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Coursera to combine with Udemy

investor.coursera.com

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Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#121

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #118
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost my entire education has been OJT (On the Job Training). I'm a high school dropout, with a G.E.D. I've spent my entire life, looking up the noses of folks that just assume they are better than me. Gets a bit grating, but the plus side is, is that I have to prove myself, over, and over. Besides that annoyance, it's been excellent. Directing my own learning has been amazing. Having to prove myself, over and over,…

> Play A Boy Named Sue , by Johnny Cash It's by Shel Silverstein; Johnny Cash just performed it.

Cool. Shel got most of the "Cash," then...

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#122

Post by zhyder »

End of an era: video (with broadband Internet penetration) was the best tool we had for 15+ years. But LLMs are now good enough, including in image+infographic generation and factuality (especially when grounding resources are provided... which is where human experts still matter). I think video is now better only for learning physical hands-on skills... and those videos tend to be on YouTube rather than on Udemy or Coursera.

Coursera's model will still survive for a while, given people's desire for branded credentials (university degree credits or company-branded certificates)... until the university bubble bursts too in a 10+ years. Start of trend: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-dramatic...

A bit of a plug: we tried building a consumer business, with a learning experience built atop these LLMs: https://uphop.ai/learn . Still offered for free to consumers, but we're now succeeding much better on B2B ("you either die a consumer business or live long enough to become B2B" was v true for us).

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#123

Post by echelon »

nkmnz wrote: post #114

Udemy never sold knowledge. They are selling that feeling of a new beginning, of a better future, of FINALLY doing (buying!!!) that course you always wanted to finish. 50% of buyers don't even finish the first video.

This.

E-learning can be like Steam to some people. You buy the course and then it sits there. You get a dopamine hit when you buy, and you can finish the course later. Sometime.

Some people need structure. But mostly structure is a way of dragging along those who aren't soaking up learning already, who aren't naturally seeking the next problem and breaking it apart. Not everyone does this, and so structure helps as a forcing function.

There are some subjects where you need academic and theoretical grounding. Or expensive equipment. For everything else, it's best to get hands on and just throw yourself at the subject. There's nothing really stopping a motivated person.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#124

Post by moralestapia »

contagiousflow wrote: post #81
moralestapia wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way you double check with any other method you prefer? Duh. LLMs are vastly superior to compile and spread knowledge than any other thing preceding them.

You double check every university lecture you've been apart of?

The real answer is:

You should have a mental model about how the world works and the fundamental rules of the context where you're operating. Even though you might not know something, you eventually develop an intuition of what makes sense and what doesn't. And yes, that applies even to "university lectures" since a lot of professors make mistakes/are wrong plenty of times.

Taking an LLM's output at face value would be dumb, yes. But it would be equally dumb to take only what's written on a book at face value, or a YouTube video, or anyone you listen to. You have to dig in, you have to do the homework.

LLMs make it much easier for you to do this homework. Sure, they still make mistakes, but they get you 90% of the way in minutes(!) and almost for free.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#125

Post by moralestapia »

bpt3 wrote: post #99
moralestapia wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way you double check with any other method you prefer? Duh. LLMs are vastly superior to compile and spread knowledge than any other thing preceding them.

They are faster, but I don't see how they are vastly superior to a course designed and offered by a subject matter expert in the field.

You can't beat a Caltech-tier lecture, for sure. But you know many people have access to that? You do know. Thousands, and I'm being generous.

LLMs level the playing field for the other 8 billion people.

Reminds of this article[1] that was featured yesterday and which I think was great!

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46254794

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#126

Post by hexagonsuns »

f6v wrote: post #20
piyushpr134 wrote: post #14

Universities are not going anywhere MOOC are a dead end

Turns out that an online certificate isn't worth anything when layoffs happen and the market is oversaturated with people who have real degrees. MOOCs have their place, but it's a very narrow set of disciplines.

Just wait until you find out that real degrees also aren't worth anything anymore

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#127

Post by layer8 »

chrisweekly wrote: post #55
chrisweekly wrote: post #49

This same week, Egghead ( https://egghead.io ) started offering $500 lifetime access to everything they ever made or will make. There's definitely some excellent material in their catalog. But the signals sure seem to point toward the decline of centralized human-created coursework.

(meta: genuinely curious why my observation was downvoted. I may take a further karma hit for mentioning it but worth it if it elicits a meaningful response. what gives?)

I didn’t downvote you, but lifetime offerings tend to be a red flag.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#128

Post by bluGill »

ghaff wrote: post #102
Aurornis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we went back to recording lectures by the worlds best and putting it online for free with attached books and exercises, we could improve the world a lot. I learn well this way. You learn well this way. However, the big revelation from the early experiments with online courses and MOOCs is that most people don’t. Fundamentals of math, history, physics, and other core topics aren’t changing except maybe for some c…

You need forced exercises, you need grading, you need something of a schedule. Not to say people can't do it. But, especially for difficult material, even a lot of motivated people won't. I mean I remember what undergrad (and grad school) was like and I'm pretty sure doing that independently and optionally would be tough.

Just look at success for adults learning the things adults commonly take up: languages or musical instruments. There is some good results, but mostly you find people who can say "Hello, how are you" and no more; or they can play some simple songs but nothing major. It takes hours and hours of practice / study time to learn anything hard. You can find a lot of community ed classes that will bring you to about that level in many subjects, but it is hard to find anyone willing to put in the hours needed to learn something to more than a surface level.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#129

Post by wat10000 »

robotresearcher wrote: post #70
sharadov wrote: post #35

Both have garbage content at this point - Coursera was great when they launched, top quality material and university-level instruction. Now it's just bottom of the barrel scraps. YT has tons of quality instruction - hell nowadays I just ask an LLM to make me a course for whatever I wanna learn.

I tried that out in my field of expertise, to calibrate my expectations. ChatGPT invented multiple references to non-existent but plausibly-titled papers written by me . I think of that when asking questions about areas I don’t know. That was about 18mo ago, so maybe this kind of hallucination is under control these days.

LLMs are good for tasks where you can verify the result. And you must verify the result unless you're just using it for entertainment.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#130

Post by jonathanlb »

vunderba wrote: post #95
sharadov wrote: post #35

Both have garbage content at this point - Coursera was great when they launched, top quality material and university-level instruction. Now it's just bottom of the barrel scraps. YT has tons of quality instruction - hell nowadays I just ask an LLM to make me a course for whatever I wanna learn.

My biggest issue with Udemy courses is that it's not easy to vet the instructor. User ratings are unreliable since beginners aren't really in a position to evaluate a teacher's expertise. If Udemy's pitch were “Learn X as Taught by Notable People in the Field,” I would have signed up in a heartbeat. - 3D Graphics taught by Michael Abrash - Card Manipulation taught by Jeff McBride - Pianistic Ergonomics taught by Edna…

> If Udemy's pitch were “Learn X as Taught by Notable People in the Field,”

MasterClass already is like this, but the content doesn't go as deep as it could to really teach learners.

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