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Coursera shuts access to old platform courses

590 points by reachtarunhere 10y ago

osivertsson 10y ago
I agree that removing/limiting access is lousy by Coursera and Udacity, for courses that used to be free and contain valuable fundamentals. I don't agree that the golden age is necessarily over though. The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com https://www.class-central.com MOOCs by government-backed traditional universities from Europe / Asia is taking over a large chunk of the "market" meaning that Coursera, Udacity, etc. is finding it difficult to get any returns.
- gnodar 10y ago
  > The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com https://www.class-central.com Never heard of that site, but I browsed through the first page of CS videos[0], and all but two courses were just links to Coursera courses. The other two were links to edX. [0] https://www.class-central.com/subject/cs https://www.class-central.com/subject/cs
  - dhawalhs 10y ago
    Founder of Class Central here. Our default sorting order is by start dates and Coursera courses now have new sessions starting monthly or bi-monthly here. We will be updating our algorithm soon to rank the courses based on our data. You can see all the providers we aggregate here: https://www.class-central.com/providers https://www.class-central.com/providers And universities here: https://www.class-central.com/universities https://www.class-central.com/universities
tgokh 10y ago
Coursera actually converted a course I was enrolled in to paid-quizzes-only, while I was actively enrolled in the course and on the second to last week of eight. They finally converted it back after 2 days of many of us contacting support but never gave me a straight answer as to whether it was accidentally or intentional :-/ Definitely lost my faith in Coursera as a platform over these recent changes.
- reachtarunhere 10y ago
  Agree they have been acting too greedy recently.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  I never liked Coursera because they offered classes only sometimes... I know a "real classroom" experience is what they were going after but it sucks finding a great looking course that will be offered a year later or worse, no upcoming dates. Sad to see they're going to downhill though.
  - zhte415 10y ago
    Indeed. I feel a gamefication theme to some of it. Think of the opposite: Socrates had his teachings and live lectures online, with recorded classroom, and feedback, for all to comment on, with his replies. It may have only been 'live' for 20/40 years of his life/teaching life/sharing life, but it would be amazing today. MOOCs offer this opportunity for humanity, to record teachings in increasingly diverse formats that are free for others to use and experiment with.
    - visarga 10y ago
      What MOOCs need is deep understanding of human learning, as it relates to specific fields. In other words they need to keep track on a per-user-basis of the level of mastery they have on all the relevant concepts. They need to map out how relevant concepts rely on each other, and be able to make recommendations. It often feels like an avalanche of books, courses, materials - we need simple paths through this mess. We need to keep people right in the sweetspot - not giving them too difficult material, but also not too easy, just right enough to maximize learning. And this perfect gradation of difficulty can be reverse engineered through machine learning over student activity logs. Another area they need to invest in is the practical side. Course takers need more examples, tests, problems and projects. Only by applying the concepts in reality will students gain firm confidence in their abilities. I don't think the "short course" format is the best. It might be better to have a graph of concept nodes, each equipped with its own instructional materials, problems and tests. The graph can be expanded gradually to include more concepts and to reduce the gradient of difficulty for the more problematic ones. People who bang their heads against difficult material and don't grock it might feel discouraged and give up. But if they can build confidence that everything is taught gradually and without too violent jumps in difficulty, they might improve the dropout rate.
wonkaWonka 10y ago
Learning is lovely, but without the advatage of being able to directly apply what you've learned toward actually improving your life, it's all just so much education porn.
- klausa 10y ago
  Why does everything you do have to go `toward actually improving your life`? Why can't we do stuff just for fun anymore?
  - sotojuan 10y ago
    Even worse, his comment assumes you can't improve your enjoyment of life just by learning about things you like.
    - wonkaWonka 10y ago
      After a while, this never ending river of UTF-8 characters and RGB pixels gets a little old. You realize all the time you've spent whiling away so much time, imagining that it's all building up to something even better than yesterday's tide of serialized data streams, that your youth has faded, and you're still just staring at a lightbulb masked behind a screen of wires, listening to air disturbed by oscillating magnets, and nothing more. But the worst part of this, is looking up, only to find a city full of similar people all still hopelessly enthralled by the discharge of so many lithium-ion batteries perturbed by some nearby electric coil.
      - 9erdelta 10y ago
        You're a cheery fella! Maybe have suicide watch on speed dial eh?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - CamperBob2 10y ago
        I don't know what you expect, staring into the Internet. - Nietzsche
brhsiao 10y ago
I'll probably get shot down for being that typical negative HN comment, but do MOOCs like Coursera actually do much in the way of making education more accessible or society fairer? All the content offered on Coursera already exists on the internet. Really motivated people will aggressively look for study materials, and they generally don't have a problem finding it. It seems to me that it's actually the internet that improves accessibility and fairness, through which curated collections of study materials are then delivered as MOOCs. Which is terrific, but then it's hardly shocking that they'd eventually have to monetize themselves. We've seen worse attempts to crack down on the internet.
- orionblastar 10y ago
  Khan Academy started out with Youtube videos and grew into a web site with quizes and tests. I don’t know if you can call it a MOOC but it teaches subjects well enough. I guess they rely on donations, and advertising on Youtube?
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    According to Wikipedia it's a non-profit. I believe Google donated ad-free YouTube for the channel. Income is indeed donations. "The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization,[8] now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, Google, the O’Sullivan Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and other philanthropic organizations."
    - orionblastar 10y ago
      Thank you, I learned that it is a non-profit now and had donations go to keep them going.
- BoysenberryPi 10y ago
  As someone has taken a lot of MOOCs, I have no idea if Coursera makes education more accessible but they certainly make certain teachers and professors more accessible and those professors have a lot of knowledge to offer. A lot of universities don't have open courseware and even if they do the recordings are beyond terrible.
bradleyjg 10y ago
I just got a somewhat confusing email canceling my enrollment in the ever elusive Cryptography II course. I guess this is what that's about. If so, it's too bad, I had a great experience in the Crypto I but it wouldn't have been nearly as good without the quizzes and assignments.
- kodfodrasz 10y ago
  I have also received such an email, yet reading it states that in the fall the course will be started (finally) on a new backend. We are really excited to have you in the course Cryptography II! We’re reaching out because this course is being moved to our new platform which is why your enrollment in the June 13th session of this course has been cancelled. That said, you’ll be able to take the course soon on our new platform in Fall 2016. Our entire team is working hard to create the best learning experience possible for you and we really appreciate your patience with this small delay.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  I've given up waiting for that now, will find another way.
avodonosov 10y ago
Script to save course materials: https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl I haven't tried it yet. Just was asking around how to save course materials (videos, slides, notes, etc) of an old platform course I want to return to sometimes. Got this advice: > app which can help you download all the > materials at one go. > https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl > Doesn't work all the time, but for old > courses should work.
- bhrgunatha 10y ago
  Coursera and Udacity have both been going downhill almost from their inception with every single change. I've used coursera-dl to archive courses I've taken part in for some time now. I was considering deleting my archive recently but now I'm really glad I didn't. However, it doesn't download the quizzes or exams though. You still have to make a local copy of the html pages (easy, but time consuming in firefox for example) or take screenshots.
- reachtarunhere 10y ago
  This will only get the videos and the slides. No assignments, quizzes or helpful Forum Discussions.
- bad_user 10y ago
  Thanks for the hint. I've downloaded about 4 courses. Time to put that 1 TB of online storage to good use :-)
  - avodonosov 10y ago
    don't forget to share the links
kercker 10y ago
I can not see how Arab Spring made the society fairer. Internet helped the Arab Spring develop, but the Arab Spring is not such a good thing, because look what it left to middle east.
Rifu 10y ago
To save people like me a trip to google, MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. Today I learned!
LouisSayers 10y ago
If anyone else is wondering, MOOC is Massive Open Online Courses. It really gets on my nerves when people don't expand their acronyms when introducing a topic. Of course there are exceptions, but is MOOC really that common an acronym?! I just find it a bit inconsiderate.</rant>
- keyle 10y ago
  Thanks, I got grizzly too.
- syngrog66 10y ago
  just googled MOOC and the top 3 results all explained it
- danso 10y ago
  It's a pretty common acronym for those of us in education, of course. But it is also known among the startup/hacker crowd because of the well-funded startups in the space. Also, it's beginning to be big in public policy. A couple of years ago, the California state senate was debating a bill to allow students to use MOOC courses for actual state college credit. That bill has since been shelved: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/01/controversial-california-bill-outsource-student-learning-dead-until-2014-or-later https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/01/controversial... In defense of the submitter, expanding the acronym may have pushed the title over the character limit.
- hueving 10y ago
  This post is venting about the state of that industry. If you don't know what MOOC stands for, it probably won't matter to you much anyway. It's sort of like expecting a post about a web framework to explain HTTP.
sreeramvenkat 10y ago
I hope edx does not follow coursera way.
- riffraff 10y ago
  I believe they did in a way, certificates are now available only if you pay, rather than for anyone taking the class. That doesn't bother me but it's the first step coursera took before ending up where it is now.
  - alasano 10y ago
    I guess it makes the certificate itself seem more valuable as a means of expressing that you accomplished something. My view of edX is biased though by how awesome CS50 is, it feels more like a movement than a class.
    - riffraff 10y ago
      indeed, and I am sure there is a percentage of people that will likely pay for a certificate that was not paying before. It's not a bad move, and it's totally legit, _but_ it hints at a stronger effort to get money. Regarding the "movement" thing, I had the same feeling with my first 3 large MOOC (AI which begat udacity, ML & DBs which begat coursera). But not anymore :/
  - krick 10y ago
    Please don't compare. I don't give a damn about certificates, and I think it's totally fair for them to be paid. Actually, as I think it's only normal to not give a damn about certificates, I'd say even some kind of "full track" with exams is ok to be paid for. They still provide good learning material for free. And, by the way, the quality of the course material on edx is arguably better. It's a shame that coursera's got way more recognition somehow, apparently.
- srikz 10y ago
  If I remember correctly edX is a non-profit. So I guess at least the content will be freely available even if they charge for the certification. I think both Coursera and edX have some financing schemes for those who can't afford the price, although I haven't found out how it actually works.
lovelearning 10y ago
I feel Coursera's pricing strategy is located at two opposite extremes and misses out an entire range of options in the middle. They either make an entire course completely free with no option to pay even if the student wants to, or they put it behind a paywall where one can't even start without paying. They along with their institutional partners are missing out revenue from people like me who'd like to pay some amount, but not the amount they fix. I'm happy to pay some amount without a certificate. They should consider giving a pay-what-you-like option for all their courses.
- akg_67 10y ago
  Are there any successful ventures with such "pay-what-you-like" pricing strategy? Having unsuccessfully tried such a pricing model myself, I have serious doubt about it's viability. Majority will not pay anything, very few will pay reasonable amount, and some will pay very little but will be very high maintenance. Payer: God dammit, I paid for your service and I want one hour of your support time. Company: How much did this payer paid? 50 cents! We need to hire someone who will take 30 cents to support this payer for an hour. This is one of those pricing strategy that sounds good and people will claim to support but in reality wouldn't.
  - aaggarwal 10y ago
    As far as I remember, edX used to follow this 'pay-what-you-like' strategy for honor-code certificate, along with fixed pricing for verified certificate.
  - zacketysack3 10y ago
    Bandcamp?
  - lovelearning 10y ago
    It probably depends on what the product or service is, and how it's sold. Coursera already provides some courses for free, and even those attract some high maintenance types from what I've seen in the forums. Does providing a pay-what-you-want option increase the number of nasties or the degree of nastiness, for example, inviting legal risks? I don't really know. But I feel Coursera should atleast experiment and gather the data before deciding, instead of missing out on all that data. Leanpub and Gumroad are two services that follow this strategy. I don't know if they are successful ventures, but I notice they have maintained this pricing strategy since their inception and never changed or stopped it. Leanpub says "...the pattern we have seen with multiple books, about a third of people will pay the suggested price, a third will pay the minimum price and a third will pay somewhere in between. Finally, the odd person will pay more than the suggested price" [1]. Some anecdotal experiences of individual authors [2],[3],[4] support it. [1]: https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq [2]: http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 [3]: http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-leanpub.html http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-l... [4]: http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-want-pricing-for-you http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-wan...
greenmoon55 10y ago
Would anyone be kind enough to provide a script for downloading assignments and quizzes?
- zo1 10y ago
  It's been posted a few times in this thread: https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    He said "assignments and quizzes", not "videos and slides". https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl/issues/490 https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl/issues/490
wtf_is_frp 10y ago
The only thing I hate about the new platform is that you can't access the info until a week after you enrolled into self-paced courses. It is fucking stupid. Beyond retarded.
fiatjaf 10y ago
What is a MOOC? These people should use the <abbr> tag.
plinkplonk 10y ago
I always wanted to work through the algorithms MOOCs from Princeton but I kept putting it off. Profs Sedgewick and Wayne are phenomenal teachers. Anyone know if this course will be available in the future? (probably not, since they had no certificates etc, and I don't see them going along with paid-for-quizzes courses, but it doesn't hurt to ask)
- wtf_is_frp 10y ago
  They are available, I have doubts about OP's post.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- dhawalhs 10y ago
  They are currently on the old platform. Officially the old platform shuts down on June 30th. Maybe they will be moved to the new platform. A lot of courses on the old platform have moved to the new platform over the past year.
- HugoMelo 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat. Found https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl and was able to download part 1 and 2.
  - saganus 10y ago
    What course names did you use? I could not find the ones from Prof. Sedgewick, only the one from Prof. Roughgarden
    - mamon 10y ago
      try algs4partI-010 and algs4partII-007
      - 10y ago
jsturner 10y ago
A good friend of mine who works at Coursera attributes their descent to the brain drain they've had over the past year. Apparently, management is sweeping the problem under the rug, and forcing a false rhetoric that the departures were good. Even their Glassdoor page[1] seems doctored now. Sad times. [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Coursera-Reviews-E654749.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Coursera-Reviews-E654749.h...
master_yoda_1 10y ago
Please teach a highly complex technical subject free for one month. Then write these kind of blogs. Otherwise keep calm and mind your own business ;)
latenightcoding 10y ago
It is truly sad to see Coursera getting greedier by the day. I can honestly say this website changed my life, I was living in a third world country and still in high school when I enrolled in Andrew Ng's machine learning class and thanks to that MOOC I was able to get a machine learning job building recommender systems for a Canadian company straight out of high school. There are plenty of amazing MOOCs that Coursera has completely removed from the website or are only available for people who want to pay upfront. Please don't be like Udacity Coursera. BTW you have until June 30 to download your courses.
- quincyla 10y ago
  If institutional partners treated MOOCs as a marketing exercise for their university's brand, instead of trying to monetize courses and certificates, people could continue to have this content for free. Unfortunately, universities don't exactly exemplify long-term thinking. Most of the content for these MOOCs is created by professors as part of their jobs, so this content is owned by their universities. I bet a vast majority of professors would prefer their MOOCs to stay open. Most of the work has been done already, and the quizzes and exercises are automated, so there's no practical reason these videos couldn't be hosted on YouTube and thrown into an open source MOOC framework like EdX's and continue to serve millions for a few hundred a month in server costs. Except that Coursera is explicitly forbidding non-private use of these courses. For what it's worth, Free Code Camp gets about 1/8 of the traffic Coursera does, and our (non-opportunity) costs are pretty minor. I don't think hosting these MOOCs would add much to the burden. If only the individual professors who created these MOOCs could give us permission to host these courses. But there's no way we're going to get anywhere with the university bureaucracies themselves.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - bpesquet 10y ago
    Hi Quincy, FreeCodeCamp's a great project. However, I always wondered about your long-term goals and "business model" (if there is one). You're offering to integrate old Coursera courses into FCC. But what if you change your mind about openness further down the road ? Couldn't FreeCodeCamp become the Udacity/Coursera of tomorrow ?
linux_devil 10y ago
There is no point of calling them MOOC , if they are not 'O'pen anymore.
- haakon 10y ago
  And since it's not 'O'pen, it's most likely much less 'M'assive. Now it's more like a traditional distance learning offering. Nothing wrong with being that, but I wish we could also have MOOCs.
  - mohsinr 10y ago
    Great point! So MOOCs have become now OCs (Online Courses), Massive & Open stays honor badge of Open Source Software :) Educators tried to use "OPEN" word from OPEN Source World, but could not keep it that way... Coursera and Udacity guys should stop using OPEN word please...
wibr 10y ago
https://class.coursera.org/ml-005/lecture https://class.coursera.org/ml-005/lecture Machine Learning, Andrew Ng https://class.coursera.org/algo-003/lecture https://class.coursera.org/algo-003/lecture Algorithms 1, Tim Roughgarden https://class.coursera.org/algo2-003/lecture https://class.coursera.org/algo2-003/lecture Algorithms 2, Tim Roughgarden Edit: https://class.coursera.org/compilers/lecture/preview https://class.coursera.org/compilers/lecture/preview Compilers, Alex Aiken What else?
- saganus 10y ago
  I also found https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture and https://class.coursera.org/crypto-preview/lecture https://class.coursera.org/crypto-preview/lecture but I think the first one is newer. There's also https://class.coursera.org/ml-003/lecture https://class.coursera.org/ml-003/lecture So I guess yours is newer. Found as well: https://class.coursera.org/automata/lecture https://class.coursera.org/automata/lecture https://class.coursera.org/hci/lecture https://class.coursera.org/hci/lecture https://class.coursera.org/pgm/lecture https://class.coursera.org/pgm/lecture And others. I just did a Google site search: site:class.coursera.org And click around. Some are not available though.
  - hatsunearu 10y ago
    >https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture Speaking of this, I got an email about the following issue: The Coursera boneheads decide to do this. What does this mean for the crypto II class? DELAYED AGAIN! It's been delayed for YEARS. YEARS I say. Another delay because of asinine greed.
    - thoralfskolem 10y ago
      Professor Boneh is pretty busy... I've been waiting for a while for this too. This has been the never-starting tease course.
  - znpy 10y ago
    I can't get to download the "C++ for C programmers" course via coursera-dl... anyone had some luck ?
etiam 10y ago
Does anyone here know of an automated solution to get a faithful save of a whole course? As I recall it coursera-dl doesn't capture quizzes and forum, for instance.
agumonkey 10y ago
I liked their first offerings a lot, very very well done too and very capable platform compared to some others. It's sad that the model couldn't sustain. ps: about downloading the courses pdf and videos... it's really the low hanging part, in the sense that lots of universities have open pages with lectures and sometimes videos too. What MOOCs brought were exercices + auto graders (+ student group).
the_wheel 10y ago
You can't deliver on your mission of democratizing education or operate as a VC backed business (which enables these attempts in the first place), if you're not making moves toward profitability. These companies are pioneering a space and searching for a viable business model in the process. They're surviving.
znpy 10y ago
So I spawned a virtual server and I am downloading some courses I wanted to take. What a shame. Farewell, free learning.
WalterBright 10y ago
If I was a prof, I'd have every one of my lectures recorded and put online for free. I wish I had recorded the lectures I attended in college. Not recalling the lectures means the notes I took in class don't make much sense. Heck, I record all of the presentations I do, and they get posted for free on the intarnets. I put a fair amount of work into them - why hide them?
- copperx 10y ago
  A bit tangential, but do you mind to share what equipment do you use to record your presentations?
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    I don't do the recording, whoever sets up the conference does it. Sometimes it's just a consumer video camera. The quality varies a lot :-) but for a lecture, the quality is not that important. You will want to use a lapel microphone with a wireless transmitter/receiver, though.
znpy 10y ago
In case you want to download as may courses as possible before they fade away, here are some notes. Please forgive me some mistakes, I wrote this a bit in a hurry. =========================== 1) Spawn a virtual server on DigitalOcean. I am using the 40$/month in order to have 40GB of space, but my plan is to shut it down in a day or two. The advantage is to have storage space AND super-fast connection. If you don't want to spend money, here is my referral code: https://m.do.co/c/867be540644c https://m.do.co/c/867be540644c This will give you 10$ credit for free. 2) Install screen, python-virtualenv, python3, python3-pip 3) edit ~/.bash_aliases: #!/usr/bin/env bash alias download="./coursera-dl -u <<username>> -p <<password>>" alias download_preview="./coursera-dl -b -u <<username>> -p <<password>>" 4) Install coursera-dl: see https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl#alternative-installation-method-for-unix-systems https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl#alternative-insta... name the virtualenv "coursera", and place it in the root home directory 5) patch to use python3: * pip3 install -r requirements.txt * patch coursera/coursera.dl: #!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- Becomes: #!/usr/bin/env python3 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- 6) Edit ~/.bashrc Add this lines at the end of the file: cd coursera source bin/activate cd coursera ======================= The setup process is done. Here is how to use it: 1) Start a screen session: `screen -S coursera` download_preview compilers-004 you can download more courses in parallel by creating another window (C-a c) and typing donwload_preview $coursename.
- znpy 10y ago
  Tested and successfully downloaded (about 30GB): - recsys-001 - hwswinterface-002 - eefun-001 - experiments-001 - gametheory-003 - crypto-010 - pgm - cariesmanagement-003 - algo2-003 - analyze-003 - audio-002 - ml-005 - sna-2012-001-staging - spatialcomputing-001 - organalysis-003 - compilers-004 - modelthinking-006 - ggp-003 - algo-009 - intrologic-005 - automata - linearopt-002 - matrix-002 Please add below this comment other coursed that can be downloaded.
  - akvar 10y ago
    - neuralnets-2012-001 - scicomp-003 - mmds-002 - comparch-003
hyperpallium 10y ago
This is opportunity for free courses. Freemium doesn't just entice customers; it also denies oxygen to competitors. The specific difficulty for courses is reputation - but wikipedia has managed it, so it's possible.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
Thanks to the author for the heads up, would be real shame if these courses are removed without someone downloading all the material first (I don't care if it's against the ToS, I still think a torrent is the way to go, free education has a greater value than copyright protection). I'm a bit confused about which courses will be removed and which ones will stay. Is there a list of courses that are present on the old platform but not on the new platform? Also, I don't know where I'd access the old platform and where I'd access the new platform. Am I right in thinking this is a course on the new platform? https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer If so, where do I go to see the old platform?
haches 10y ago
Worthwhile to point out that edX is a non-profit [1] unlike Coursera [2] and Udacity [3]. [1] https://www.edx.org/about-us https://www.edx.org/about-us [2] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coursera https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coursera [3] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/udacity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/udacity
- cpkpad 10y ago
  Kinda. They act more like a for-profit than like a non-profit.
  - misingnoglic 10y ago
    How so? All of their classes are available for free, the only thing you have to pay for is the certificate. Non profit =/= no profit.
  - rpgmaker 10y ago
    Taking a page out of the nonprofit university playbook.
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  One may find Introduction to Functional Programming [1] by Erik Meijer interesting. [1] https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programming-delftx-fp101x-0 https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programmi...
Dowwie 10y ago
The author of this blog post has taken to a soap box to shout out, "The Golden Age of MOOCs is over" and that he hates Coursera. Wow. Really? Do I want to even read what this is about? Fine. "Of late we have seen MOOC providers caring less about the students and more about the $$$". Oh boy, here comes the assault on reason. "they should stop the game of telling people that they care for students and are here to “provides universal access to the world’s best education”." Yeah, that's enough for me. Tarun Vangani needs a reality check. Coursera has brought much good to the world. It has to provide good to the world in an economically sustainable way. It would be great if the Macarthur Foundation gave its $100 Million grant to Coursera so that it could continue to focus on its mission. Hopefully, Coursera qualifies and applies for it.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Personally, I'd much rather see the money go to the Khan Academy.
znpy 10y ago
I wonder what would have happened with a flat subscription model... Like "Pay 19.99 monthly and take whatever class you want".
z3r0c00l 10y ago
It would be great if you guys made a torrent out of the downloaded courses
znpy 10y ago
See comments on reddit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4njrt0/golden_age_of_moocs_is_over_coursera_shuts_access/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4njrt0/golden_...
mohsinr 10y ago
Disappointed by Coursera and Udacity (they positioned for free MOOCs and now they are taking everything back they offered). More power to KhanAcademy and MIT Open Courseware! For staying true to their mission of providing Free Courses...
- amjd 10y ago
  I haven't used Coursera recently but Udacity still has free courses and anyone can sign up for them. They even keep releasing free courses such as the new Deep Learning course by Google. Also, I'm taking their Android nanodegree course on a scholarship and I can say that even that uses their existing free courses for teaching purposes and nanodegree mostly just provides you with projects and deadlines.
- markdown 10y ago
  > Disappointed by Udacity (they positioned for free MOOCs and now they are taking everything back they offered). Nonsense. Udacity now have paid "Nanodegree" courses alongside their free ones. They haven't removed their free courses, and in fact continue to release new free ones. Also, their paid courses come with grading and code feedback from humans, so it's not like it was scalable as a free option. Further, they guarantee you'll get a job based on the Nanodegree courses or you get your money back.
  - mohsinr 10y ago
    Thank you for the correction. I edit my comment about Udacity. Sorry looks like It cannot bed edited anymore. But thanks to your comment, users will not be mislead by comment about udacity. I was browsing from my mobile and could not find free courses easily like it used to be so thought it was gone, but now I see we can still access we just have to look further. Thank you!
raldu 10y ago
I have been feeling more and more disappointed with their step-by-step implementation of paywalling learners, and a general decline in community engagement. This decision to cut access to the old material is very short-sighted, and it would do more harm than good to their "business". The old content would have been perceived as having a historical value, as being among the first courses published in the first actual MOOC platform, not to mention the tremendous value those courses contributed by successfully reaching wide audiences around the world, changing many lives. Now they are making a bad image out of themselves. Coursera has been getting progressively worse. There is no community engagement. I cannot be surprised or engaged by non-discussion going on, which is also the case with edX, by the way. I have done mentorship in one of the paid courses at Coursera and all I could do was to mechanically answer technical questions. Nobody cared about the critical aspects, nobody cared about generating interesting and thought-provoking discussions, even when some mentors have encouraged it. As mentors, what we were doing was just free technical support for the course providers. Further, the recent content is at best feels like "best seller" stuff for whatever trending industry anyway. Even the UI has been getting slower. This example provides the meaning of backing up (and further sharing) data stored in the cloud. Mostly we do not think it would be necessary to backup since the data is going to stay there "forever", right? As a final note, I was surprised that nobody mentioned FutureLearn (https://www.futurelearn.com https://www.futurelearn.com). It is a new MOOC platform with somewhat "European" feeling to it. I have surprisingly had the best community experience with quality discussions in one of the courses provided there. The overall content is very diverse and interesting. And yes, the UI is faster!
simunaga 10y ago
why are disappointed? if everyone had certificates, how much valuable would they be for employers? it's odd. just think about it for a minute.
veddox 10y ago
Shame! I've done courses on both Udacity and Coursera in the past. Not very many, but they did shape me and taught me stuff I either couldn't have learned any other way or could not have learnt as well. I understand that they are both businesses that need to take care of their finances if they want to survive. Nonetheless, I am still disappointed - when they started out some years back they were all full of vigour and idealism about free education, and somewhere along the line they have been quietly dropping that idealism. They didn't even try to explain why they were doing what they were doing and why they were changing. In essence, they betrayed who they were at the beginning, and that's what makes me sad. So thank you, Udacity and Coursera, for who you were and what you gave me, but I fear our roads shall part here...
ajmurmann 10y ago
I understand that they need to make money. However, something like this provides so much value to society that we as a society have a large interest in keeping it as available to everyone as possible. Therefore I think that we need to have a publicly funded platform like this or one run by a non-profit like Wikimedia Foundation. The lower the barrier for everyone to take classes the better.
T3RMINATED 10y ago
Atleast uDemy promises Lifetime Access forever despite it being pirated or not... its a Garuantee.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
This sort of thing would obviously happen as Coursera is a high-value, VC-backed firm. This sort of thing is best done open and nonprofit. One I know like that is EDX: non-profit with open source software with courses from MIT, Harvard, etc. Check it out people. https://www.edx.org/about-us https://www.edx.org/about-us
mattfrommars 10y ago
I have to blame my procrastination and never having the habit to complete or start any of the courses I had 'enrolled' in. Now coursera shutting down, I'm leaving all my hopes to the knight of the internet to archive these. Will download and hopefully get back.
Myrmornis 10y ago
This seems very sad. I was just considering taking the neuralnets-2012-001 class from 2012 and so although I can download I won't have access to any of the discussion forums etc. Is there an official position statement from Coursera on this decision? I'd be happy to pay a bit for it if that's what they want. Or is their view that Geoffrey Hinton teaching neural networks in 2012 is just kind of cruft cluttering up the internet?
andretadeu 10y ago
I confess I didn't get the point about shutting down the old platform. The new platform still allows you to enroll to a course for free and the content of several of them were updated. Some courses weren't offered a second time since 2012 or 2013 due to massive dropouts and very few students that finished the courses. Nowadays I'm taking some courses for free at Coursera, such as 'More Chinese for beginners'. I chose to pay for several and other ones I attend for free.
bitL 10y ago
They should implement per region pricing depending on GDP PPP or similar. Paying for a course means commitment; while it's no big deal for me to shelve $50-100 on their course, it's a big deal for Eastern Europe, Africa, majority of Asia etc. If they adjusted prices to locally reasonable levels, they could increase both profit and completion rate.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dimdimdim 10y ago
Dear Coursera, Thanks for all the free courses for the last couple of years. I understand the need to be profitable and make this a real business so you don't have to fire all your good employees who have helped provide free education for so long. I for one welcome what you are doing - as I understand that's is impossible to sustain a free model forever. All the best!
mattfrommars 10y ago
This is bad to hear. I never managed to do a single course in the past due to other commitments. Only thing I did manage was to enroll with them. What can I do now? I wanted to learn to code and become good at it and land a job or atleast get involved in local software development companies. Is this still possible with coursera shutting down? I'm getting a little stressed in being 'late to the party'.
smith5555 10y ago
I think that companies can live off good publicity for a long time, even if they change their business model.
smith5555 10y ago
I don't know about the old Udacity, but I love the new Udacity the way I use it. I load up on topics that might interest me, and run thru them at top speed. I get a quick (and very useful) overview by what appear to be very skilled communicators. I don't think I'll ever go for the project based learning model, too much potential for copy, paste, get reward like Codeacademy. Re Coursera, I've never found a class that held my attention till the end. I don't think they are challenging enough, but good information.
joeevans1000 10y ago
Well, now, I guess we weren't paying attention to whether or not these courses were under an open license or not. Maybe we should support or develop options that are.
dhawalhs 10y ago
I published a guide on which courses are part of the old platform and how to batch download them before the June 30th Deadline. You can find it here: https://www.class-central.com/report/coursera-old-platform-shutdown-download-courses/ https://www.class-central.com/report/coursera-old-platform-s...
piggybox 10y ago
I thank Coursera for everything they've done to me. It's totally life changing. Without it I wouldn't be at where I am, wouldn't have chance to learn these great courses from top universities and as a result, got a dream job. I don't mind paying a small fee (still much cheaper than going to any other school) seriously. I understand that's not the topic people are arguing about here, but anyway.
Coursera 10y ago
Hi everyone - I work at Coursera and wanted to share a blog post that should help clear up some misunderstandings about where courses from our old platform will go after June 30th: https://blog.coursera.org/post/145882467032 https://blog.coursera.org/post/145882467032 The most important thing to know is that hundreds of courses will NOT disappear from Coursera. The vast majority of courses have already or will be updated and transitioned to our new platform in the coming months. Please read the blog post for more detailed information. I'd also like to address questions around the payment model on our new platform. Coursera is 100% committed to our mission of providing universal access to education, and the move to our new platform does not in any way affect our mission. Anyone who demonstrates that they are unable to afford the cost of a course or Specialization can apply for financial aid. You can learn more about our financial aid program here: https://blog.coursera.org/post/131756940057 https://blog.coursera.org/post/131756940057
- fao_ 10y ago
  Isn't it more costly to administer and provide financial aid rather than set n courses as free?
- javiermares 10y ago
  Thank you very much for the clarification. Would it be possible for you to share with us the list of the few dozen courses that will not migrate to the new platform?
moizsajid 10y ago
Lets hope for the best!
misterGautham 10y ago
Will Andrew Ng's machine learning course be staying?

590 points by reachtarunhere 10y ago

I agree that removing/limiting access is lousy by Coursera and Udacity, for courses that used to be free and contain valuable fundamentals. I don't agree that the golden age is necessarily over though. The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com https://www.class-central.com MOOCs by government-backed traditional universities from Europe / Asia is taking over a large chunk of the "market" meaning that Coursera, Udacity, etc. is finding it difficult to get any returns.

gnodar 10y ago
> The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com https://www.class-central.com Never heard of that site, but I browsed through the first page of CS videos[0], and all but two courses were just links to Coursera courses. The other two were links to edX. [0] https://www.class-central.com/subject/cs https://www.class-central.com/subject/cs
- dhawalhs 10y ago
  Founder of Class Central here. Our default sorting order is by start dates and Coursera courses now have new sessions starting monthly or bi-monthly here. We will be updating our algorithm soon to rank the courses based on our data. You can see all the providers we aggregate here: https://www.class-central.com/providers https://www.class-central.com/providers And universities here: https://www.class-central.com/universities https://www.class-central.com/universities

tgokh 10y ago

Coursera actually converted a course I was enrolled in to paid-quizzes-only, while I was actively enrolled in the course and on the second to last week of eight. They finally converted it back after 2 days of many of us contacting support but never gave me a straight answer as to whether it was accidentally or intentional :-/ Definitely lost my faith in Coursera as a platform over these recent changes.

reachtarunhere 10y ago
Agree they have been acting too greedy recently.
sotojuan 10y ago
I never liked Coursera because they offered classes only sometimes... I know a "real classroom" experience is what they were going after but it sucks finding a great looking course that will be offered a year later or worse, no upcoming dates. Sad to see they're going to downhill though.
- zhte415 10y ago
  Indeed. I feel a gamefication theme to some of it. Think of the opposite: Socrates had his teachings and live lectures online, with recorded classroom, and feedback, for all to comment on, with his replies. It may have only been 'live' for 20/40 years of his life/teaching life/sharing life, but it would be amazing today. MOOCs offer this opportunity for humanity, to record teachings in increasingly diverse formats that are free for others to use and experiment with.
  - visarga 10y ago
    What MOOCs need is deep understanding of human learning, as it relates to specific fields. In other words they need to keep track on a per-user-basis of the level of mastery they have on all the relevant concepts. They need to map out how relevant concepts rely on each other, and be able to make recommendations. It often feels like an avalanche of books, courses, materials - we need simple paths through this mess. We need to keep people right in the sweetspot - not giving them too difficult material, but also not too easy, just right enough to maximize learning. And this perfect gradation of difficulty can be reverse engineered through machine learning over student activity logs. Another area they need to invest in is the practical side. Course takers need more examples, tests, problems and projects. Only by applying the concepts in reality will students gain firm confidence in their abilities. I don't think the "short course" format is the best. It might be better to have a graph of concept nodes, each equipped with its own instructional materials, problems and tests. The graph can be expanded gradually to include more concepts and to reduce the gradient of difficulty for the more problematic ones. People who bang their heads against difficult material and don't grock it might feel discouraged and give up. But if they can build confidence that everything is taught gradually and without too violent jumps in difficulty, they might improve the dropout rate.

wonkaWonka 10y ago

Learning is lovely, but without the advatage of being able to directly apply what you've learned toward actually improving your life, it's all just so much education porn.

klausa 10y ago
Why does everything you do have to go `toward actually improving your life`? Why can't we do stuff just for fun anymore?
- sotojuan 10y ago
  Even worse, his comment assumes you can't improve your enjoyment of life just by learning about things you like.
  - wonkaWonka 10y ago
    After a while, this never ending river of UTF-8 characters and RGB pixels gets a little old. You realize all the time you've spent whiling away so much time, imagining that it's all building up to something even better than yesterday's tide of serialized data streams, that your youth has faded, and you're still just staring at a lightbulb masked behind a screen of wires, listening to air disturbed by oscillating magnets, and nothing more. But the worst part of this, is looking up, only to find a city full of similar people all still hopelessly enthralled by the discharge of so many lithium-ion batteries perturbed by some nearby electric coil.
    - 9erdelta 10y ago
      You're a cheery fella! Maybe have suicide watch on speed dial eh?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      I don't know what you expect, staring into the Internet. - Nietzsche

brhsiao 10y ago

I'll probably get shot down for being that typical negative HN comment, but do MOOCs like Coursera actually do much in the way of making education more accessible or society fairer? All the content offered on Coursera already exists on the internet. Really motivated people will aggressively look for study materials, and they generally don't have a problem finding it. It seems to me that it's actually the internet that improves accessibility and fairness, through which curated collections of study materials are then delivered as MOOCs. Which is terrific, but then it's hardly shocking that they'd eventually have to monetize themselves. We've seen worse attempts to crack down on the internet.

orionblastar 10y ago
Khan Academy started out with Youtube videos and grew into a web site with quizes and tests. I don’t know if you can call it a MOOC but it teaches subjects well enough. I guess they rely on donations, and advertising on Youtube?
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  According to Wikipedia it's a non-profit. I believe Google donated ad-free YouTube for the channel. Income is indeed donations. "The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization,[8] now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, Google, the O’Sullivan Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and other philanthropic organizations."
  - orionblastar 10y ago
    Thank you, I learned that it is a non-profit now and had donations go to keep them going.
BoysenberryPi 10y ago
As someone has taken a lot of MOOCs, I have no idea if Coursera makes education more accessible but they certainly make certain teachers and professors more accessible and those professors have a lot of knowledge to offer. A lot of universities don't have open courseware and even if they do the recordings are beyond terrible.

bradleyjg 10y ago

I just got a somewhat confusing email canceling my enrollment in the ever elusive Cryptography II course. I guess this is what that's about. If so, it's too bad, I had a great experience in the Crypto I but it wouldn't have been nearly as good without the quizzes and assignments.

kodfodrasz 10y ago
I have also received such an email, yet reading it states that in the fall the course will be started (finally) on a new backend. We are really excited to have you in the course Cryptography II! We’re reaching out because this course is being moved to our new platform which is why your enrollment in the June 13th session of this course has been cancelled. That said, you’ll be able to take the course soon on our new platform in Fall 2016. Our entire team is working hard to create the best learning experience possible for you and we really appreciate your patience with this small delay.
tonyedgecombe 10y ago
I've given up waiting for that now, will find another way.

avodonosov 10y ago

Script to save course materials: https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl I haven't tried it yet. Just was asking around how to save course materials (videos, slides, notes, etc) of an old platform course I want to return to sometimes. Got this advice: > app which can help you download all the > materials at one go. > https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl > Doesn't work all the time, but for old > courses should work.

bhrgunatha 10y ago
Coursera and Udacity have both been going downhill almost from their inception with every single change. I've used coursera-dl to archive courses I've taken part in for some time now. I was considering deleting my archive recently but now I'm really glad I didn't. However, it doesn't download the quizzes or exams though. You still have to make a local copy of the html pages (easy, but time consuming in firefox for example) or take screenshots.
reachtarunhere 10y ago
This will only get the videos and the slides. No assignments, quizzes or helpful Forum Discussions.
bad_user 10y ago
Thanks for the hint. I've downloaded about 4 courses. Time to put that 1 TB of online storage to good use :-)
- avodonosov 10y ago
  don't forget to share the links

kercker 10y ago

I can not see how Arab Spring made the society fairer. Internet helped the Arab Spring develop, but the Arab Spring is not such a good thing, because look what it left to middle east.

Rifu 10y ago

To save people like me a trip to google, MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. Today I learned!

LouisSayers 10y ago

If anyone else is wondering, MOOC is Massive Open Online Courses. It really gets on my nerves when people don't expand their acronyms when introducing a topic. Of course there are exceptions, but is MOOC really that common an acronym?! I just find it a bit inconsiderate.</rant>

keyle 10y ago
Thanks, I got grizzly too.
syngrog66 10y ago
just googled MOOC and the top 3 results all explained it
danso 10y ago
It's a pretty common acronym for those of us in education, of course. But it is also known among the startup/hacker crowd because of the well-funded startups in the space. Also, it's beginning to be big in public policy. A couple of years ago, the California state senate was debating a bill to allow students to use MOOC courses for actual state college credit. That bill has since been shelved: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/01/controversial-california-bill-outsource-student-learning-dead-until-2014-or-later https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/01/controversial... In defense of the submitter, expanding the acronym may have pushed the title over the character limit.
hueving 10y ago
This post is venting about the state of that industry. If you don't know what MOOC stands for, it probably won't matter to you much anyway. It's sort of like expecting a post about a web framework to explain HTTP.

sreeramvenkat 10y ago

I hope edx does not follow coursera way.

riffraff 10y ago
I believe they did in a way, certificates are now available only if you pay, rather than for anyone taking the class. That doesn't bother me but it's the first step coursera took before ending up where it is now.
- alasano 10y ago
  I guess it makes the certificate itself seem more valuable as a means of expressing that you accomplished something. My view of edX is biased though by how awesome CS50 is, it feels more like a movement than a class.
  - riffraff 10y ago
    indeed, and I am sure there is a percentage of people that will likely pay for a certificate that was not paying before. It's not a bad move, and it's totally legit, _but_ it hints at a stronger effort to get money. Regarding the "movement" thing, I had the same feeling with my first 3 large MOOC (AI which begat udacity, ML & DBs which begat coursera). But not anymore :/
- krick 10y ago
  Please don't compare. I don't give a damn about certificates, and I think it's totally fair for them to be paid. Actually, as I think it's only normal to not give a damn about certificates, I'd say even some kind of "full track" with exams is ok to be paid for. They still provide good learning material for free. And, by the way, the quality of the course material on edx is arguably better. It's a shame that coursera's got way more recognition somehow, apparently.
srikz 10y ago
If I remember correctly edX is a non-profit. So I guess at least the content will be freely available even if they charge for the certification. I think both Coursera and edX have some financing schemes for those who can't afford the price, although I haven't found out how it actually works.

lovelearning 10y ago

I feel Coursera's pricing strategy is located at two opposite extremes and misses out an entire range of options in the middle. They either make an entire course completely free with no option to pay even if the student wants to, or they put it behind a paywall where one can't even start without paying. They along with their institutional partners are missing out revenue from people like me who'd like to pay some amount, but not the amount they fix. I'm happy to pay some amount without a certificate. They should consider giving a pay-what-you-like option for all their courses.

akg_67 10y ago
Are there any successful ventures with such "pay-what-you-like" pricing strategy? Having unsuccessfully tried such a pricing model myself, I have serious doubt about it's viability. Majority will not pay anything, very few will pay reasonable amount, and some will pay very little but will be very high maintenance. Payer: God dammit, I paid for your service and I want one hour of your support time. Company: How much did this payer paid? 50 cents! We need to hire someone who will take 30 cents to support this payer for an hour. This is one of those pricing strategy that sounds good and people will claim to support but in reality wouldn't.
- aaggarwal 10y ago
  As far as I remember, edX used to follow this 'pay-what-you-like' strategy for honor-code certificate, along with fixed pricing for verified certificate.
- zacketysack3 10y ago
  Bandcamp?
- lovelearning 10y ago
  It probably depends on what the product or service is, and how it's sold. Coursera already provides some courses for free, and even those attract some high maintenance types from what I've seen in the forums. Does providing a pay-what-you-want option increase the number of nasties or the degree of nastiness, for example, inviting legal risks? I don't really know. But I feel Coursera should atleast experiment and gather the data before deciding, instead of missing out on all that data. Leanpub and Gumroad are two services that follow this strategy. I don't know if they are successful ventures, but I notice they have maintained this pricing strategy since their inception and never changed or stopped it. Leanpub says "...the pattern we have seen with multiple books, about a third of people will pay the suggested price, a third will pay the minimum price and a third will pay somewhere in between. Finally, the odd person will pay more than the suggested price" [1]. Some anecdotal experiences of individual authors [2],[3],[4] support it. [1]: https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq [2]: http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 [3]: http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-leanpub.html http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-l... [4]: http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-want-pricing-for-you http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-wan...

greenmoon55 10y ago

Would anyone be kind enough to provide a script for downloading assignments and quizzes?

zo1 10y ago
It's been posted a few times in this thread: https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl
- LionessLover 10y ago
  He said "assignments and quizzes", not "videos and slides". https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl/issues/490 https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl/issues/490

wtf_is_frp 10y ago

The only thing I hate about the new platform is that you can't access the info until a week after you enrolled into self-paced courses. It is fucking stupid. Beyond retarded.

fiatjaf 10y ago

What is a MOOC? These people should use the <abbr> tag.

plinkplonk 10y ago

I always wanted to work through the algorithms MOOCs from Princeton but I kept putting it off. Profs Sedgewick and Wayne are phenomenal teachers. Anyone know if this course will be available in the future? (probably not, since they had no certificates etc, and I don't see them going along with paid-for-quizzes courses, but it doesn't hurt to ask)

wtf_is_frp 10y ago
They are available, I have doubts about OP's post.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dhawalhs 10y ago
They are currently on the old platform. Officially the old platform shuts down on June 30th. Maybe they will be moved to the new platform. A lot of courses on the old platform have moved to the new platform over the past year.
HugoMelo 10y ago
I'm in the same boat. Found https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl and was able to download part 1 and 2.
- saganus 10y ago
  What course names did you use? I could not find the ones from Prof. Sedgewick, only the one from Prof. Roughgarden
  - mamon 10y ago
    try algs4partI-010 and algs4partII-007
    - 10y ago

jsturner 10y ago

A good friend of mine who works at Coursera attributes their descent to the brain drain they've had over the past year. Apparently, management is sweeping the problem under the rug, and forcing a false rhetoric that the departures were good. Even their Glassdoor page[1] seems doctored now. Sad times. [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Coursera-Reviews-E654749.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Coursera-Reviews-E654749.h...

master_yoda_1 10y ago

Please teach a highly complex technical subject free for one month. Then write these kind of blogs. Otherwise keep calm and mind your own business ;)

latenightcoding 10y ago

It is truly sad to see Coursera getting greedier by the day. I can honestly say this website changed my life, I was living in a third world country and still in high school when I enrolled in Andrew Ng's machine learning class and thanks to that MOOC I was able to get a machine learning job building recommender systems for a Canadian company straight out of high school. There are plenty of amazing MOOCs that Coursera has completely removed from the website or are only available for people who want to pay upfront. Please don't be like Udacity Coursera. BTW you have until June 30 to download your courses.

quincyla 10y ago
If institutional partners treated MOOCs as a marketing exercise for their university's brand, instead of trying to monetize courses and certificates, people could continue to have this content for free. Unfortunately, universities don't exactly exemplify long-term thinking. Most of the content for these MOOCs is created by professors as part of their jobs, so this content is owned by their universities. I bet a vast majority of professors would prefer their MOOCs to stay open. Most of the work has been done already, and the quizzes and exercises are automated, so there's no practical reason these videos couldn't be hosted on YouTube and thrown into an open source MOOC framework like EdX's and continue to serve millions for a few hundred a month in server costs. Except that Coursera is explicitly forbidding non-private use of these courses. For what it's worth, Free Code Camp gets about 1/8 of the traffic Coursera does, and our (non-opportunity) costs are pretty minor. I don't think hosting these MOOCs would add much to the burden. If only the individual professors who created these MOOCs could give us permission to host these courses. But there's no way we're going to get anywhere with the university bureaucracies themselves.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bpesquet 10y ago
  Hi Quincy, FreeCodeCamp's a great project. However, I always wondered about your long-term goals and "business model" (if there is one). You're offering to integrate old Coursera courses into FCC. But what if you change your mind about openness further down the road ? Couldn't FreeCodeCamp become the Udacity/Coursera of tomorrow ?

linux_devil 10y ago

There is no point of calling them MOOC , if they are not 'O'pen anymore.

haakon 10y ago
And since it's not 'O'pen, it's most likely much less 'M'assive. Now it's more like a traditional distance learning offering. Nothing wrong with being that, but I wish we could also have MOOCs.
- mohsinr 10y ago
  Great point! So MOOCs have become now OCs (Online Courses), Massive & Open stays honor badge of Open Source Software :) Educators tried to use "OPEN" word from OPEN Source World, but could not keep it that way... Coursera and Udacity guys should stop using OPEN word please...

wibr 10y ago

https://class.coursera.org/ml-005/lecture https://class.coursera.org/ml-005/lecture Machine Learning, Andrew Ng https://class.coursera.org/algo-003/lecture https://class.coursera.org/algo-003/lecture Algorithms 1, Tim Roughgarden https://class.coursera.org/algo2-003/lecture https://class.coursera.org/algo2-003/lecture Algorithms 2, Tim Roughgarden Edit: https://class.coursera.org/compilers/lecture/preview https://class.coursera.org/compilers/lecture/preview Compilers, Alex Aiken What else?

saganus 10y ago
I also found https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture and https://class.coursera.org/crypto-preview/lecture https://class.coursera.org/crypto-preview/lecture but I think the first one is newer. There's also https://class.coursera.org/ml-003/lecture https://class.coursera.org/ml-003/lecture So I guess yours is newer. Found as well: https://class.coursera.org/automata/lecture https://class.coursera.org/automata/lecture https://class.coursera.org/hci/lecture https://class.coursera.org/hci/lecture https://class.coursera.org/pgm/lecture https://class.coursera.org/pgm/lecture And others. I just did a Google site search: site:class.coursera.org And click around. Some are not available though.
- hatsunearu 10y ago
  >https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture Speaking of this, I got an email about the following issue: The Coursera boneheads decide to do this. What does this mean for the crypto II class? DELAYED AGAIN! It's been delayed for YEARS. YEARS I say. Another delay because of asinine greed.
  - thoralfskolem 10y ago
    Professor Boneh is pretty busy... I've been waiting for a while for this too. This has been the never-starting tease course.
- znpy 10y ago
  I can't get to download the "C++ for C programmers" course via coursera-dl... anyone had some luck ?

etiam 10y ago

Does anyone here know of an automated solution to get a faithful save of a whole course? As I recall it coursera-dl doesn't capture quizzes and forum, for instance.

agumonkey 10y ago

I liked their first offerings a lot, very very well done too and very capable platform compared to some others. It's sad that the model couldn't sustain. ps: about downloading the courses pdf and videos... it's really the low hanging part, in the sense that lots of universities have open pages with lectures and sometimes videos too. What MOOCs brought were exercices + auto graders (+ student group).

the_wheel 10y ago

You can't deliver on your mission of democratizing education or operate as a VC backed business (which enables these attempts in the first place), if you're not making moves toward profitability. These companies are pioneering a space and searching for a viable business model in the process. They're surviving.

znpy 10y ago

So I spawned a virtual server and I am downloading some courses I wanted to take. What a shame. Farewell, free learning.

WalterBright 10y ago

If I was a prof, I'd have every one of my lectures recorded and put online for free. I wish I had recorded the lectures I attended in college. Not recalling the lectures means the notes I took in class don't make much sense. Heck, I record all of the presentations I do, and they get posted for free on the intarnets. I put a fair amount of work into them - why hide them?

copperx 10y ago
A bit tangential, but do you mind to share what equipment do you use to record your presentations?
- WalterBright 10y ago
  I don't do the recording, whoever sets up the conference does it. Sometimes it's just a consumer video camera. The quality varies a lot :-) but for a lecture, the quality is not that important. You will want to use a lapel microphone with a wireless transmitter/receiver, though.

znpy 10y ago

In case you want to download as may courses as possible before they fade away, here are some notes. Please forgive me some mistakes, I wrote this a bit in a hurry. =========================== 1) Spawn a virtual server on DigitalOcean. I am using the 40$/month in order to have 40GB of space, but my plan is to shut it down in a day or two. The advantage is to have storage space AND super-fast connection. If you don't want to spend money, here is my referral code: https://m.do.co/c/867be540644c https://m.do.co/c/867be540644c This will give you 10$ credit for free. 2) Install screen, python-virtualenv, python3, python3-pip 3) edit ~/.bash_aliases: #!/usr/bin/env bash alias download="./coursera-dl -u <<username>> -p <<password>>" alias download_preview="./coursera-dl -b -u <<username>> -p <<password>>" 4) Install coursera-dl: see https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl#alternative-installation-method-for-unix-systems https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl#alternative-insta... name the virtualenv "coursera", and place it in the root home directory 5) patch to use python3: * pip3 install -r requirements.txt * patch coursera/coursera.dl: #!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- Becomes: #!/usr/bin/env python3 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- 6) Edit ~/.bashrc Add this lines at the end of the file: cd coursera source bin/activate cd coursera ======================= The setup process is done. Here is how to use it: 1) Start a screen session: `screen -S coursera` download_preview compilers-004 you can download more courses in parallel by creating another window (C-a c) and typing donwload_preview $coursename.

znpy 10y ago
Tested and successfully downloaded (about 30GB): - recsys-001 - hwswinterface-002 - eefun-001 - experiments-001 - gametheory-003 - crypto-010 - pgm - cariesmanagement-003 - algo2-003 - analyze-003 - audio-002 - ml-005 - sna-2012-001-staging - spatialcomputing-001 - organalysis-003 - compilers-004 - modelthinking-006 - ggp-003 - algo-009 - intrologic-005 - automata - linearopt-002 - matrix-002 Please add below this comment other coursed that can be downloaded.
- akvar 10y ago
  - neuralnets-2012-001 - scicomp-003 - mmds-002 - comparch-003

hyperpallium 10y ago

This is opportunity for free courses. Freemium doesn't just entice customers; it also denies oxygen to competitors. The specific difficulty for courses is reputation - but wikipedia has managed it, so it's possible.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

Thanks to the author for the heads up, would be real shame if these courses are removed without someone downloading all the material first (I don't care if it's against the ToS, I still think a torrent is the way to go, free education has a greater value than copyright protection). I'm a bit confused about which courses will be removed and which ones will stay. Is there a list of courses that are present on the old platform but not on the new platform? Also, I don't know where I'd access the old platform and where I'd access the new platform. Am I right in thinking this is a course on the new platform? https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer If so, where do I go to see the old platform?

haches 10y ago

Worthwhile to point out that edX is a non-profit [1] unlike Coursera [2] and Udacity [3]. [1] https://www.edx.org/about-us https://www.edx.org/about-us [2] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coursera https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coursera [3] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/udacity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/udacity

cpkpad 10y ago
Kinda. They act more like a for-profit than like a non-profit.
- misingnoglic 10y ago
  How so? All of their classes are available for free, the only thing you have to pay for is the certificate. Non profit =/= no profit.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  Taking a page out of the nonprofit university playbook.
0xmohit 10y ago
One may find Introduction to Functional Programming [1] by Erik Meijer interesting. [1] https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programming-delftx-fp101x-0 https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programmi...

Dowwie 10y ago

The author of this blog post has taken to a soap box to shout out, "The Golden Age of MOOCs is over" and that he hates Coursera. Wow. Really? Do I want to even read what this is about? Fine. "Of late we have seen MOOC providers caring less about the students and more about the $$$". Oh boy, here comes the assault on reason. "they should stop the game of telling people that they care for students and are here to “provides universal access to the world’s best education”." Yeah, that's enough for me. Tarun Vangani needs a reality check. Coursera has brought much good to the world. It has to provide good to the world in an economically sustainable way. It would be great if the Macarthur Foundation gave its $100 Million grant to Coursera so that it could continue to focus on its mission. Hopefully, Coursera qualifies and applies for it.

voltagex_ 10y ago
Personally, I'd much rather see the money go to the Khan Academy.

znpy 10y ago

I wonder what would have happened with a flat subscription model... Like "Pay 19.99 monthly and take whatever class you want".

z3r0c00l 10y ago

It would be great if you guys made a torrent out of the downloaded courses

znpy 10y ago

See comments on reddit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4njrt0/golden_age_of_moocs_is_over_coursera_shuts_access/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4njrt0/golden_...

mohsinr 10y ago

Disappointed by Coursera and Udacity (they positioned for free MOOCs and now they are taking everything back they offered). More power to KhanAcademy and MIT Open Courseware! For staying true to their mission of providing Free Courses...

amjd 10y ago
I haven't used Coursera recently but Udacity still has free courses and anyone can sign up for them. They even keep releasing free courses such as the new Deep Learning course by Google. Also, I'm taking their Android nanodegree course on a scholarship and I can say that even that uses their existing free courses for teaching purposes and nanodegree mostly just provides you with projects and deadlines.
markdown 10y ago
> Disappointed by Udacity (they positioned for free MOOCs and now they are taking everything back they offered). Nonsense. Udacity now have paid "Nanodegree" courses alongside their free ones. They haven't removed their free courses, and in fact continue to release new free ones. Also, their paid courses come with grading and code feedback from humans, so it's not like it was scalable as a free option. Further, they guarantee you'll get a job based on the Nanodegree courses or you get your money back.
- mohsinr 10y ago
  Thank you for the correction. I edit my comment about Udacity. Sorry looks like It cannot bed edited anymore. But thanks to your comment, users will not be mislead by comment about udacity. I was browsing from my mobile and could not find free courses easily like it used to be so thought it was gone, but now I see we can still access we just have to look further. Thank you!

raldu 10y ago

I have been feeling more and more disappointed with their step-by-step implementation of paywalling learners, and a general decline in community engagement. This decision to cut access to the old material is very short-sighted, and it would do more harm than good to their "business". The old content would have been perceived as having a historical value, as being among the first courses published in the first actual MOOC platform, not to mention the tremendous value those courses contributed by successfully reaching wide audiences around the world, changing many lives. Now they are making a bad image out of themselves. Coursera has been getting progressively worse. There is no community engagement. I cannot be surprised or engaged by non-discussion going on, which is also the case with edX, by the way. I have done mentorship in one of the paid courses at Coursera and all I could do was to mechanically answer technical questions. Nobody cared about the critical aspects, nobody cared about generating interesting and thought-provoking discussions, even when some mentors have encouraged it. As mentors, what we were doing was just free technical support for the course providers. Further, the recent content is at best feels like "best seller" stuff for whatever trending industry anyway. Even the UI has been getting slower. This example provides the meaning of backing up (and further sharing) data stored in the cloud. Mostly we do not think it would be necessary to backup since the data is going to stay there "forever", right? As a final note, I was surprised that nobody mentioned FutureLearn (https://www.futurelearn.com https://www.futurelearn.com). It is a new MOOC platform with somewhat "European" feeling to it. I have surprisingly had the best community experience with quality discussions in one of the courses provided there. The overall content is very diverse and interesting. And yes, the UI is faster!

simunaga 10y ago

why are disappointed? if everyone had certificates, how much valuable would they be for employers? it's odd. just think about it for a minute.

veddox 10y ago

Shame! I've done courses on both Udacity and Coursera in the past. Not very many, but they did shape me and taught me stuff I either couldn't have learned any other way or could not have learnt as well. I understand that they are both businesses that need to take care of their finances if they want to survive. Nonetheless, I am still disappointed - when they started out some years back they were all full of vigour and idealism about free education, and somewhere along the line they have been quietly dropping that idealism. They didn't even try to explain why they were doing what they were doing and why they were changing. In essence, they betrayed who they were at the beginning, and that's what makes me sad. So thank you, Udacity and Coursera, for who you were and what you gave me, but I fear our roads shall part here...

ajmurmann 10y ago

I understand that they need to make money. However, something like this provides so much value to society that we as a society have a large interest in keeping it as available to everyone as possible. Therefore I think that we need to have a publicly funded platform like this or one run by a non-profit like Wikimedia Foundation. The lower the barrier for everyone to take classes the better.

T3RMINATED 10y ago

Atleast uDemy promises Lifetime Access forever despite it being pirated or not... its a Garuantee.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

This sort of thing would obviously happen as Coursera is a high-value, VC-backed firm. This sort of thing is best done open and nonprofit. One I know like that is EDX: non-profit with open source software with courses from MIT, Harvard, etc. Check it out people. https://www.edx.org/about-us https://www.edx.org/about-us

mattfrommars 10y ago

I have to blame my procrastination and never having the habit to complete or start any of the courses I had 'enrolled' in. Now coursera shutting down, I'm leaving all my hopes to the knight of the internet to archive these. Will download and hopefully get back.

Myrmornis 10y ago

This seems very sad. I was just considering taking the neuralnets-2012-001 class from 2012 and so although I can download I won't have access to any of the discussion forums etc. Is there an official position statement from Coursera on this decision? I'd be happy to pay a bit for it if that's what they want. Or is their view that Geoffrey Hinton teaching neural networks in 2012 is just kind of cruft cluttering up the internet?

andretadeu 10y ago

I confess I didn't get the point about shutting down the old platform. The new platform still allows you to enroll to a course for free and the content of several of them were updated. Some courses weren't offered a second time since 2012 or 2013 due to massive dropouts and very few students that finished the courses. Nowadays I'm taking some courses for free at Coursera, such as 'More Chinese for beginners'. I chose to pay for several and other ones I attend for free.

bitL 10y ago

They should implement per region pricing depending on GDP PPP or similar. Paying for a course means commitment; while it's no big deal for me to shelve $50-100 on their course, it's a big deal for Eastern Europe, Africa, majority of Asia etc. If they adjusted prices to locally reasonable levels, they could increase both profit and completion rate.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dimdimdim 10y ago

Dear Coursera, Thanks for all the free courses for the last couple of years. I understand the need to be profitable and make this a real business so you don't have to fire all your good employees who have helped provide free education for so long. I for one welcome what you are doing - as I understand that's is impossible to sustain a free model forever. All the best!

mattfrommars 10y ago

This is bad to hear. I never managed to do a single course in the past due to other commitments. Only thing I did manage was to enroll with them. What can I do now? I wanted to learn to code and become good at it and land a job or atleast get involved in local software development companies. Is this still possible with coursera shutting down? I'm getting a little stressed in being 'late to the party'.

smith5555 10y ago

I think that companies can live off good publicity for a long time, even if they change their business model.

smith5555 10y ago

I don't know about the old Udacity, but I love the new Udacity the way I use it. I load up on topics that might interest me, and run thru them at top speed. I get a quick (and very useful) overview by what appear to be very skilled communicators. I don't think I'll ever go for the project based learning model, too much potential for copy, paste, get reward like Codeacademy. Re Coursera, I've never found a class that held my attention till the end. I don't think they are challenging enough, but good information.

joeevans1000 10y ago

Well, now, I guess we weren't paying attention to whether or not these courses were under an open license or not. Maybe we should support or develop options that are.

dhawalhs 10y ago

I published a guide on which courses are part of the old platform and how to batch download them before the June 30th Deadline. You can find it here: https://www.class-central.com/report/coursera-old-platform-shutdown-download-courses/ https://www.class-central.com/report/coursera-old-platform-s...

piggybox 10y ago

I thank Coursera for everything they've done to me. It's totally life changing. Without it I wouldn't be at where I am, wouldn't have chance to learn these great courses from top universities and as a result, got a dream job. I don't mind paying a small fee (still much cheaper than going to any other school) seriously. I understand that's not the topic people are arguing about here, but anyway.

Coursera 10y ago

Hi everyone - I work at Coursera and wanted to share a blog post that should help clear up some misunderstandings about where courses from our old platform will go after June 30th: https://blog.coursera.org/post/145882467032 https://blog.coursera.org/post/145882467032 The most important thing to know is that hundreds of courses will NOT disappear from Coursera. The vast majority of courses have already or will be updated and transitioned to our new platform in the coming months. Please read the blog post for more detailed information. I'd also like to address questions around the payment model on our new platform. Coursera is 100% committed to our mission of providing universal access to education, and the move to our new platform does not in any way affect our mission. Anyone who demonstrates that they are unable to afford the cost of a course or Specialization can apply for financial aid. You can learn more about our financial aid program here: https://blog.coursera.org/post/131756940057 https://blog.coursera.org/post/131756940057

fao_ 10y ago
Isn't it more costly to administer and provide financial aid rather than set n courses as free?
javiermares 10y ago
Thank you very much for the clarification. Would it be possible for you to share with us the list of the few dozen courses that will not migrate to the new platform?

moizsajid 10y ago

Lets hope for the best!

misterGautham 10y ago

Will Andrew Ng's machine learning course be staying?