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Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

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Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#91

Post by vonklaus »

quincyla wrote: post #67
latenightcoding wrote: post #55

It is truly sad to see Coursera getting greedier by the day. I can honestly say this website changed my life, I was living in a third world country and still in high school when I enrolled in Andrew Ng's machine learning class and thanks to that MOOC I was able to get a machine learning job building recommender systems for a Canadian company straight out of high school. There are plenty of amazing MOOCs that Coursera…

If institutional partners treated MOOCs as a marketing exercise for their university's brand, instead of trying to monetize courses and certificates, people could continue to have this content for free. Unfortunately, universities don't exactly exemplify long-term thinking. Most of the content for these MOOCs is created by professors as part of their jobs, so this content is owned by their universities. I bet a vast…

just saw this comment, and checked it out. I think it is a cool project and I will circle back to it when I have more time. I was a little put out by the onboarding proces just because I signed in with my github account, but several steps made me open a browser and go to github....to open a github account. That said, I have experience developing and I suspect a beginner is your target audience. Also, it is (or seems) free so you don't owe me anything and I appreciate the work you put in to it.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#92

Post by f0urtyfive »

bpesquet wrote: post #88
quincyla wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If institutional partners treated MOOCs as a marketing exercise for their university's brand, instead of trying to monetize courses and certificates, people could continue to have this content for free. Unfortunately, universities don't exactly exemplify long-term thinking. Most of the content for these MOOCs is created by professors as part of their jobs, so this content is owned by their universities. I bet a vast…

Hi Quincy, FreeCodeCamp's a great project. However, I always wondered about your long-term goals and "business model" (if there is one). You're offering to integrate old Coursera courses into FCC. But what if you change your mind about openness further down the road ? Couldn't FreeCodeCamp become the Udacity/Coursera of tomorrow ?

I'm not him, but it looks like their curriculum is licensed in the github repo under "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License", which according to this:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Would suggest that anyone could take their curriculum and rehost it with attribution if they were to "go private".

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#93

Post by LionessLover »

_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…

It doesn't make it fairer - studies have shown that overwhelmingly those already privileged take online courses (no, individual examples to the contrary don't count - this is about numbers, statistics, not the edges of the distribution). Especially for the better courses you should really already have had quite an education. And you need time and fast Internet access.

But it certainly makes it more accessible!

Myself for example, as a CS degree holder and IT consultant, over the last few years I received quite an education in anatomy, physiology, statistics (focus on medicine, biology and public health), chemistry, org. chemistry, medicinal chemistry (drug development), neuroscience, etc. Several hundreds of hours of lectures. Plus lots of others like history of architecture, "first nights" from Harvard (classical music, several courses), equine care, equine nutrition, Apacher Spark (Berkeley courses), and a lot more.

There is no way on earth I could have learned much esp. about the medical subjects any other way. You have to be really, really dedicated to try to put the pieces together just from random sites Google gives you - that's more for when you already are deep(er) into a subject and need something specific. You can of course, but since I have a life effort/benefit analysis would prevent one from doing so.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#94

Post by jaked89 »

latenightcoding wrote: post #55

It is truly sad to see Coursera getting greedier by the day. I can honestly say this website changed my life, I was living in a third world country and still in high school when I enrolled in Andrew Ng's machine learning class and thanks to that MOOC I was able to get a machine learning job building recommender systems for a Canadian company straight out of high school. There are plenty of amazing MOOCs that Coursera…

Coursera is willing to have the same amount of money you're willing to keep. How are they greedier than you?

Expecting a service without giving anything in return is the definition of "greedy".

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#95

Post by agumonkey »

I liked their first offerings a lot, very very well done too and very capable platform compared to some others. It's sad that the model couldn't sustain.

ps: about downloading the courses pdf and videos... it's really the low hanging part, in the sense that lots of universities have open pages with lectures and sometimes videos too. What MOOCs brought were exercices + auto graders (+ student group).

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#96

Post by agumonkey »

LionessLover wrote: post #89
unimpressive wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anybody else able to download the compilers course? I'm having trouble.

I don't have any problems. I used the standard options with `coursera-dl`. It's all been downloaded without a hitch now. cd /D/Videos/Courses/ ./coursera-dl/coursera-dl -u > -p > compilers-004

With 'compilers' only there's an issue in the video URLs, thanks for the suffix tip.

ps: 004 didn't work, only 003

pps:

tested these: - progfun1 - proglang-002 almost worked.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#97

Post by fx85ms »

netheril96 wrote: post #19
_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…

Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but I've found no place other than Coursera/EdX offering high quality quizzes and assignments, with feedback , even if just automated. Texts and videos explaining all kinds of topics are abundant, but the most valuable learning experience comes from practice, and that is rare.

I think that coursera is moving away from quizzes with feedback. I'm currently doing the ML course by Andrew Ng and the quizzes do not have feedback when you answered correctly or incorrectly. The archived ML course (with the old coursera interface) still shows the feedback for quizzes.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#98

Post by LionessLover »

zo1 wrote: post #76
greenmoon55 wrote: post #35

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

It's been posted a few times in this thread: https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl

He said "assignments and quizzes", not "videos and slides".

https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl/issues/490

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#99

Post by the_wheel »

You can't deliver on your mission of democratizing education or operate as a VC backed business (which enables these attempts in the first place), if you're not making moves toward profitability. These companies are pioneering a space and searching for a viable business model in the process. They're surviving.

Re: Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

#100

Post by haakon »

linux_devil wrote: post #63

There is no point of calling them MOOC , if they are not 'O'pen anymore.

And since it's not 'O'pen, it's most likely much less 'M'assive. Now it's more like a traditional distance learning offering. Nothing wrong with being that, but I wish we could also have MOOCs.
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