8 ms·

Coursera’s co-founder Daphne Koller set to start anew at Calico

80 points by doppp 10y ago

untilHellbanned 10y ago
MOOCs seemed like a good idea at the time until everyone realized you go to college for the rubber stamp. The actual knowledge is an illiquid thing available on YouTube/Google or wherever. It is most definitely not a business. What's surprising is that people who've been professors for 18 years at Stanford or frickin heads of a Ivy League university didn't realize this until 5 more years into the business side of education. Shows how narrow academic's wheelhouse is.
- xeniak 10y ago
  What about in the web/startup world? Although not a real meritocracy, proving you can program/hack/design gets you a lot further than a piece of paper with a stamp in it.
  - hashnsalt 10y ago
    Agreed. The tech/CS world is more open to these alternative credentials. But a decent majority of the jobs are outside web/tech where traditional degrees hold a lot of value. It's not as easy to get a good mechanical engineering degree online because it requires a fair amount of lab work. Similarly for other forms of engineering and science.
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
      Don't conflate the webdev world with the rest of the tech industry. Most programming jobs are controlled by companies who do care what credentials you have, and the companies you describe are in such high demand by applicants that they have more qualified applicants than slots to fill.
      - XenophileJKO 10y ago
        On the higher end of the market, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Uber, etc.. You can definitely leverage MOOC learning and credentials. I leveraged MOOCs and their credentials as part of my personal brand to offset not having any degree. It helped me move into a software engineering role at a top tier company. It isn't just the top of the market either.. many employers are learning that there is a significant pool of talent available by including candidates with alternative educational backgrounds.
        vonmoltke 10y ago
        You missed a key part of what I said: > the companies you describe are in such high demand by applicants that they have more qualified applicants than slots to fill That applies to every company you named. It's great that you managed to get one of those slots. There are plenty of people who don't, though, and they can end up in a much worse position if they spend their time on learning that the majority of companies don't recognize.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    The value of the piece of paper will vary, but evidence that you can do Job X is important in lots of cases--especially as experience accumulates and time from degree (or non-degree) increases. The issue is that if all MOOCs were was another way to view lectures and do some exercises in an online setting for free/cheap, they wouldn't have been viewed with any particular excitement. But that's pretty much what they turned out to be. I'm sure they've been a useful way of learning for some. But they haven't fundamentally changed anything.
- ghaff 10y ago
  That seems excessively cynical. That said, the market [EDIT: from a $ revenue opportunity perspective] for online ongoing professional education for motivated people who don't care about certifications isn't a huge one. There are things like the Great Courses, Lynda, and of course books. But these are neither VC-sized opportunities nor anything especially disruptive. Leaving aside a few useful tools like online code evaluators, MOOCs largely solved a problem that was long-ago solved. Namely, access to quality broadcast-style lectures and other course content. At the same time, peer interactions and any genuine coaching pretty much didn't work with MOOCs.
  - hashnsalt 10y ago
    Do you think part of the problem with "online education" lies in defining what an education is really supposed to achieve? Should I be guaranteed a job at the end of this series of courses? Should I learn for leisure? Why try to build a one-size-fits-all university on the web anyways?
    - ghaff 10y ago
      I'm not sure it was so much "guaranteed a job at the end of this series of courses." But I do think that there was a suggestion, hope, even promise that MOOCs could replace traditional classroom education and degrees under some circumstances. The issue is that, to a large degree, they mostly solved the easy thing. Making videos of university lectures widely available isn't hard. Neither is making other broadcast aspects of the syllabus available (e.g. in MIT OCW). A lot of good material was made available through Coursera and edX. But, frankly, a Wordpress blog with embedded videos and links would have worked nearly as well for a lot of this material. Yes, CS somewhat uniquely benefits from the opportunity to reasonably evaluate code written for problem sets. But, for the most part, evaluation is at the multiple choice level.
    - visarga 10y ago
      I believe what is missing from MOOCs is personal coaching. People do better when they are observed by other people than in a void. The educational coach doesn't need to be an expert in the domain, just an expert in education. Maybe MOOCs would do better to be coupled with local study groups and educational coaches that make recommendations about what to learn next and supervise the progress of the student.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Huh? All of the MOOCs very early made it clear that their business model was selling certifications, drive that's where the marketable value was. It didn't take anyone involved 5 years to recognize that.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Yes, they knew that the business model was to sell certifications--not sure what else it would be. However, that Coursera certifications would be valued (presumably by employers) on a mass scale was always an aspiration without an awful lot of evidence behind it. (Yes, there are certifications that people pay a lot of money for but they're essentially all focused on a very specific set of skills and tied into some sort of ongoing program.)
  - untilHellbanned 10y ago
    Yeah and how well do those certifications sell? Again, doesn't take a ivy leaguer to know not very well.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > All of the MOOCs very early made it clear that their business model was selling certifications No, at the beginning another model was seriously discussed: Giving employers access to people who love to learn new things on their own. Cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311744
- ramblerman 10y ago
  Ridiculous, I've learned a great deal from MIT Open Courseware. I agree that Coursera has it's problems, with the insistence to stick to class start and end dates as one example. But to extrapolate that therefore online learning doesn't work as a medium is absurd.
  - drfloob 10y ago
    Not so say Coursera doesn't have problems, but the start and end dates don't mean much as of earlier this year, when they rolled out their new platform. There's no penalty for late assignments[0], and you can switch to a later session of the course whenever you want[1]. [0]: https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/208279866 https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/208279866 [1]: https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/208279776 https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/208279776
  - untilHellbanned 10y ago
    Entirely missed my point. It works, it's just not a business.
- michaelt 10y ago
  everyone realized you go to college for the rubber stamp. College also provides a bunch of other things: * Face-to-face contact with professors. * Face-to-face contact with classmates, with the possibility of forming in-person study groups and suchlike. * A structure to help your self-discipline; lectures follow a strict schedule so you don't fall behind, thinking "I'll watch it later", then never get caught up. * An environment where your peers are doing the same thing you are - rather than being the one guy in your office who watches coursera videos at lunchtime, you see hundreds of your fellow students every day. * A widely understood and non-stigmatised social status when pursued full time. You're not "unemployed for 4 years and not even looking for a job" a.k.a. lazy freeloader. You're a "student" a.k.a. future member of the middle class. * Clubs and societies where you can make friends. Friends who are close to your age, with similar backgrounds to yours, and with similar interests to you, and who are looking for new friends at the same time you are. * Networking opportunities (at least if you're doing an MBA or something where other people want to network) * Parties full of nice young people of your preferred gender. * Etc etc Now granted, the rubber stamp is important too, but to say college is only a rubber stamp is IMHO an over-simplification for a lot of people's college experiences.
ryporter 10y ago
I do not believe that both Koller's and Andrew Ng's transitions out of Coursera reflect badly on Coursera or on MOOCs in general. Instead, what you're seeing is two incredibly brilliant professors (I was a grad student in the same lab as both, and I TA'd for Koller) returning to their area of expertise. The world will probably be a better place for it.
- Jormundir 10y ago
  I was an early user of Coursera. I really enjoyed and completed three classes and thought it was the future of education. Since then, they've tried to monetize and in the process thrown quality out the window and ignored their users. I think Koller leaving is just another sign that coursera is run by its investors, in it for money instead of making a great education platform. The site no longer has any value to me, and I haven't even browsed the course list in over a year. I'm sure Koller is making a good decision, moving on from it to something she can be passionate about again. Best of luck.
  - yazaddaruvala 10y ago
    So on point. I took Andrew Ng's first machine learning course, it was the future of learning! In stead of building a framework for iterative improvements, and an online educational material, Coursera focused on building "classes" and "credentials" and trying to monetize. It isn't surprising that I learnt the most in college from Wikipedia. Which isn't even meant to be a teaching material. Truly a shame. Hopefully Khan Academy or even Wikipedia doesn't eventually disappoint.
    - perseusprime11 10y ago
      Unless those credentials are accepted by employers and schools and count for a real degree, they are meaningless.
      - icc97 10y ago
        That's a bit like saying there's no point in reading a book because employers don't ask for the books you've read. The courses are awesome just for you to learn things. It wouldn't even matter if you got nothing at the end. However they do provide a genuine way to show that you've taken a course. It shows willingness to learn above and beyond your degree. You can stick it on your Linked In profile and Stack Overflow profile, it's a way to differentiate yourself from the masses. Also it's a way of finding better employers. If you're employer is open-minded enough to take your Coursera courses seriously then they're more likely to be a good employer.
dannylandau 10y ago
This is very sad! I for one think that MOOCs have huge potential to disrupt higher education even if it becomes a non-profit at the end.
- bmer 10y ago
  Even if, or especially if?
- ghaff 10y ago
  edX is already a non-profit. Which is probably why, notwithstanding pleas to pay for certifications, you still have full access as a free user.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > notwithstanding pleas to pay for certifications, you still have full access as a free user. No, just look at the "XSeries" and "Professional Education" programs at edX. These are not free.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      I believe the XSeries are just track certifications for courses you can still take for free. However, the Professional Education programs--which I think are relatively new--do seem to be fee-based only. I stand corrected. Of course, even though it's a non-profit, edX is doubtless still under pressure by its sponsoring institutions to more or less pay its own way. That's a lower bar than "make VCs a bunch of money" but it still can't survive as a bottomless money pit.
      - wolfgke 10y ago
        > I believe the XSeries are just track certifications for courses you can still take for free. I stand partly corrected, but there are also XSeries tracks for courses from Professional Education.
- j45 10y ago
zump 10y ago
Will Geoff Hinton's Neural Network course still continue?
mark_edward 10y ago
I never understand all this hubbub. Does anyone actually think millions of Americans suddenly found a love of knowledge in the past couple decades? I know I'm in college to get a piece of paper to get green pieces of paper. I learn what I care about on my own time. The majority of people are in college because you get (rewarded for | penalized for not) going by Mr. Market, however you want to spin it. It doesn't matter whether it becomes apparent in your work that your degree was basically irrelevant. Booming education among a market where the fastest growing and largest job sector is shit jobs in service is just nation wide stack ranking. We're all on a treadmill and we can't all win.
- visarga 10y ago
  We can all win in the domain of personal development. Most of what I learn, I learn for fun. I am happy to be able to stand on the shoulders of these great people and see further ahead.
- Perceptes 10y ago
  That's a very cynical, narrow, and depressing view of what education is. I very much doubt that view is shared by anyone that started or worked on Coursera or any other MOOC.
  - mark_edward 10y ago
    It's a view about why people get education, not what education's potential is. If I felt I had the luxury to go to college and spend 4 years and thousands of dollars broadening my horizons, I know what I would study, what classes I would take, what professors I would talk to. But I don't feel that secure and so I am doing something completely different. I enjoy learning, I really do. I spend my freetime reading texts about what I love and talking to other more educated people who've studied it. It's not why I went to college, and not why people told me to go to college ever since I was old enough to understand arguments about my future life prospects and career and etc. It's not why my aunt who's been a nanny for 20 years is going to com-college, It's not why my mom is becoming a CPA, it's not why my dad went to engineering school, etc.
- 10y ago
thebeardedone 10y ago
Although I disagree with this view I cant help but get the sense that people are expecting to replace a 3-4 year education which is filled with 6-12 of these types of courses with 5 courses and think they will be valued just as much. Getting knowledge in a topic is one thing, years of problem solving across different topics is another. I use these classes as additional support to my education (when i dont understand something or if my class just scratched the surface and i want more). Other cases are classes that aren't offered that i find interesting like advanced databases from CMU that was posted a couple of months ago. It is definitly not a replacement, but helps you dwell into topics that you may not be able to or are unsure of.
- icc97 10y ago
  I can't see how anyone would expect that Coursera certificates will be a replacement for a degree. There's quite a clear difference between the two. Having said that each of the individual courses that I've taken on coursera were significantly better than any courses I took during my degree.
- j45 10y ago
  Problem solving as a domain is experience, not just study of problem solving. The reality is the 3-4 year educations, unless high quality, have a lot of unrelated fluff, except for the recognition. Same goes for online courses - both are a crapshoot and what I like about your point is the overarching theme that we should pay attention to the quality of the education we're receiving and focus on our ability to create value with it. At the end of the day, it's not what our education makes of us, but what we make of our education.
kercker 10y ago
As to Coursera, I really don't like the specification concept. When I browse the course list, I want to see a clean interface, not an interface cluttered with specifications. I don't have the data. But I guess that although Coursera has 20 million members, their overall engagement rate is decreasing. Because without new courses, many users will likely not return to the site.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Because without new courses, many users will likely not return to the site. In my opinion rather without free Statement of Accomplishment many users will likely not return to the site. It might be different in the US, but in Germany there is a culture of "certificate or it did not happen". I have heard that the same holds in Brazil, too. Thus being German I stopped attending Coursera courses as soon as free Statements of Accomplishment were dropped. I also have the impression that after this step the quality of courses dropped. Originally I remember that it was seriously considered that as a way of monetizing MOOC sites there was the thought that MOOC participants are people that love to learn new stuff on their own. This is something many employers like. So the idea for monetizing was: why not allow employers give (for money) access to the list of participants to find potential employees. Does anybody know why this route to monetizing MOOCs was left?
  - ghaff 10y ago
    > Thus being German I stopped attending Coursera courses as soon as free Statements of Accomplishment were dropped. Did you feel that being able to list the free statements of accomplishment has some specific value to you as an employee or a job seeker? (But, presumably, not sufficient value to pay for a certificate?) Otherwise, it seems a bit of an odd attitude. Do you avoid reading books for educational purposes or watching videos on professional topics because you don't get a certificate for doing so? I do get that there's value in some certifications. But, except for some limited circumstances (continuing education requirements, as something to show in the absence of a traditional degree) my impression is that Coursera certifications don't have a lot of value. Which has been sort of their problem.
antman 10y ago
But I just got an email from her as a registered coursera user that she will soon rerun the Propabilistic Graphical Models course which is now split to three separate courses. I hope that her new position won't change that, her course is very good.

80 points by doppp 10y ago

MOOCs seemed like a good idea at the time until everyone realized you go to college for the rubber stamp. The actual knowledge is an illiquid thing available on YouTube/Google or wherever. It is most definitely not a business. What's surprising is that people who've been professors for 18 years at Stanford or frickin heads of a Ivy League university didn't realize this until 5 more years into the business side of education. Shows how narrow academic's wheelhouse is.

xeniak 10y ago
What about in the web/startup world? Although not a real meritocracy, proving you can program/hack/design gets you a lot further than a piece of paper with a stamp in it.
- hashnsalt 10y ago
  Agreed. The tech/CS world is more open to these alternative credentials. But a decent majority of the jobs are outside web/tech where traditional degrees hold a lot of value. It's not as easy to get a good mechanical engineering degree online because it requires a fair amount of lab work. Similarly for other forms of engineering and science.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    Don't conflate the webdev world with the rest of the tech industry. Most programming jobs are controlled by companies who do care what credentials you have, and the companies you describe are in such high demand by applicants that they have more qualified applicants than slots to fill.
    - XenophileJKO 10y ago
      On the higher end of the market, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Uber, etc.. You can definitely leverage MOOC learning and credentials. I leveraged MOOCs and their credentials as part of my personal brand to offset not having any degree. It helped me move into a software engineering role at a top tier company. It isn't just the top of the market either.. many employers are learning that there is a significant pool of talent available by including candidates with alternative educational backgrounds.
      - vonmoltke 10y ago
        You missed a key part of what I said: > the companies you describe are in such high demand by applicants that they have more qualified applicants than slots to fill That applies to every company you named. It's great that you managed to get one of those slots. There are plenty of people who don't, though, and they can end up in a much worse position if they spend their time on learning that the majority of companies don't recognize.
- ghaff 10y ago
  The value of the piece of paper will vary, but evidence that you can do Job X is important in lots of cases--especially as experience accumulates and time from degree (or non-degree) increases. The issue is that if all MOOCs were was another way to view lectures and do some exercises in an online setting for free/cheap, they wouldn't have been viewed with any particular excitement. But that's pretty much what they turned out to be. I'm sure they've been a useful way of learning for some. But they haven't fundamentally changed anything.
ghaff 10y ago
That seems excessively cynical. That said, the market [EDIT: from a $ revenue opportunity perspective] for online ongoing professional education for motivated people who don't care about certifications isn't a huge one. There are things like the Great Courses, Lynda, and of course books. But these are neither VC-sized opportunities nor anything especially disruptive. Leaving aside a few useful tools like online code evaluators, MOOCs largely solved a problem that was long-ago solved. Namely, access to quality broadcast-style lectures and other course content. At the same time, peer interactions and any genuine coaching pretty much didn't work with MOOCs.
- hashnsalt 10y ago
  Do you think part of the problem with "online education" lies in defining what an education is really supposed to achieve? Should I be guaranteed a job at the end of this series of courses? Should I learn for leisure? Why try to build a one-size-fits-all university on the web anyways?
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I'm not sure it was so much "guaranteed a job at the end of this series of courses." But I do think that there was a suggestion, hope, even promise that MOOCs could replace traditional classroom education and degrees under some circumstances. The issue is that, to a large degree, they mostly solved the easy thing. Making videos of university lectures widely available isn't hard. Neither is making other broadcast aspects of the syllabus available (e.g. in MIT OCW). A lot of good material was made available through Coursera and edX. But, frankly, a Wordpress blog with embedded videos and links would have worked nearly as well for a lot of this material. Yes, CS somewhat uniquely benefits from the opportunity to reasonably evaluate code written for problem sets. But, for the most part, evaluation is at the multiple choice level.
  - visarga 10y ago
    I believe what is missing from MOOCs is personal coaching. People do better when they are observed by other people than in a void. The educational coach doesn't need to be an expert in the domain, just an expert in education. Maybe MOOCs would do better to be coupled with local study groups and educational coaches that make recommendations about what to learn next and supervise the progress of the student.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Huh? All of the MOOCs very early made it clear that their business model was selling certifications, drive that's where the marketable value was. It didn't take anyone involved 5 years to recognize that.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Yes, they knew that the business model was to sell certifications--not sure what else it would be. However, that Coursera certifications would be valued (presumably by employers) on a mass scale was always an aspiration without an awful lot of evidence behind it. (Yes, there are certifications that people pay a lot of money for but they're essentially all focused on a very specific set of skills and tied into some sort of ongoing program.)
- untilHellbanned 10y ago
  Yeah and how well do those certifications sell? Again, doesn't take a ivy leaguer to know not very well.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > All of the MOOCs very early made it clear that their business model was selling certifications No, at the beginning another model was seriously discussed: Giving employers access to people who love to learn new things on their own. Cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311744
ramblerman 10y ago
Ridiculous, I've learned a great deal from MIT Open Courseware. I agree that Coursera has it's problems, with the insistence to stick to class start and end dates as one example. But to extrapolate that therefore online learning doesn't work as a medium is absurd.
- drfloob 10y ago
  Not so say Coursera doesn't have problems, but the start and end dates don't mean much as of earlier this year, when they rolled out their new platform. There's no penalty for late assignments[0], and you can switch to a later session of the course whenever you want[1]. [0]: https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/208279866 https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/208279866 [1]: https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/208279776 https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/208279776
- untilHellbanned 10y ago
  Entirely missed my point. It works, it's just not a business.
michaelt 10y ago
everyone realized you go to college for the rubber stamp. College also provides a bunch of other things: * Face-to-face contact with professors. * Face-to-face contact with classmates, with the possibility of forming in-person study groups and suchlike. * A structure to help your self-discipline; lectures follow a strict schedule so you don't fall behind, thinking "I'll watch it later", then never get caught up. * An environment where your peers are doing the same thing you are - rather than being the one guy in your office who watches coursera videos at lunchtime, you see hundreds of your fellow students every day. * A widely understood and non-stigmatised social status when pursued full time. You're not "unemployed for 4 years and not even looking for a job" a.k.a. lazy freeloader. You're a "student" a.k.a. future member of the middle class. * Clubs and societies where you can make friends. Friends who are close to your age, with similar backgrounds to yours, and with similar interests to you, and who are looking for new friends at the same time you are. * Networking opportunities (at least if you're doing an MBA or something where other people want to network) * Parties full of nice young people of your preferred gender. * Etc etc Now granted, the rubber stamp is important too, but to say college is only a rubber stamp is IMHO an over-simplification for a lot of people's college experiences.

ryporter 10y ago

I do not believe that both Koller's and Andrew Ng's transitions out of Coursera reflect badly on Coursera or on MOOCs in general. Instead, what you're seeing is two incredibly brilliant professors (I was a grad student in the same lab as both, and I TA'd for Koller) returning to their area of expertise. The world will probably be a better place for it.

Jormundir 10y ago
I was an early user of Coursera. I really enjoyed and completed three classes and thought it was the future of education. Since then, they've tried to monetize and in the process thrown quality out the window and ignored their users. I think Koller leaving is just another sign that coursera is run by its investors, in it for money instead of making a great education platform. The site no longer has any value to me, and I haven't even browsed the course list in over a year. I'm sure Koller is making a good decision, moving on from it to something she can be passionate about again. Best of luck.
- yazaddaruvala 10y ago
  So on point. I took Andrew Ng's first machine learning course, it was the future of learning! In stead of building a framework for iterative improvements, and an online educational material, Coursera focused on building "classes" and "credentials" and trying to monetize. It isn't surprising that I learnt the most in college from Wikipedia. Which isn't even meant to be a teaching material. Truly a shame. Hopefully Khan Academy or even Wikipedia doesn't eventually disappoint.
  - perseusprime11 10y ago
    Unless those credentials are accepted by employers and schools and count for a real degree, they are meaningless.
    - icc97 10y ago
      That's a bit like saying there's no point in reading a book because employers don't ask for the books you've read. The courses are awesome just for you to learn things. It wouldn't even matter if you got nothing at the end. However they do provide a genuine way to show that you've taken a course. It shows willingness to learn above and beyond your degree. You can stick it on your Linked In profile and Stack Overflow profile, it's a way to differentiate yourself from the masses. Also it's a way of finding better employers. If you're employer is open-minded enough to take your Coursera courses seriously then they're more likely to be a good employer.

dannylandau 10y ago

This is very sad! I for one think that MOOCs have huge potential to disrupt higher education even if it becomes a non-profit at the end.

bmer 10y ago
Even if, or especially if?
ghaff 10y ago
edX is already a non-profit. Which is probably why, notwithstanding pleas to pay for certifications, you still have full access as a free user.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > notwithstanding pleas to pay for certifications, you still have full access as a free user. No, just look at the "XSeries" and "Professional Education" programs at edX. These are not free.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I believe the XSeries are just track certifications for courses you can still take for free. However, the Professional Education programs--which I think are relatively new--do seem to be fee-based only. I stand corrected. Of course, even though it's a non-profit, edX is doubtless still under pressure by its sponsoring institutions to more or less pay its own way. That's a lower bar than "make VCs a bunch of money" but it still can't survive as a bottomless money pit.
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > I believe the XSeries are just track certifications for courses you can still take for free. I stand partly corrected, but there are also XSeries tracks for courses from Professional Education.
j45 10y ago

zump 10y ago

Will Geoff Hinton's Neural Network course still continue?

mark_edward 10y ago

I never understand all this hubbub. Does anyone actually think millions of Americans suddenly found a love of knowledge in the past couple decades? I know I'm in college to get a piece of paper to get green pieces of paper. I learn what I care about on my own time. The majority of people are in college because you get (rewarded for | penalized for not) going by Mr. Market, however you want to spin it. It doesn't matter whether it becomes apparent in your work that your degree was basically irrelevant. Booming education among a market where the fastest growing and largest job sector is shit jobs in service is just nation wide stack ranking. We're all on a treadmill and we can't all win.

visarga 10y ago
We can all win in the domain of personal development. Most of what I learn, I learn for fun. I am happy to be able to stand on the shoulders of these great people and see further ahead.
Perceptes 10y ago
That's a very cynical, narrow, and depressing view of what education is. I very much doubt that view is shared by anyone that started or worked on Coursera or any other MOOC.
- mark_edward 10y ago
  It's a view about why people get education, not what education's potential is. If I felt I had the luxury to go to college and spend 4 years and thousands of dollars broadening my horizons, I know what I would study, what classes I would take, what professors I would talk to. But I don't feel that secure and so I am doing something completely different. I enjoy learning, I really do. I spend my freetime reading texts about what I love and talking to other more educated people who've studied it. It's not why I went to college, and not why people told me to go to college ever since I was old enough to understand arguments about my future life prospects and career and etc. It's not why my aunt who's been a nanny for 20 years is going to com-college, It's not why my mom is becoming a CPA, it's not why my dad went to engineering school, etc.
10y ago

thebeardedone 10y ago

Although I disagree with this view I cant help but get the sense that people are expecting to replace a 3-4 year education which is filled with 6-12 of these types of courses with 5 courses and think they will be valued just as much. Getting knowledge in a topic is one thing, years of problem solving across different topics is another. I use these classes as additional support to my education (when i dont understand something or if my class just scratched the surface and i want more). Other cases are classes that aren't offered that i find interesting like advanced databases from CMU that was posted a couple of months ago. It is definitly not a replacement, but helps you dwell into topics that you may not be able to or are unsure of.

icc97 10y ago
I can't see how anyone would expect that Coursera certificates will be a replacement for a degree. There's quite a clear difference between the two. Having said that each of the individual courses that I've taken on coursera were significantly better than any courses I took during my degree.
j45 10y ago
Problem solving as a domain is experience, not just study of problem solving. The reality is the 3-4 year educations, unless high quality, have a lot of unrelated fluff, except for the recognition. Same goes for online courses - both are a crapshoot and what I like about your point is the overarching theme that we should pay attention to the quality of the education we're receiving and focus on our ability to create value with it. At the end of the day, it's not what our education makes of us, but what we make of our education.

kercker 10y ago

As to Coursera, I really don't like the specification concept. When I browse the course list, I want to see a clean interface, not an interface cluttered with specifications. I don't have the data. But I guess that although Coursera has 20 million members, their overall engagement rate is decreasing. Because without new courses, many users will likely not return to the site.

wolfgke 10y ago
> Because without new courses, many users will likely not return to the site. In my opinion rather without free Statement of Accomplishment many users will likely not return to the site. It might be different in the US, but in Germany there is a culture of "certificate or it did not happen". I have heard that the same holds in Brazil, too. Thus being German I stopped attending Coursera courses as soon as free Statements of Accomplishment were dropped. I also have the impression that after this step the quality of courses dropped. Originally I remember that it was seriously considered that as a way of monetizing MOOC sites there was the thought that MOOC participants are people that love to learn new stuff on their own. This is something many employers like. So the idea for monetizing was: why not allow employers give (for money) access to the list of participants to find potential employees. Does anybody know why this route to monetizing MOOCs was left?
- ghaff 10y ago
  > Thus being German I stopped attending Coursera courses as soon as free Statements of Accomplishment were dropped. Did you feel that being able to list the free statements of accomplishment has some specific value to you as an employee or a job seeker? (But, presumably, not sufficient value to pay for a certificate?) Otherwise, it seems a bit of an odd attitude. Do you avoid reading books for educational purposes or watching videos on professional topics because you don't get a certificate for doing so? I do get that there's value in some certifications. But, except for some limited circumstances (continuing education requirements, as something to show in the absence of a traditional degree) my impression is that Coursera certifications don't have a lot of value. Which has been sort of their problem.

antman 10y ago

But I just got an email from her as a registered coursera user that she will soon rerun the Propabilistic Graphical Models course which is now split to three separate courses. I hope that her new position won't change that, her course is very good.