Coursera is a money losing company with a 10% y/y growth that IPOed at the top of the 2021 hype cycle. Now that the infinite money glitch is over they are in trouble, so they buy a marginally profitable company and slap Synergy and AI on it and pray to the gods of the market for more bountiful harvests of stocks issued.
Coursera used to be good, and I've found the occasional good course on Udemy, but neither are particularly great right now in my opinion. Well curated learning materials are such a unicorn.
There are plenty of good courses and many of the courses are the same that have been there for years (Medical Neuroscience is incredible), it's just behind a paywall now and you can't audit them (unless I'm retarded and missing something, which is fully possible).
I’ve purchased many Udemy courses over the years. The subscription plan they’ve been pushing makes no sense financially. I hope I’m wrong but I worry that eventually being a subscriber will be the only thing they offer.
Yes! I have had unfettered access to it via a couple employers and the Illusion of Choice is real. The best thing they could do (for users like me, not sure if this is true for the majority) would be to go back to being a curator of quality and not a marketplace for anyone to make a course.
There was one course I did gor mongoose, muber I think it's called. I really liked it as a student because it's all very bite-sized and you could stop/start whenever. They do recaps at the beginning.
Compare that to a 6 hr video on YouTube, next day you already forgot what the timestamp was about.
How valid are these certificates in the real world? Does anyone get benefitted by having them? I have always used these sites as a quick one off concept check. That was before llms, and I don’t have a use for these sites for my use case. So I don’t have any understanding of how valid they are in general
It's been a while since I took a Coursera course but I LOVED it at the beginning. Between Machine Learning, the (numerical) optimisation courses and NAND-To-Tetris (even for the platform alone) it had so many great courses to pick from.
+1 for NAND-to-Tetris. I combined it with a visual logic simulator so I could actually see the structures beyond the VHDL. I would love to go back and do Part 2.
I did Andrew Ng's old Machine Learning, Obarsky's Scala course, the Ng's Deep Learning specialization, Nand to Tetris part 1 and a small Data Science course which wasn't very good. I think my very first course was "Model Thinking" course, but I never took the exam there.
I also tried the sequel to the Scala course at one point, and the Cryptography course, but I dropped out from those after finding out they were a bit too hard - I spent way more time on the coursework than I'd intended.
But I can't say I like the direction it's taken in recent years.
The model thinking course was interesting but it should have had a follow up that was much more than a freshman survey course treatment of each model.
Reading online it seems like most people got the impression that it was establishing that all models are essentially useless. Instead it was showing that each of these models were an extremely efficient way to understand some dynamic situations, but that it’s still absurd to focus on only one model when trying to understand the world.
Didn’t the gamification course have one of the relatively few well done peer assessments? The course was good, but it’s interesting now that gamification features completely turn me off now on any platform or program attempting to motivate me toward a specific end, regardless of whether that goal is in my interest or the interest of someone else trying to make money.
Agreed about Odersky, the Scala course and the Scala Functional Programming course were solid (the latter a bit less so, a blemish was its insistence on Akka, but the concepts were interesting).
There was also a very interesting introduction to Programming Languages (by Dan... something? He was from the University of Washington I think) which covered multiple paradigms and had interesting things to say about the ML family.
Coursera used to be great, the value was unparalleled. Great specializations too; I learned Python and data science techniques through the platform during the COVID pandemic.
Lately though they've been pushing for courses to have AI dialogue modules, where an AI agent asks you questions about the content. These modules are absolute slop garbage, often asking repetitive questions that have no grounding in actual course content. I got sick of this and dropped my subscription about a month ago.
I've used both platforms regularly over the years, and I have mixed feelings about both. I mean they both have some truly excellent content, but so much utter trash. There should be some kind of quality control.
They make it reaaaaally hard to find the good stuff. Many courses are time sensitive (e.g. there's no point in learning a 20 year old version of PHP), but they frequently lie about when a course was created which makes it impossible to filter out old stuff.
There are so many courses that could benefit from more interactive tests/quizzes, but it's usually limited to solving a few ridiculously simple multiple choice questions. I'm not sure if that's a platform limitation or a course creator limitation.
So much of the content is extremely stale, and it even matters for languages that you would think are relatively unchanging.
It seems like they must have put almost no incentives in place for the instructors. Setting up a course must take even more effort than running a full semester course in their own school, but since no one is making new versions Coursera must not be paying them like it, or offering equity in the platform. I imagine that teaching students in person is also a lot more rewarding,
I haven’t taken any recent online courses, but EdX looked like it might still be good.
We have free coursera at work. But I really hate it because it enforces random deadlines on you. Even though the courses are completely prerecorded and absolutely don't need any kind of deadlines. I just want to study at my own pace.
If they don't force it people won't complete the course. While that at first sounds good - they collect money - long term people who complete courses are your best marketing as they tell others and so completion is importation and thus the deadlines.
Though how much force is best is subject to debate.
> long term people who complete courses are your best marketing as they tell others and so completion is importation and thus the deadlines
I don't see why completing courses is a customer satisfaction criterion. I've had many courses that I didn't complete, yet I was quite satisfied with the content and could recommend it to friends.
Coursera is a money losing company with a 10% y/y growth that IPOed at the top of the 2021 hype cycle. Now that the infinite money glitch is over they are in trouble, so they buy a marginally profitable company and slap Synergy and AI on it and pray to the gods of the market for more bountiful harvests of stocks issued.
Coursera used to be good, and I've found the occasional good course on Udemy, but neither are particularly great right now in my opinion. Well curated learning materials are such a unicorn.
There are plenty of good courses and many of the courses are the same that have been there for years (Medical Neuroscience is incredible), it's just behind a paywall now and you can't audit them (unless I'm retarded and missing something, which is fully possible).
Maybe you want to rephrase that second parenthetical?
> This is also Day 1. We’re being thoughtful and deliberate in how we bring our platforms together to deliver a unified, seamless experience.
So on day 1 they can deliver humongous amount of garbage, imagine what they can do on next day.
Coursera has high-quality, curated courses from reputable professors and institutions.
Udemy has almost the opposite.
Hopefully, this is handled well.
I’ve purchased many Udemy courses over the years. The subscription plan they’ve been pushing makes no sense financially. I hope I’m wrong but I worry that eventually being a subscriber will be the only thing they offer.
Any courses you would particularly recommend? I always found that Udemy's vast catalogue made it hard to actually pick a course.
Yes! I have had unfettered access to it via a couple employers and the Illusion of Choice is real. The best thing they could do (for users like me, not sure if this is true for the majority) would be to go back to being a curator of quality and not a marketplace for anyone to make a course.
Being a big marketplace is their big differentiator from sites like masterclass
But at the same time I agree that they aren't doing enough to surface the high quality courses
There was one course I did gor mongoose, muber I think it's called. I really liked it as a student because it's all very bite-sized and you could stop/start whenever. They do recaps at the beginning.
Compare that to a 6 hr video on YouTube, next day you already forgot what the timestamp was about.
I recommend anything by jonas schmedtmann for js/ts/react to work colleagues.
How valid are these certificates in the real world? Does anyone get benefitted by having them? I have always used these sites as a quick one off concept check. That was before llms, and I don’t have a use for these sites for my use case. So I don’t have any understanding of how valid they are in general
The Computational Neuroscience one helped me get a PhD place many years ago.
But one of the professors on the admissions board was a friend of the professor who ran the Coursera course so they had a lot more trust in it.
I have not noticed good results from candidates who have these certs.
It's been a while since I took a Coursera course but I LOVED it at the beginning. Between Machine Learning, the (numerical) optimisation courses and NAND-To-Tetris (even for the platform alone) it had so many great courses to pick from.
+1 for NAND-to-Tetris. I combined it with a visual logic simulator so I could actually see the structures beyond the VHDL. I would love to go back and do Part 2.
I did Andrew Ng's old Machine Learning, Obarsky's Scala course, the Ng's Deep Learning specialization, Nand to Tetris part 1 and a small Data Science course which wasn't very good. I think my very first course was "Model Thinking" course, but I never took the exam there.
I also tried the sequel to the Scala course at one point, and the Cryptography course, but I dropped out from those after finding out they were a bit too hard - I spent way more time on the coursework than I'd intended.
But I can't say I like the direction it's taken in recent years.
The model thinking course was interesting but it should have had a follow up that was much more than a freshman survey course treatment of each model.
Reading online it seems like most people got the impression that it was establishing that all models are essentially useless. Instead it was showing that each of these models were an extremely efficient way to understand some dynamic situations, but that it’s still absurd to focus on only one model when trying to understand the world.
Odersky ;)
"Model Thinking" was great!
And I really liked the gamification course by Kevin Werbach (The topic was still hot back then) - something I used extensively at my start up.
Didn’t the gamification course have one of the relatively few well done peer assessments? The course was good, but it’s interesting now that gamification features completely turn me off now on any platform or program attempting to motivate me toward a specific end, regardless of whether that goal is in my interest or the interest of someone else trying to make money.
Whoops, Obarsky was the Amiga synth guy, yeah, I haven't taken any courses with him. Although I might consider it.
I'll have to look at the Scala course, thanks!
Agreed about Odersky, the Scala course and the Scala Functional Programming course were solid (the latter a bit less so, a blemish was its insistence on Akka, but the concepts were interesting).
There was also a very interesting introduction to Programming Languages (by Dan... something? He was from the University of Washington I think) which covered multiple paradigms and had interesting things to say about the ML family.
Coursera put NAND to tetris behind a paywal after being free for like a decade. Just puke.
I checked now, and it says "Enroll for free". Am I missing something?
Hopefully this doesn't change public libraries' access to Udemy.
Competition is for losers.
Blitzscaling and fast-scaling are hardly new phenomena in online service firms.
It isn't about competition, but rather getting market dominance early. =3
Meh. I would've been more bothered back in the day when Coursera was a treasure trove of high quality courses, but it went downhill.
So to add Udemy's infinite catalogue of poorly structured courses, it only adds to the decline
Coursera used to be great, the value was unparalleled. Great specializations too; I learned Python and data science techniques through the platform during the COVID pandemic. Lately though they've been pushing for courses to have AI dialogue modules, where an AI agent asks you questions about the content. These modules are absolute slop garbage, often asking repetitive questions that have no grounding in actual course content. I got sick of this and dropped my subscription about a month ago.
Hope this changes the state of things like API access at Udemy
I've used both platforms regularly over the years, and I have mixed feelings about both. I mean they both have some truly excellent content, but so much utter trash. There should be some kind of quality control.
They make it reaaaaally hard to find the good stuff. Many courses are time sensitive (e.g. there's no point in learning a 20 year old version of PHP), but they frequently lie about when a course was created which makes it impossible to filter out old stuff.
There are so many courses that could benefit from more interactive tests/quizzes, but it's usually limited to solving a few ridiculously simple multiple choice questions. I'm not sure if that's a platform limitation or a course creator limitation.
So much of the content is extremely stale, and it even matters for languages that you would think are relatively unchanging.
It seems like they must have put almost no incentives in place for the instructors. Setting up a course must take even more effort than running a full semester course in their own school, but since no one is making new versions Coursera must not be paying them like it, or offering equity in the platform. I imagine that teaching students in person is also a lot more rewarding,
I haven’t taken any recent online courses, but EdX looked like it might still be good.
We have free coursera at work. But I really hate it because it enforces random deadlines on you. Even though the courses are completely prerecorded and absolutely don't need any kind of deadlines. I just want to study at my own pace.
I also hate all the gamification.
Many people need deadlines or their own pace ends up being never.
Then have that as a feature, don’t force it
If they don't force it people won't complete the course. While that at first sounds good - they collect money - long term people who complete courses are your best marketing as they tell others and so completion is importation and thus the deadlines.
Though how much force is best is subject to debate.
> long term people who complete courses are your best marketing as they tell others and so completion is importation and thus the deadlines
I don't see why completing courses is a customer satisfaction criterion. I've had many courses that I didn't complete, yet I was quite satisfied with the content and could recommend it to friends.
Does it change their subscription pricing?
What about LinkedInlearning tho?
Blackrock buys more of the world.. cool story.
The pillaging will continue until quarterly earnings improve
What happens when they just stop being shared?
As a purchaser of many Udemy courses (and yes, there are good ones), I'm waiting for the enshittification to begin.
Oh, I have really, really good news for you specifically then!
Oh no ...