Can You Give Students Bad Reviews on Coursera

While the pandemic has shone a fresh spotlight on distance didactics, online learning is hardly new. For decades, we've been able to earn a degree or pick up a new skill using the best online learning sites. Coursera is one such site that's been around for years. Coursera's highlight is that information technology hosts courses from prestigious universities and makes many of them available to anyone, for free. In other words, yous can get all the lectures and reading materials from a real class at, say, Yale University without paying annihilation at all. Coursera partners with private companies, too, to offering accessible education in a variety of fields. Y'all tin have classes for gratis for personal enrichment or pay for a course that results in a professional person document, bachelor'south caste, or master's caste.

Equally an online platform that teaches yous through videos, readings, quizzes, and assignments, Coursera is straightforward and not exactly cutting border. Some aspects of the interface would do good from updates, and the cloth can be dry compared with, say, MasterClass, which invests heavily in production value. Coursera does well in supporting a diverseness of languages, with many courses taught in languages other than English, as well equally closed captioning, subtitles, and a complete text of the spoken parts of every video. While the platform could use some upgrades and refinement, Coursera wins an Editors' Option accolade for making then many courses from real universities available to so many people for gratuitous.

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What Does Coursera Offering?

Coursera essential offers three types of courses:

Costless courses that yous inspect, meaning you get full access to the materials just no graded assignments or certificates,
Paid courses with grades, instructor feedback, and sometimes a certificate, and
Bachelor's and principal'due south degree programs from established universities (where Coursera hosts the courses).

While some online learning programs focus on information science training or other specializations, Coursera covers a vast range of topics. They include Arts and Humanities, History, Music and Fine art, Philosophy, Concern, Informatics, Data Science, Information Technology, Health, Math and Logic, Physical Science and Technology, and others.

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Coursera also offers courses that end in a Bachelor of Practical Arts and Sciences, offered through partnerships with universities. Some of these matriculated programs have a much college cost than Coursera's other programs and may have restrictions. For example, a BSc in Computer science from University of London may take 3 to six years to consummate with a total estimated price of £10,693–£fifteen,990—most $14,860-$22,222 at the time of publication. These caste programs also typically take house get-go dates.

Beyond these paid, degree-focused offerings, there's a vast catalog of courses that anyone can take. Some examples include Stanford Introduction to Food and Health, Google Information technology Automation with Python, Introduction to International Criminal Police force, and Autodesk Certified Professional: AutoCAD for Pattern and Drafting Exam Prep.

What Do You Need to Enroll?

Depending on the grade, yous may demand zero at all to enroll, just an electronic mail address to sign up for Coursera.

Degree programs require an awarding with the host university, however. Yous must utilise for access by meeting the institution'south deadlines, prerequisites, fee schedule, and so along. Essentially, yous're enrolling with the university, but using Coursera every bit the platform to admission the course materials, participate in class discussions, and submit assignments.

How Much Does Coursera Toll?

When a course is truly free on Coursera, you're unremarkably enrolled as auditing it. Auditing a course ways you're limited from participating in some way. Ordinarily, you can't submit assignments for a grade, and y'all won't receive any credential from Coursera saying you successfully completed the class. Many courses, however, withal permit you to participate in peer-review, and so while you won't get a professional review of your work from an instructor, you may still receive some kind of feedback from other people auditing the form.

For a fee, usually either $49 apartment for a short document course or $49 per month for longer programs, you can upgrade from an auditor to an enrolled learner. These rates are far less than you'd expect to pay for degree programs, however—those fees are typically much college and are at the discretion of the university.

Coursera with completed objectives and notes framing the video

How Much Do Other Learning Courses Toll?

Information technology's difficult to compare Coursera's prices to those of other learning sites, because Coursera's rates vary depending on what kind of program you enroll in. The fact that many courses are accessible for costless, and plenty of others for well-nigh $49 seems extremely reasonable.

If we await at Udacity for comparison, Udacity is more expensive, costing $339–$399 per month on average for and so-called Nanodegree courses. Nanodegrees typically have 3 to four months to complete, putting the total cost per class at $1,017–$1,356. Some of Udacity'southward courses are free, simply the gratuitous ones don't typically come with a document, similar to Coursera. Another similarity is that Udacity partners with major companies such equally Google and IBM to offer classes that teach skills those companies want and need.

Skillshare, LinkedIn Learning, and other sites offer professional person development courses, too. Those 2 in particular have more soft skill courses, like business leadership, but also tutorials for specific computer programs, such every bit Photoshop and InDesign. Skillshare charges $32 per month or $168 per year. LinkedIn Learning isn't available every bit a standalone purchase, however. You lot have to have a paid LinkedIn account to get information technology, and those run approximately $240-$576 per year. Paid LinkedIn accounts come with additional benefits, such every bit added tools for job hunting, networking, and recruiting.

Inside a Coursera Course

For this review, nosotros enrolled in:

The Scientific discipline of Wellbeing, Yale University,
Establishing a Professional person 'Self' through Effective Intercultural Communication, National University of Singapore, and
Write a Feature Length Screenplay for Film or Tv set, Michigan State Academy (in audit mode).

Before you lot enroll in a grade, Coursera does a good job of giving you lot details almost what it contains. For case, you see a summary tabular array with the virtually important data—whether the form is part of a larger programme, the estimated commitment time to complete the form, supported languages and subtitles, how to pass the class, and an average user rating. You can besides preview the class syllabus before enrolling.

One time you lot enroll, you see a clear layout of the course across all the weeks that are estimated to complete it. This visual timeline also shows when assignments are due, if applicable. For gratis audited courses, assignments won't announced on your timeline even if you are given the option to submit something for peer-review because the assignment is not required. For paid programs, the assignments are mandatory for passing.

In our experience, the commitment times were not always accurate. The course on screenwriting, for example, grossly overestimates how much time learners demand for the content in Weeks one, 2 and 3. The video lectures and assignments in those weeks are extremely curt and quick to complete. Other courses had more than accurate estimates. Because you work at your own stride, you lot tin power through material as fast every bit yous desire.

The only time yous may be held up is if you're waiting for peer-reviews of submitted work in courses that you're auditing. In our testing, we saw work that was nine moths erstwhile still in need of peer feedback. In this particular course, each submission remains open until it receives five reviews. That said, you lot tin can still progress through the course and move onto the next module fifty-fifty if you don't receive all five reviews from your peers. Just yous may be disappointed to non get sufficient feedback in a timely fashion.

Interface

Videos are used prominently for the lecture portion of courses. Sometimes the videos are only ii or three minutes long. Other times, they're 15 or 20 minutes. The video actor has controls for adjusting the playback speed and toggling on closed captioning or subtitles in multiple languages.

Below the video histrion is a transcription of the spoken dialogue from the video. You tin can highlight annihilation from this cake of text and save it equally a note. When you make a note in this way, Coursera links it direct to the video. That style, when you review the notes, you tin also bound to the exact spot in the video with that content.

Some courses as well have readings. Readings can exist included right on the screen, although some instructors will link to or provide the reference of very long readings, such equally academic articles and books. Nosotros plant it much more than useful to take the reading material on screen. Links were sometimes wrong or dead, and some references were not linked at all, leading yous to hunt downward a paper or volume that might non fifty-fifty be required reading anyway.

Interacting With the Materials and Other Learners

Aside from video lectures and readings, Coursera courses tin can also incorporate quizzes. Like to the readings, some instructors create a quiz that's right on screen. A quiz can fifty-fifty pop upwardly during a video so that you complete it in the context of the lecture. We encountered 1 example of a quiz hosted on some other site with the URL provided, and unfortunately that URL led to a dead folio.

The screenwriting course included many assignments, such every bit weekly drafts of a working script. For learners who were auditing the form, peer-review is essential. Some assignments were short enough to exist typed into a textbox on Coursera and submitted directly. Other times the consignment was to upload a file. The textbox submission could use improvements. When you save your work and effort to preview information technology, yous don't actually come across a preview of the final text as it will appear. If you cutting and paste text from another app, the Coursera system doesn't preserve line breaks and other formatting, although yous won't know this in the "preview" since information technology's non accurate. Worse, if a peer gives you negative feedback on your unformatted, dense block of text, in that location's no way to edit the submission once it's in.

The screenwriting course encourages learners to join writing groups and follow one some other'southward submissions, which is unfortunately impossible given the limitations of the arrangement. There's no way to follow another person and their submissions. When it's your turn to provide peer review (which you must exercise in order to have your submission reviewed), Coursera dishes up whatever assignments are in demand of review, regardless of who wrote it.

To ready writing groups, learners utilize simple workarounds, such as posting their email addresses or Slack invitations on a forum. Based on posts in this course, quite a few people grew frustrated that the class didn't provide a more than organized mode to join a writing group.

Accessibility

Equally mentioned, Coursera has skillful language support. You can find courses taught in a variety of languages, non simply English. Courses also typically come up with subtitles in a few languages as well every bit airtight captioning in the native linguistic communication.

Some other characteristic that makes Coursera a niggling more than accessible to all learners is the transcription that appears below the video. A small inset video appears to the side of the screen and so that you can continue referencing the video if you lot need it. If you demand magnification, you can zoom in on this block of text using your browser tools (the inset video disappears if you zoom in significantly). The sound syncs up with the text to highlight each phrase or sentence equally it'south spoken.

Real University Courses, Available to Practically Anyone

Coursera does an admirable chore of making real courses from renowned universities available to practically anyone. Fifty-fifty if you lot tin't beget to pay annihilation at all, y'all can get the same lectures and readings as a student enrolled in Princeton University, Sciences Po, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and many other prestigious institutions. In that location are also courses designed by private companies, similar Google, IBM, and Autodesk to help you learn specific chore evolution skills. While the Coursera platform could utilize some upgrades, its structure is sturdy enough and like shooting fish in a barrel to navigate. Coursera is an Editors' Choice pick for making instruction attainable.

Coursera

The Lesser Line

With Coursera, you can accept a class from Yale Academy for free, learn to program, develop your professional self, or pay to enroll in a degree program from leading universities.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/coursera