Coursera: 33 Universities, 200 Courses, 1.3 Million Students

Any one being cynical about Coursera is definitely having a perspective of the traditional college/school structure, i.e assignments, exams and grades equals knowledge. That need not be true, because any one would be enrolling in the courses just to get their curiosity fueled and gain some knowledge which or else they would have absolutely no access to. I have been enrolling in at least two courses a month and i make a point to finish all the lectures and understand them before enrolling for more, but i have had no time to actually do the assignments and take the quizzes. Ill not get a certificate of completion i.e iam a drop out, but i have access to knowledge and i free to choose what i want to learn.

The Atlantic recently had an interesting POV that puts a positive spin on the high dropout rates of MOOC courses[1]. Essentially claiming that it is a by-product of the great fact that these courses are free and therefore have a low barrier to entry - in contrast to traditional higher education.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/overblown-claims-of-failure-watch-how-not-to-gauge-the-success-of-online-courses/260159/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/overbl...</a>

There seems to be a fair amount cynicism around the business model (rather, the lack thereof) for these MOOC services. I personally believe that an interesting monetization model lies in examinations. EdX seems to be exploring proctored examinations with Pearson, but if someone can come up with a credible, non-game-able, non-proctored alternative, there's a lot of value to be created/captured.<p>Completing one of these courses along with the accompanying assignments only takes you so far. Grades in a rigorous examination, however, represent a credential, which in turn sets up much needed (by the candidates taking the course) signaling. Eventually, a lot of employers might end up becoming sensitive to this signaling. A crude example of this can be found here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353543" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353543</a><p>If (and when) someone does crack this puzze and if employers in turn, react to this change, I see a lot of universities more than breaking a sweat. This latent potential is what, IMHO, most analysts / investors are really upbeat about.

What are the other alternatives ? I know 1. Udacity [<a href="http://www.udacity.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.udacity.com/</a>] 2. Venture Lab [<a href="http://venturelab.stanford.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://venturelab.stanford.edu/</a>] 3. Class2go [<a href="http://class2go.stanford.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://class2go.stanford.edu/</a>] 4. MITx [<a href="http://mitx.mit.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://mitx.mit.edu/</a>]

Andrew Ng, who founded Coursera, is a professor of machine learning at Stanford - I am taking his course right now. I wonder whether, once Coursera has been around for a while, he might use his machine learning knowledge to predict such things as how likely a person is to drop out of a course or to do well in a course, or to compare people based on the university they attended or other factors. Could be really interesting.

As much as I love Coursera, their statistics so far have shown that most of the students actually benefiting from their courses already have degrees and many even have graduate degrees.<p>It's still great that people are pursuing more knowledge; however, I'd much rather see MOOCs find a way to penetrate the percentage of the population that has less access to education.

I'm taking Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (ModPoPenn) and I'm thoroughly impressed by the fact that the professor, Al Filreis and his staff of TAs maintain a strong presence in the forums. The discussion format videos are excellent and the team is doing a super job of making this voluntary learning experience an extremely valuable one. The coursera.org platform is easy enough for my Mom to use. Now, as far as I can see, the only barriers to entry are background skills and commitment.

Impressive! Coursera keeps growing at a rapid pace. As always, the limit will be the time you have to put into it - there are already interesting courses there to keep me busy for a year (if I had the time ;-))<p>I also noticed that they have a profile page for students now. This may not be brand new (although I hadn't seen it before), but it's useful and looks good.

Great to see Coursera growing with more universities, especially internationally. I'm really enjoying the courses that I'm studying - it is without a doubt a force for good.

my wife signed up and followed a few so i got to watch some of the lectures - i was amazed by the quality of information they are giving out for free!