Obtained BerkeleyX Data88.2EX — Advanced Concepts in Economics Certificate

The 2nd in a series of total 3 certificates related to becoming a “DATA 88EX: Economic Models with Python” Professional certificate folder. Completed and cert collected.

The entire certificate is available to see here.

My thoughts on the first certificate is available here.

Now then, something unusual did happen as I was going through the 2nd certificate.

After a few chapters were completed, I noticed that not a single lab was loading. It always ended in an error such as this. note: sometimes images show here.

As always, the strength of any service is how they will resolve things when issues happen. I headed over to the support article, and raised a ticket.

Within 24 hours, a support person replied, asking me to.

Post the problem directly in the ‘discussion’ section fo the course. This is something I have already been doing as and when I encountered errors.
Wait for a week for the course owners to respond.
I found this odd and informed them that other students have raised questions and some of them have been ignored by the course authors and if there is any way they can reach out to the course authors and speed things up.

Then, within 24 ours, the course designers did indeed show up. They quickly replied to all the discussion forum questions (the ones from me, and also the ones from other students). Then, they immediately fixed the errors.

In the beginning, when they said 1 week of waiting, I was a little sad. These certificates cost me a lot of money, especially as I was paying in US dollars via Indian Rupee (which is a lot of money because Indian Rupee is devalued a lot). I was worried and it even affected my daily studying.

Then, when the course designers showed up and fixed everything, my spirits lifted. I immediately finished the course, the lab sessions and collected the certificate.

Also, this incident restored and validated my faith in the edX platform. I am really counting on buying more courses from this platform and the content and gradings all look really good.

All in all, any students out there, I would highly recommend the edX platform for free learning. and, if you have the money (like I paid for the course), please do go ahead and collect the valuable certificates as well.

this is a copy of original blog post, available here.