I wish IBM took offering classes for this certification as seriously as I am attempting to take the classes themselves. Things are regularly presented out of order, if at all. The peer assessment requirement is a royal pain, with people regularly not following instructions or not reading your submissions and just failing you for the hell of it. And, there's enough error present in the materials themselves that the legitimacy of the course is called into question in a very real way. If IBM continues offering courses, they either need to hire a legitimate and trained curriculum development team and/or an editor and tester at the very least.

I am highly disappointed with this course. It doesn't follow basic JavaScript conventions, such using as let and const instead of var, naming, and effective use of array methods. It is easy to see that this course wasn't looked over by someone experienced.

This course has had so many issues it's insane. I have been able to use most of the other courses with no problems, but this one needs heavy fixing. When I do npm install im only getting 36/36 files but it says on the instruction side that its 96/96.

there are errors and missing information

Positives: The ungraded hands-on activities were valuable. Many of the videos were high quality. Negatives: Some parts of the final project were set up poorly. Several of the tasks expected text for submission, but there were no directions given about what to enter for text. These should have been a code screenshot requirement. Then, the rubric for peer review of those tasks didn't provide samples or explanations of what specifically to look for in the responses. Finally--an overall critique--the course is missing valuable context in many of the videos. For example, in the lessons about making http requests, it is unclear where the http requests are coming from--the client, the server, or both. Similarly, any mentions of Axios don't make clear that the package is used for making http requests--not serving them.

I am a novice when it comes to NodeJS and ExpressJS and took this course to learn more. For the record, I am not interested in obtaining the IBM Full Stack Developer Cert. The videos are monotonous as it sounds like a monotone robot reciting what is on the slides. The only humans you see are 4 people who are there to provide occasional "expert opinions" but offer very little substance. The course content, being a 13 hour course, is too high-level for topics that are very complex to understand especially when it comes to topics like promises and async/await. Perhaps what upsets me the most is the final assignment which I gave up on. In about the 3rd task of the assignment, you are asked to do something which was NOT taught in the class (videos or labs) and uses source information with a format that is so unusual that I couldn't find one example on the internet on how to successfully parse it. So I will end this feedback with... good luck!

I understand that this is free however it does not even give you real feel that you are learning something because whole course audio is AI recorded not even that good its literally waste of time I am so disappointed because initially I felt that finally worth learning but what's point if there is no connection between the learner and trainer rip course. God save other people from this.

Not a Beginner Friendly Course , and no faculty is teaching , just an automated Voice with a lot of theory and Notes, and no guidance in coding part , just Copy and pasting will do your job , so not a good choice for beginner , and if you are not a beginner , you will surely know very much more than this...

It is really best for basic or to clear foundation in backend with node. If someone is learning nodeJS as a beginner you need to have this course!!

it is not resetting my deadline niether allowing me to redue my peer graded assigment

The most difficult course in the IBM full stack developer specialization, but one of the most valuable. Take your time with it and learn everything, and remember why you started in the first place.

It was not easy but,I made it. awesome course to get started in express.

Pretty decent. Course videos wasn't very helpful, too theoretical and skimmed over everything, so had to study from external sources. But the labs was pretty educational and helped a lot. The final assessment was a really good challenge, although felt like my general JS logic was tested more, it was really good learning to integrate that knowledge into backend. However, as it has been with most courses on this certificate, I really detest the peer assessment method. Just having a look at some of the assessments posted, it is ridiculous to think that we are having the same people grade other people's projects. I really hope you'll consider a better method for grading.

The course has multiple content and quality issues that seriously affect the learning experience. The explanations are often repetitive and contradictory—for example, the same topic is redefined multiple times with conflicting details. Some sections also contain technically incorrect information, forcing learners to rely on external sources like ChatGPT for clarification. The hands-on labs have coding issues and unclear instructions. If extra steps are needed beyond the given solution, they should be clearly mentioned. I appreciate that some lab fixes were made quickly. Several theoretical sections are confusing, with complex terms misused and quiz questions that are incomplete or unnecessarily tricky, which adds no learning value. The writing quality is poor, with grammatical mistakes and technically inaccurate statements, which is disappointing from a reputed company. Code screenshots are low-quality and hard to read, there are numerous typos and repetitions, and there’s no guidance on running projects locally. The content feels overloaded with theory and lacks practical balance. The discussion forum is also unreliable—slow to respond and often unhelpful. In the final project, the instructions are very confusing. Axios was only taught for external APIs, with no mention of using it for local APIs. ChatGPT and the coach were the only real sources of help. The project feels disconnected from the theory—many concepts taught earlier were not applied or explained in context. Overall, this course feels unpolished and below professional standards. For a paid course from IBM, I expected organized, accurate, and professionally written content. I’d recommend it only to full-time learners, not working professionals who don’t have time to untangle unclear content or wait for vague forum replies. Please review and update the material to match the quality expected from IBM.

Very unclear for a newbie, a few practices are given, and a ton of theoretical information.

absolute shit , no instructional material useful at all --- I would NOT reccomend.

trash

A Well structured course, those you wants to become a backend developer

A superb course to practice Backend development!

Nice Course with great learnings