Average Workload
Average Difficulty
Average Overall
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As of course start, I had around 3.5 years of experience working as a professional software engineer, specifically doing web applications (full-stack .NET + JavaScript). My previous degree was in Engineering (non-CE/non-EE) from early 2010s.
This was my fifth/sixth course in OMSCS (taken concurrently with AIES, CS 6603), within the computing systems specialization. I previously completed GIOS (CS 6200, Fall 2021), IIS (CS 6035, Fall 2022), CN (CS 6250, Summer 2023), and HPCA (CS 6290, Fall 2023).
Overall, I enjoyed the course. It is essentially a business course, so it's not going to have the technical spin of a CS/CSE course; but if one doesn't know that going in, then they are beyond help (otherwise, knowing that going in but nevertheless still complaining about it later on is equally questionable in my view). From an applications development perspective, this is a very useful course for frontend-focused work (i.e., UI/UX), since it covers a lot of adjacent topics and terminology around UI design, SEO, etc. (albeit from a business/marketing perspective, but still relevant to that general line of work nevertheless), with particular focus on social media such as YouTube, Facebook, and Google (search), which is the most prominent advertising/marketing medium in the current-year landscape.
The course is not curved, and follows a strict 10-point scale (i.e., 90.000-100.000% overall for an A, 80-89.999% overall for a B, etc.). The relative weighting of the deliverables is as follows:
I did not keep strict tabs on time expenditures across deliverables, but my best in-hindsight back-estimates are as follows:
Given an 11-week summer semester, this averages out to 4.4 hours/week [= (9 + 20 + 9 + 10) / 11].
DM is relatively unique within OMS, in that everything is released upfront (including the exams), so in principle you could work ahead "to your heart's content," which is great from a planning/flexibility standpoint. Otherwise, if following the schedule, the cadence was typically 1-2 mini-case discussions per week (in Summer semester). Furthermore, the major-case reflections and exams were relatively evenly distributed across the semester in terms of deadlines (additionally, major-case reflections and exams were on offsetting/non-overlapping weeks).
I mostly stuck to the weekly schedule myself, and my general impression of the workload was "steady churn" rather than "intermittent boluses" (but still a relatively low time commitment overall either way).
The bulk of the weekly deliverables were focused around the content in the textbook ("eMarketing" 7th edition by Red & Yellow), as supplemented/summarized by the lectures.
Additionally, the major-case reflections did a deeper dive into specific topics, and also required purchasing a supplementary PDFs packet from the Harvard Business Publishing for around $20 USD, providing the relevant subject matter for commentary in the deliverable/writing.
For these manually graded components, grading was turned around fairly promptly, much to the credit of the staff (and given the large size of the course, no less), typically within a week or so of the submission deadline.
The exams tested a relatively comprehensive knowledge of the material, at least to the level of rigor in the lectures (including some of the more "oddly specific" factoids highlighted therein). I'd say roughly 70-75% was attainable just by "sheer intution," but beyond that, it did test some more specific details that would likely boil down to "educated guessing at best" otherwise in the absence of deliberate content review. Both exams were proctored via Honorlock in Canvas.
Given the relatively high weighting of the exams (i.e., 60% of the overall grade between the two), it does require some effort to land high grades on the exams, but not to an overly difficult extent. I ended up doing relatively poorly on the midterm (high 70s, below median), including second-guessing in the wrong direction on review of the questions prior to submitting for around 2-3 questions, but managed to clinch an overall A via the final (low 90% and slightly above median, right at the required threshold for me to clear the overall A hurdle, i.e., one more question wrong on the final would've cost me the A in the course!). Nevertheless, the median across deliverables is in the high 80s-90s ballpark in the course, so it's really "your A to lose" in that regard.
Overall, I enjoyed the course, in terms of delivering what it intended from a subject matter standpoint. If you're not interested in UI design and/or marketing, then this is not the course for you; and if that's the case, then that's a personal choice/preference, rather than a fault of the course/staff itself. Otherwise, if you are interested, but still feel like you're "wasting a slot" by taking DM regardless, then I would personally recommend to simply independently read/study from the aforementioned textbook ("eMarketing" 7th edition by Red & Yellow), which covers the subject matter very well in my opinion and was a judicious choice for source material accordingly on the part of the staff. Additionally, I thought the lectures were extremely well done, in terms of presenting the information in a very coherent manner, and emphasizing the key points accordingly; despite not being a topic which I'm extremely enthusiastic over myself (but do still regard it to be relevant as a full-stack applications developer), I nevertheless feel like I've left the course with a reasonably solid understanding/foundation in the fundamentals of marketing (particularly SEO and social-media-focused marketing), thanks to the lectures and course content at large.
This is a pretty light course overall and should be amenable to pairing with another, even over the summer (DM and AIES paired together was less work overall than single courses individually that I had taken previously, e.g., GIOS and HPCA).
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Even in a summer semester, the course felt extremely light. The modules are highly relevant and provide extensive knowledge in regards to each digital channel in a marketer's toolkit. While the course if fully theoretical, I appreciated the identical structure in each chapter that went like channel statistics > channel benefits > channel considerations > channel best practices and so on. This structured course planning allowed me as a student to understand each tool to the complete extent. While we are on the subject of theory, I do wish that the course covered some practical aspects of digital marketing. I would have loved to see some assignments that involved analyzing and reporting insights from marketing related datasets.
The mini-cases should not take longer than an hour to complete; the 5 major cases throughout the semester were also fair and did not take a significant time dedication. It felt like a great opportunity to express my learnings by employing critical thinking and also utilizing the knowledge gained from the class. Finally, the two exams felt even easier compared to the assignments. The slides and video lectures were enough for me to perform great in the course.