Coursera shuts access to old platform courses • Hacker News Board

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#31

Post by lovelearning » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:40 AM UTC

I feel Coursera's pricing strategy is located at two opposite extremes and misses out an entire range of options in the middle. They either make an entire course completely free with no option to pay even if the student wants to, or they put it behind a paywall where one can't even start without paying.

They along with their institutional partners are missing out revenue from people like me who'd like to pay some amount, but not the amount they fix. I'm happy to pay some amount without a certificate. They should consider giving a pay-what-you-like option for all their courses.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#32

Post by Jtsummers » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:41 AM UTC

wonkaWonka wrote: post #7

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.

Synthesis. To a point you're right. A lot of this may just be education porn. But a greater breadth and depth of knowledge permits synthesis. Computer science, computing in general, is one of the greatest examples of synthesis.

Starting with mathematics, the a theoretical machine, augmented by a language hierarchy gleaned from linguistics, with models based in real biological and physical systems. Even today's hotness in machine learning with ANNs is founded in an attempt to understand intelligence based on the physical structure of the mind.

Perhaps much of this can be recreated without being exposed to mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, philosophy, linguistics, and other fields. But I imagine the insights needed to develop the first ANN model, the first language designed around a CFG would've taken far longer to develop in that narrow worldview.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#33

Post by srtjstjsj » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

_xhok wrote: post #29

_xhok wrote: post #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 tha…

After reading the replies, I now think my first assumption was wrong, and that Coursera does in fact offer substantially more than raw stacks of torrented pdfs. But that's just my second point. MOOCs are a substantial service built on top of the free internet. Surely that costs money? And surely the fact that MOOCs are increasingly charging for stuff (and taking measures to make sure users pay) is not a sign that "so…

some MOOCs are free. Some or not. That beats "nothing is available for free"

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#34

Post by keyle » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

LouisSayers wrote: post #20

If anyone else is wondering, MOOC is Massive Open Online Courses. It really gets on my nerves when people don't expand their acronyms when introducing a topic. Of course there are exceptions, but is MOOC really that common an acronym?! I just find it a bit inconsiderate.

Thanks, I got grizzly too.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#35

Post by greenmoon55 » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:46 AM UTC

Would anyone be kind enough to provide a script for downloading assignments and quizzes?

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#36

Post by syngrog66 » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:48 AM UTC

LouisSayers wrote: post #20

If anyone else is wondering, MOOC is Massive Open Online Courses. It really gets on my nerves when people don't expand their acronyms when introducing a topic. Of course there are exceptions, but is MOOC really that common an acronym?! I just find it a bit inconsiderate.

just googled MOOC and the top 3 results all explained it

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#37

Post by akeating » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:49 AM UTC

wonkaWonka wrote: post #7

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.

You will always find something valuable that will improve your life. For example, software engineers can apply the abstract learning from Coursera's course about functional programming in Scala to any other language. Focused learning can generate more tangible and immediate returns, but don't discount the value of learning generally. It's likely to be a significant factor in keeping you relevant and consistently employable over the long term.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#38

Post by lovelearning » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:49 AM UTC

_xhok wrote: post #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 tha…

I started out thinking this way some years ago (which is also why I never went for higher degrees in college). But after taking a couple of MOOCs every year from last 4 years, I've realized that a good (or even somewhat good) instructor can inject thoughts and ideas in a way that reading books, blogs and presentations cannot. Something as simple as the way the content is organized also gives some insights; for example, what concepts are closely related. Andrew Ng's treatment of Machine Learning and Sedgewick's treatment of Algorithmic thinking stand out in my mind. But it's not just them; even the relatively unknown instructors of courses I'm taking right now have always given some insight that books or blogs haven't - and I do read a lot of them too.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#39

Post by wtf_is_frp » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:53 AM UTC

The only thing I hate about the new platform is that you can't access the info until a week after you enrolled into self-paced courses. It is fucking stupid. Beyond retarded.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#40

Post by wonkaWonka » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:56 AM UTC

sotojuan wrote: post #15

klausa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even worse, his comment assumes you can't improve your enjoyment of life just by learning about things you like.

After a while, this never ending river of UTF-8 characters and RGB pixels gets a little old.

You realize all the time you've spent whiling away so much time, imagining that it's all building up to something even better than yesterday's tide of serialized data streams, that your youth has faded, and you're still just staring at a lightbulb masked behind a screen of wires, listening to air disturbed by oscillating magnets, and nothing more.

But the worst part of this, is looking up, only to find a city full of similar people all still hopelessly enthralled by the discharge of so many lithium-ion batteries perturbed by some nearby electric coil.