7 - Sorting in a view seems to not be alphabetical?
Since the course field is an entity reference the sort would be working on the node id and not the node name. can you check this.

What you could do is add the node title instead of the node entity field. and create a relationship to the node title to the entity reference field. Now the sort should work properly.

EDIT : Adding the steps mentioned in comment


Add Content:Title to the view.  
Go to advanced, add a relationship to the content type.   
Go back to that title field configuration and select the relationship from the drop down.   
Go the the format settings and make the new field sortable.