<story><title>As Coursera Evolves, Colleges Stay On and Investors Buy In</title><url>http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/as-coursera-evolves-colleges-stay-on-and-investors-buy-in/57267</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>randomwalker</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m the instructor of an upcoming Coursera course [1]. A couple of observations from my point of view:&lt;p&gt;* I wish there were a way to fund online education through philanthropy&amp;#x2F;donations. Coursera being for-profit leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. At a practical level, it complicates what images I can use in my lectures and qualify as fair use.&lt;p&gt;* After several years the site is &lt;i&gt;far&lt;/i&gt; from being at a point where an instructor can log on and upload content. The interface is constantly changing, confusing, and buggy. My university has a dedicated team who help out instructors with putting their material online and even they are often confused about how to edit this or upload that.&lt;p&gt;Overall I&amp;#x27;m glad that Coursera exists and is finding a revenue stream; my own undergraduate education would have been vastly different if I&amp;#x27;d had access to the material that&amp;#x27;s available today.&lt;p&gt;[1] Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency technologies &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.coursera.org&amp;#x2F;course&amp;#x2F;bitcointech&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.coursera.org&amp;#x2F;course&amp;#x2F;bitcointech&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>As Coursera Evolves, Colleges Stay On and Investors Buy In</title><url>http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/as-coursera-evolves-colleges-stay-on-and-investors-buy-in/57267</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tboyd47</author><text>&amp;gt; The company has created a series of courses that add up to mini-degrees that students can earn quickly, and pay a small fee to certify that they successfully completed them. “It’s mostly people in their 20s and 30s who are interested in learning more skills and making themselves prepared for better jobs,” said Mr. Levin.&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else noticed that since this recent pivot, the quality of Coursera&amp;#x27;s classes have declined?&lt;p&gt;I recently tried a course hosted on Coursera from an Ivy League school, as part of a business &amp;quot;specialization&amp;quot; that consists of 4 classes at $90 each. The class was 4 weeks long and was taught by 3 different professors. The only material provided was a series of video lectures (10-20 5-minute lectures per professor) and a smattering of blog posts and news articles for optional reading.&lt;p&gt;There was some discussion in the forums that the lectures seemed to jump around, and didn&amp;#x27;t cover all the material represented in the final exam. Some previous students were guessing that the gaps in instruction were because the course used to be 9 weeks long before they started charging for it.&lt;p&gt;I enjoyed the class but didn&amp;#x27;t feel like I got my money&amp;#x27;s worth. In the end I decided I could get more value by just buying and reading books on business development on my own.</text></comment>