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Coursera’s Preview Mode

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Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#11

Post by Grokify »

I still get substantial value out of Coursera. I started with Andrew Ng's original Machine Learning course way back when, and recently completed classes that I thought were well worth my time on Claude Code, Crew AI, AutoGen, and MCP.

While not revolutionary, a recent improvement is AI-based review, which is much appreciated for it's near instant review.

From a transformative perspective, I like the AWS Skill Builder SimuLearn classes. They say teaching is one of the best ways to learn, and I found the chat-based role play where you are the expert to be very interesting.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#14

Post by freddie_mercury »

rgavuliak wrote: post #4

> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. I would disagree, I saw a lot of people, especially in the Data Science field that got up-skilled by back then free Coursera.

The early hype of MOOCs wasn't "a few people in handful of fields will get up-skilled".

If that was all they claimed there wouldn't have been early hype around transformative potential.

Coursera had 1.7 million "students" in under 2 years and was growing faster than Facebook. The President of edX talked about "disrupting" the entire higher education system. Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, and Duke all offered MOOCs with the idea that anyone anywhere in the world could now get an MIT/Stanford level of education without needing to be on-campus (or pay a lot of money in tuition).

From the 2012 NYTimes article on MOOCs:

'Dr. Agarwal predicts that “a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with edX certificates.” He expects students will one day arrive on campus with MOOC credits the way they do now with Advanced Placement.'

Never happened.

'Dr. Stavens promises more change, and more disruption: “We are only 5 to 10 percent of the way there.”'

Turned out we were already 100% of the way there after 24 months of MOOCs being launched.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#17

Post by redbluered »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #14
rgavuliak wrote: post #4

> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. I would disagree, I saw a lot of people, especially in the Data Science field that got up-skilled by back then free Coursera.

The early hype of MOOCs wasn't "a few people in handful of fields will get up-skilled". If that was all they claimed there wouldn't have been early hype around transformative potential. Coursera had 1.7 million "students" in under 2 years and was growing faster than Facebook. The President of edX talked about "disrupting" the entire higher education system. Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, and Duke all offe…

Agarwal said that in public. Behind closed doors, he was completely cynical about impact. His primary goal was financial (for himself).

What happened was primarily due to personalities and misaligned incentives.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#18

Post by redbluered »

phyzome wrote: post #12
geodel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't logged in edX in long time but as per this article it is no longer free.

Only parts are paywalled, I think? Looks like it's specifically tests and such (graded assignments) that are affected.

Which are where you learn.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#19

Post by ocdtrekkie »

klipklop wrote: post #10

Never took off because employees care zero that you took a Coursera class. Might as well watch YouTube videos or take local community college classes.

Your community college is probably accredited and people actually will care about that one. I went back and picked up an additional associate's degree pertaining to my job.
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