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Coursera is phasing out free certificates

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Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#111

Post by SloopJon »

ipsin wrote: post #103

The shame for me is that I occasionally used the "with distinction" grading to push myself where I might otherwise think I've done a "good enough" job understanding the content. It really helped push me over the line when taking the "Mathematical Biostats Boot Camp" series, which I enjoyed. https://www.coursera.org/course/biostats It's silly, I know, but free certificates were the gamification of learning, and I'll m…

> It's silly, I know, but free certificates were the gamification of learning, and I'll miss that particular aspect of the game.

Absolutely. Even if I'm the only person in the world who even knows I took the class, grades and deadlines, and (to a lesser extent) certificates are part of the added value of an online class, compared to self study.

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#112

Post by SiVal »

pigscantfly wrote: post #106
kiloreux wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although that it's not important how MOOCs changed my life , but i will tell you how , i was raised in a poor family (like really poor) , i got my first computer when i was 16 years old , and saw the internet for the first time when i was 18 years old , i always had hunger for knowledge and learning new things but never could go further than reading some old books from the high school library , when i first got the i…

That's really awesome to hear! I work on the Stanford edX team, but we don't see a lot of feedback from our off-campus users (even though there are lots of them). It's great to know that MOOCs are actually helping people out. In case anyone hasn't heard of our site (it's a little smaller than the more well known ones), we run a public edX instance at lagunita.stanford.edu and maintain forks of the edX repositories at…

Kiloreux and others who have benefited in similar ways, PLEASE email your stories to Coursera, edX, MIT OCW, or any other sites whose MOOCs have helped you. Sometimes, they are sitting in a meeting room discussing whether to discontinue some free aspect of the service, and your story will be enough to convince them to keep it going a little longer.

You might feel insignificant off in some far corner of the world, but when the creators hear your voice, they REALLY care what you think.

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#113

Post by ghaff »

brudgers wrote: post #10
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #2

I honestly don't understand this. The article talks about revolutionizing the world of education and yet expects the online courses to give out certifications, like classical schools do. The free online courses exist so that you have free access to education, not that you have a piece of something that you can show to people. That might be an added benefit, and I see nothing wrong with strict requirements and chargin…

There are a lot of different models for distance learning. Self-paced study is one of them. A more structured classroom type environment is another. The value for me was that Coursera provided the latter and the support of a cohort of students with their more traditional approach of timelines with fixed milestones on a fixed calendar. When I started, the verified certificate was offered. It didn't really offer value…

On the one hand, I agree. On the other... well, an inability to add more value to a verified certificate is pretty much one of the fundamental problems that Coursera (and other MOOCs) has struggled with. A certificate that you've completed a MOOC (together with some weak identity verification) just doesn't have pretty much any value to most people.

Maybe if you've got no other credentials, they're better than nothing--especially if they indicate a systematic attempt to educate yourself in a relevant area. Or maybe to satisfy some sort of continuing education requirement.

But MOOCs haven't really gone much of anywhere as businesses precisely because their value is correctly largely seen as more akin to self-paced study with books and video than a college class. This isn't only because of the lack of value attached to their credentials, verified or otherwise, but it's one of the reasons.

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#114

Post by smsm42 »

I have take a lot of Coursera courses, and I guess this news is a bit of a downer, but not too much. For me, SOA is more of a memorabilia peace than any value, though I admit it is convenient to have an externally visible list of courses. But if any employer ever cared, I could just print out the profile page listing them anyway :)

OTOH, they have to make money somehow, and the fact that I still can learn so much without paying anything is plain awesome.

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#115

Post by smsm42 »

snambi wrote: post #63

Do we really need coursera? Most universities are uploading their lectures into youtube anyway.

Depends on your preferred learning model. If you can learn by just absorbing the narrative lectures, fine, but not everybody prefers it. For some, like myself, a degree of structure and interactivity provided by Coursera, helps a lot.

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#116

Post by jeffwass »

ColinWright wrote: post #25

People in other comments are saying the certificates are pointless, or useless, or never needed. In contrast to their claims, recently when applying for a job I was asked for proof that I really do have a PhD. I have no idea where the certificate is, and pointed out in an email that certificates can, these days, easily be faked. To provide a certificate merely gives them grounds later, if they find I don't have a PhD…

For the proof of your PhD, doesn't an official transcript mailed from your school suffice?

I've been at my job for the past 7 yrs, but has hiring changed so much in this time that most jobs DON'T ask for academic transcripts anymore?

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#117

Post by smsm42 »

aheilbut wrote: post #79
tomjen3 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it is free for now, there are no guarantees about the future (death and taxes excepted and then I am not even sure about death), but why would you make that comment? The MOOCs don't owe you anything, they are providing the equivalent of a university degree for no cost, so why so negative?

I think there are conflicting incentives, and we've seen how these things tend to play out. It's really the universities and the professors teaching the classes who are providing the courses, and they need to be careful that they don't inadvertently put all this material into a walled garden under the assumption that they're giving it away to the world.

So far, there's no wall. There's just a gardener that can sell you a certificate that you indeed visited the garden, but you can still visit it anytime whether you pay or not.

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#118

Post by ColinWright »

jeffwass wrote: post #116
ColinWright wrote: post #25

People in other comments are saying the certificates are pointless, or useless, or never needed. In contrast to their claims, recently when applying for a job I was asked for proof that I really do have a PhD. I have no idea where the certificate is, and pointed out in an email that certificates can, these days, easily be faked. To provide a certificate merely gives them grounds later, if they find I don't have a PhD…

For the proof of your PhD, doesn't an official transcript mailed from your school suffice? I've been at my job for the past 7 yrs, but has hiring changed so much in this time that most jobs DON'T ask for academic transcripts anymore?

That then means contacting my school and getting them to sort out a transcript, which means involving a third party. Easier just to point them at a URL. Done.

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#119

Post by andyidsinga »

rpcope1 wrote: post #104
andyidsinga wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but only to the extent that we're looking at the current state of moocs - which don't offer access to those kinds of equipment. When we start seeing that happen, we're back to the focus on ability to show work, experiments behind them, and the ability to describe the work in great detail to a potential employer in order to get the job. also , for new college grad jobs in chemistry, rocket design, metalu…

I have some very strong doubts that a MOOC will ever be able to offer the laboratory experience that you'd get at a traditional university (I'm not talking entry level). To do a lot of the EE work I've done in the past, you really need to know what you're doing, and a lot of the equipment, like a good vector network analyzer, is both incredibly cost prohibitive (new ones can reach a quarter of a million), and really…

hmm - yes I have the similar doubts about programming at the advanced "building something very complicated level" with a analogous experience in my current project with machine learning and cloud infrastructure.

Totally agree about having a person present -- but moocs don't preclude that - see "inverted classroom" concepts.

back to complicated high-end equipment :

* there are people who have electron microscopes of their own - http://hackedgadgets.com/2013/01/01/garage-scanning-electron... .

* usb protocol analyzers used to be 20k (if I remember correctly how much catc's were) ...and now they are available for Its hard to imagine ahead of time, but many exotic things come down in price and complexity when smart people come along and imagine a need for them in their garages or similar lower-end-than-original setting.

fun discussion!

Re: Coursera is phasing out free certificates

#120

Post by andyidsinga »

wolfgke wrote: post #100
andyidsinga wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is the "personel manager" you describe really the state of hiring? As a company it seems you would miss a lot of talent by filtering this way.

First: This kind of personal manager a hate object in German programming and engineering circles in about the same way the pointy-haired boss does in US ones. I openly can't answer this question for reasons that are off topic here. But I have good reasons to believe that the stories are often true: If you just look at job advertisements you'll very often see very contradictory job requirements that by simple logic an…

ok got it - thanks for additional context.
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