Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coursera’s Preview Mode

classcentral.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 61 posts

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#31

Post by SchemaLoad »

margalabargala wrote: post #27
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.

You're right that employers don't care that you take a coursera course in the same way they don't care you watched a YouTube video. But in both cases, if you learn something from that course or video, and then go off and create something based on that, that something can be something employers care about.

I never did university, learned mostly off Codeacademy back in 2013. I never once listed this in my resume. I instead built website using the knowledge, contributed to open source, and then listed those things. Which seemed to work.

These days I don't do any personal projects or contribute to OSS, I just list my previous jobs and can ace any on the spot questions.

Expecting to be able to list the completion of an online course as an achievement is kind of silly. They are very easy to skim through without learning, and are only really useful for yourself to learn, not to prove anything.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#32

Post by fc417fc802 »

__rito__ wrote: post #22

> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs. A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. I am one of them. It’s not the usual suspects like, "people don't have self-discipline", "one learns much more in university", etc. that have limited the perceived influence of MOOCs. It is pure credentialis…

I never liked MOOCs because I didn't see the value add over youtube. At the end of the day I just want free and unfettered access the full list of video lectures. Accounts, course enrollment, fixed sequences, it's all just friction that gets in the way of actual learning.

They also (at least in my experience) try to force you to watch via the browser. It's far more ergonomic for me to yt-dlp a full playlist and watch it locally.

Luckily MIT OCW exists and an almost unimaginably wide variety of educational material is constantly being dumped on youtube.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#33

Post by geodel »

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…

Exactly.

The hype was massive. Everyone was supposed to be going MOOCs way. It was supposed to restructuring education system grounds up.

Now all I have seen is many did these big data/ data science courses and joined that great enterprise IT boondoggle of data processing/analytics.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#34

Post by margalabargala »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #31
margalabargala wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that employers don't care that you take a coursera course in the same way they don't care you watched a YouTube video. But in both cases, if you learn something from that course or video, and then go off and create something based on that, that something can be something employers care about.

I never did university, learned mostly off Codeacademy back in 2013. I never once listed this in my resume. I instead built website using the knowledge, contributed to open source, and then listed those things. Which seemed to work. These days I don't do any personal projects or contribute to OSS, I just list my previous jobs and can ace any on the spot questions. Expecting to be able to list the completion of an onl…

Absolutely. It's basically the same as putting a list of things you've read on your resume.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#35

Post by geodel »

redbluered wrote: post #17
freddie_mercury wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well if that was the case, I'd call him full of shit masquerading as educator.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#36

Post by kijin »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #32
__rito__ wrote: post #22

> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs. A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. I am one of them. It’s not the usual suspects like, "people don't have self-discipline", "one learns much more in university", etc. that have limited the perceived influence of MOOCs. It is pure credentialis…

I never liked MOOCs because I didn't see the value add over youtube. At the end of the day I just want free and unfettered access the full list of video lectures. Accounts, course enrollment, fixed sequences, it's all just friction that gets in the way of actual learning. They also (at least in my experience) try to force you to watch via the browser. It's far more ergonomic for me to yt-dlp a full playlist and watch…

I could tolerate the accounts, sequences, and restricted environments if they were required for an actual diploma that is widely recognized in society. But they're not. The MOOCs are just following somebody's playbook for maximizing engagement or whatever.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#37

Post by Aurornis »

__rito__ wrote: post #22

> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs. A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. I am one of them. It’s not the usual suspects like, "people don't have self-discipline", "one learns much more in university", etc. that have limited the perceived influence of MOOCs. It is pure credentialis…

> I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs.

> A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs.

MOOCs are great and I agree: A lot of people have benefited.

The only disappointment is relative to the impossible hype cycle that was happening when MOOCs first entered the scene. You couldn’t open a MOOC relayed article or thread without some speculation that this would be the death of expensive university educations. That obviously didn’t happen, but MOOCs have been quite valuable on their own when well executed.

The primary disappointment I’ve seen is the half-baked courses that have been put out there. The first MOOC I tried was great and well run. The next two or three felt like they assigned some undergrad student a make-work project to put some old course materials on a website but they left out key parts. I remember it almost felt intentional, like someone didn’t want to put too much of the material online or the professor had objected to sharing their materials. They just wanted to say they got in on the MOOC train.

The later generation of courses that were made for the Internet were far better executed, of course, but they weren’t as plentiful and widespread as the hype predicted.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#38

Post by t_mann »

Aurornis wrote: post #37
__rito__ wrote: post #22

> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs. A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. I am one of them. It’s not the usual suspects like, "people don't have self-discipline", "one learns much more in university", etc. that have limited the perceived influence of MOOCs. It is pure credentialis…

> I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs. > A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. MOOCs are great and I agree: A lot of people have benefited. The only disappointment is relative to the impossible hype cycle that was happening when MOOCs first entered the scene. You couldn’t open a MOOC relayed article or thread without some speculation that this would be the death o…

> this would be the death of expensive university educations. That obviously didn’t happen

Maybe a bit early to declare that, as the wave of college closures has shown no signs of slowing after the Covid years [0] and is expected to accelerate further [1]?

[0] https://www.2adays.com/blog/college-shutdown-surge-update-th...

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91245055/higher-education-crisis...

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#39

Post by RHSeeger »

cortesoft wrote: post #29
__rito__ wrote: post #22

> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs. A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. I am one of them. It’s not the usual suspects like, "people don't have self-discipline", "one learns much more in university", etc. that have limited the perceived influence of MOOCs. It is pure credentialis…

> Everyone is all about skills untill the hiring time comes. Now companies want the students of the best colleges, the best degrees, etc. Students with proper skills might not even get through the door without the proper degree. What hiring companies want is to get good employees who can do the job they are supposed to do, and they want to have as low a false positive rate as possible (hiring someone who can't do the…

- a lower false positive rate looking at school and credentials than any skill test they give.

- don't really care about false negative rates

That pretty much sums it up right there. And it's not hard at all to see _why_ this is the case.

Re: Coursera’s Preview Mode

#40

Post by __rito__ »

Aurornis wrote: post #37
__rito__ wrote: post #22

> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs. A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. I am one of them. It’s not the usual suspects like, "people don't have self-discipline", "one learns much more in university", etc. that have limited the perceived influence of MOOCs. It is pure credentialis…

> I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs. > A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. MOOCs are great and I agree: A lot of people have benefited. The only disappointment is relative to the impossible hype cycle that was happening when MOOCs first entered the scene. You couldn’t open a MOOC relayed article or thread without some speculation that this would be the death o…

This makes sense.

But if we start benchmarking the effects of anything against its its Sillicon Valley-flavored hype, then, every tech/X-train will be judged as underwhelming, not reaching its "potential".

Post reply on HN