Coursera: Is It For You?

Ok, so  following our group presentation, the Professor spoke briefly about Coursera. For those of you who might have forgot, or perhaps weren’t there (shame, shame), Coursera is “a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free” (www.coursera.org/#about/howitworks). And by top universities in the world, we’re talking about institutions like Stanford, MIT, Duke, the University of Michigan, and many more world renowned educational institutions.

We failed to mention Coursera in our presentation for a couple reasons, namely because I was the individual responsible for researching the collegiate aspect of eLearning and eTraining, and the research I found (in my mind & in the mind of our group) related to Coursera and its range of class offerings were new and exciting, but were also unproven. Coursera has not even been around a whole year yet. It’s true, however, that Coursera has just fewer than 3 million users, and it offers a wide array of top quality educational courses. All things considered, though, there is definitely a level of subjectivity as it relates to the appeal of taking classes through a system like Coursera. What I mean by that is that although the classes are free to anyone and everyone, the benefits of taking these courses are marginal. There are no formal certifications offered upon completion of these courses, nor will it earn you transferable credits for a comparable course offering at a traditional college or university. So that leaves students the sole gratification received from gaining knowledge and increasing your skill levels in certain academic disciplines as the key motivating factors for completing these courses.

With respect to Coursera and its founders, though, it is highly possible that their formula for education could be a trendsetter in all aspects of formal education, from kindergarten through graduate school. In fact, the Coursera founders set out with a vision in mind that people shouldn’t be limited in the quest for an education by how much money an education costs. They feel that anyone should be able to earn whatever level of education they desire no matter their financial situation. It seems to me that they fail to realize, however, that what they are essentially doing is only shifting the paradigm from a requirement of monetary capital to the need for time-based capital. In other words even though it’ll be free, your new concerns will consist of having and/or making the time to complete courses, and whether or not there are sufficient consequences to not making the time needed to complete your coursework in a timely fashion, if that makes sense. Before, it was you or your parents’ hard-earned money on the line pressing you toward completion. In this hypothetical learning environment, will there even be a significant motivating factor there to spur you along?

So with all that in mind, and knowing that I have a captive audience due to the fact that some of us still need to fulfill our blog comment requirements, I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you to respond to a few questions.

First, if an entire [college] education was free via an online provider like Coursera, would you have enough self-motivation to stick to it and complete your degree in a timely manner? Out of curiosity, what would be those motivating factors?

Second, given the fact that Coursera currently offers no certification for class completion, would you still be interested, today, in taking one of the courses they offer in an effort to grow your base of knowledge?

Finally, do you see this trend toward free educational offerings good or bad for both education and our society? Why, or why not?

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and check out our blog.

 

Source: http://www.coursera.org