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Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

reachtarunhere.github.io

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Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#2
I agree that removing/limiting access is lousy by Coursera and Udacity, for courses that used to be free and contain valuable fundamentals.

I don't agree that the golden age is necessarily over though. The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com

MOOCs by government-backed traditional universities from Europe / Asia is taking over a large chunk of the "market" meaning that Coursera, Udacity, etc. is finding it difficult to get any returns.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#3
Coursera actually converted a course I was enrolled in to paid-quizzes-only, while I was actively enrolled in the course and on the second to last week of eight. They finally converted it back after 2 days of many of us contacting support but never gave me a straight answer as to whether it was accidentally or intentional :-/ Definitely lost my faith in Coursera as a platform over these recent changes.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#4
post #3

Coursera actually converted a course I was enrolled in to paid-quizzes-only, while I was actively enrolled in the course and on the second to last week of eight. They finally converted it back after 2 days of many of us contacting support but never gave me a straight answer as to whether it was accidentally or intentional :-/ Definitely lost my faith in Coursera as a platform over these recent changes.

Agree they have been acting too greedy recently.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#5

I agree that removing/limiting access is lousy by Coursera and Udacity, for courses that used to be free and contain valuable fundamentals. I don't agree that the golden age is necessarily over though. The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com MOOCs by government-backed traditional universities from Europe / Asia is taking over a large chunk of the "market" mea…

> The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com

Never heard of that site, but I browsed through the first page of CS videos[0], and all but two courses were just links to Coursera courses. The other two were links to edX.

[0] https://www.class-central.com/subject/cs

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#6
post #3

Coursera actually converted a course I was enrolled in to paid-quizzes-only, while I was actively enrolled in the course and on the second to last week of eight. They finally converted it back after 2 days of many of us contacting support but never gave me a straight answer as to whether it was accidentally or intentional :-/ Definitely lost my faith in Coursera as a platform over these recent changes.

I never liked Coursera because they offered classes only sometimes... I know a "real classroom" experience is what they were going after but it sucks finding a great looking course that will be offered a year later or worse, no upcoming dates.

Sad to see they're going to downhill though.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#8
post #5

I agree that removing/limiting access is lousy by Coursera and Udacity, for courses that used to be free and contain valuable fundamentals. I don't agree that the golden age is necessarily over though. The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com MOOCs by government-backed traditional universities from Europe / Asia is taking over a large chunk of the "market" mea…

> The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com Never heard of that site, but I browsed through the first page of CS videos[0], and all but two courses were just links to Coursera courses. The other two were links to edX. [0] https://www.class-central.com/subject/cs

Founder of Class Central here. Our default sorting order is by start dates and Coursera courses now have new sessions starting monthly or bi-monthly here. We will be updating our algorithm soon to rank the courses based on our data.

You can see all the providers we aggregate here: https://www.class-central.com/providers

And universities here: https://www.class-central.com/universities

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#9

Learning is lovely, but without the advatage of being able to directly apply what you've learned toward actually improving your life, it's all just so much education porn.

Why does everything you do have to go `toward actually improving your life`? Why can't we do stuff just for fun anymore?

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#10
I'll probably get shot down for being that typical negative HN comment, but do MOOCs like Coursera actually do much in the way of making education more accessible or society fairer? All the content offered on Coursera already exists on the internet. Really motivated people will aggressively look for study materials, and they generally don't have a problem finding it.

It seems to me that it's actually the internet that improves accessibility and fairness, through which curated collections of study materials are then delivered as MOOCs. Which is terrific, but then it's hardly shocking that they'd eventually have to monetize themselves. We've seen worse attempts to crack down on the internet.

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