First of all - I love your UI design book. It's really useful and I refer back to it all the time. Secondly - I'm taking the UX course now and I think it has a lot of useful information. I agree that it's more of a starting point. An absolute beginner will need to have time and practice with these skills to work in the industry. Most of the work I've seen in the forums and peer-reviewed is not what I would consider to be at a professional level. However, if a student takes this seriously, they can create some very nice portfolio work. I find the peer review process to be frustrating from both sides. Reviewing projects is tough - in the beginning, I tried to give a lot of constructive feedback. However, many of the assignments I've reviewed are lacking in skill or just sloppy and incomplete. I don't want to be responsible for reprimanding fellow students over and over. On the other hand, I put a lot of time and effort into my assignments, and the last two have gotten no feedback at all besides a passing grade. So I'm not gaining any insight. Anyways, I enjoyed your writeup! Thanks for publishing!