The blogging was one of my favorite parts of the class as well. It allowed me to take what I learned from the live class and apply it to things in my life which made me learn it much easier.
The blogs usually took me about an hour to look up sources and formulate my thoughts into writing. The Excel homework usually took me much longer to complete; that homework typically took me about 2-3 hours to complete because of having to work the problems out before I found the correct answers.
I can't really think of anything that I would have liked to see more about during the class, except maybe a little more on the hiring process but even that was covered pretty well. The approach with the blogging and Excel homework was a great way to learn the curriculum with the right amount of math and concepts.