DataCamp

Data science is a field that works with data. Data camp has taken their time to exhibit a well structured curriculum. Learning through Data Camp has been very encouraging and retaining because tutorial videos are concise and detailed. There are plenty of guided coding exercises in every module without local installation of any IDE. Everything is done online. The guided and unguided projects has been helpful in giving me real world experiences of working with real world data.
Thanks to Data Camp.

Material is decent and is good for beginners though may be too rudimentary and not applicable for real life projects. However my biggest issue is with their payment renewal system. I had signed up specifically for only a month subscription and was under the impression that after the month was done my subscription would be over. However based on their policy they automatically auto-renew you for whatever period you signed up for (monthly/yearly). Their websites hides this fact and briefly mentions they set it to auto-renewal by default no matter what and they no refund will be given. They say they send an email to all subscribers regarding this policy but none was received. Furthermore, when you realize (like I did) they secretly charged you for 3 extra months without you knowing and try to cancel on their website, you are only canceling for the current month and auto-renewal is still in place. That means you need to read the cancelation careful to cancel the current month subscription and then cancel auto-renewal. This company has decent material but very shady practices. The fact that I cannot even remove my billing information from their platform is another cause for concern. With how shady they are, what is stopping them from secretly billing me again? I would be very careful. 

I got a data camp subscription because I wanted to get better at coding and learn stuff like R and Pandas. Unfortunately it was kind of a waste of time and money. The courses are redundant and don't actually help you build skill-- they hand you all the answers and there is no room to challenge yourself. edX and Rosalind are both free sites that are worth your time. I wouldn't recommend a data camp subscription because it is very hard to cancel: they don't have a customer service phone line, and it was nearly impossible for me to cancel my subscription-- even once I did they over-billed me. 

Pros:
1. It has videos to explain a concept
2. Many concepts are included and explained that not all MOOCs provide
3. It offers certificates to make me motivated to complete the course
4. It offers courses in Phyton and R
5. It has a lot courses that can be choosen from
6. Cheaper than many other MOOCs
7. It offers projects that you can work on after completing several courses
Cons:
1. I don't feel like I was challenged enough
2. Many exercises are too easy and only fill in the blanks
3. Easy forget the concept after finish the course
4. I feel I don't grasp or learn much after the end of the concept
5. Minimal repetition to embed any learning
6. Repetition between the videos and the notes in the exercise
7. The code is half done
8. Not really learning by doing
9. Can just copy paste from the slide lectures
10. Material and testing really is so basic
11. The level of difficulty at Datacamp seems to be below other beginners courses and some of the quizzes/tests could be done simply by copying and pasting from the question (i.e. without having any real comprehension of the material).

Overall, It doesn't meet my expectations on a Data Science Course because I don't feel I learn, know, and understand after completing the course because the exercises were just fill in the blanks from the given instructions. Should have give the customer many challenging exercises where they coded from the beginning to the end without feel being spoon-fed. Customer will remember, understand, and learn more if they are asked to think and code for the solution themselves.