I took Elaine's Beginning Python course, aimed at people who already have some programming experience. On the whole, it was a good course. Elaine works hard, and can explain things well. She teaches by demonstrating at the keyboard, which is usually very effective. She is willing to meet privately with students to give them extra help. She is very responsive to email questions. The textbook (Wesley Chun's "Core Python") is a reasonable choice.

The course could have been better, though. The weekly programming assignments were too easy for people who already have programming experience. Elaine would teach the simple points of some new area, but wouldn't get into the subtleties. Sometimes she seemed unfamiliar with aspects of Python that were explained in our textbook. Though she usually ran her class very professionally, she could sometimes be rude or patronizing to students.

The first half of the course consisted of readings in the textbook, and weekly assignments. For the second half, she divided us into teams of four students, and we worked on a long-term assignment as a team. The goal was to mirror some of the aspects of the software workplace: you work on a team, you translate high-level requirements into a design, you figure out which software packages to use, you use packages that you don't know very well at first, you work out your own schedule.

I believe most of the class enjoyed the second half more than the first. Some of the teams did some very good work, and clearly learned a lot. On the other hand, if you are already in the software industry, as most of the class seemed to be, then you already work on such projects every day. It might have been more profitable to have smaller teams (or even teams of one), to minimize the overhead of communication and scheduling.

This course will teach you the basics of Python, but you will have to dig out the details yourself, probably with another book -- both "The Python Cookbook" and "Python in a Nutshell" seemed to be popular with students wanting to learn more.