Using Coursera courses (paid options)

[Grantmom]

Does anyone know if the verified certificate or the specialization certificate for Coursera courses would be worth doing, to have some confirmed record of having completed the work for your transcript?  Has anyone done this, or are you just using the free versions?

[mumto2]

We were just doing the free options until dd wanted to do University of Pennsylvania's Calculus class. That one can be upgraded to receive 3 credit hours through ACE for roughly $130. We went ahead and paid for that one. She just finished last week and did well. Overall it was a good experience for her. Until we paid for the final she was doing the verified certificate route. It was surprisingly easy so would do it again if they start a specialization track with the intention of finishing it.

[Grantmom]

Thanks!  The verified certificate costs money too, though, right?  Can you sign up later during the course or do you have to do it at the beginning?  Did they give grades or just a pass/fail type of thing?  Or does that vary from course to course?

[flyingiguana]

While a lot of colleges have written policies for things like AP and CLEP credit, I'm not aware of any that have policies concerning Coursera courses.  So if my intent was to get college credit, I'd want to check with the college my student would be going to to see if they would accept something like this.

 

My guess is that in most cases, they won't.  Coursera hasn't been around long enough for them to form policies.  The exception would be if the certificate is through an agency that colleges already accept credit from.  But even then, I'd want to check -- just because a certain coursera class is being done at a well known university doesn't mean other colleges will accept credit *as if* it came from that university.

 

Otherwise, I'm not sure what benefit it would be -- unless one really wants outside grades.

 

But I've so far gotten 2 kids into college -- one with a lot of outside grades and one with none.  There didn't seem to be any problem for the one with none.  She had an ACT score and my transcript and that was good enough.

[MarkT]

While a lot of colleges have written policies for things like AP and CLEP credit, I'm not aware of any that have policies concerning Coursera courses.  So if my intent was to get college credit, I'd want to check with the college my student would be going to to see if they would accept something like this.

 

My guess is that in most cases, they won't.  Coursera hasn't been around long enough for them to form policies.  The exception would be if the certificate is through an agency that colleges already accept credit from.  But even then, I'd want to check -- just because a certain coursera class is being done at a well known university doesn't mean other colleges will accept credit *as if* it came from that university.

 

 

I might be helpful for dual enrollment placement, for example taking Calculus 2 at a CC after taking Calculus 1 via Coursera.

 

[mumto2]

Thanks! The verified certificate costs money too, though, right? Can you sign up later during the course or do you have to do it at the beginning? Did they give grades or just a pass/fail type of thing? Or does that vary from course to course?

For most courses that we have taken a verified certificate costs around $40. You have roughly 2 weeks after a class starts to register. We have only paid the one time for the second Calculus class dd has taken because the credits were availiable for an advanced Calculus class.

 

They have taken a fairly large assortment of classes with Coursera. Everything from several programing and economics classes to chemistry and dinosaurs earning free certificates in all. Their Coursera transcript is available when you log into their account. Generally it gives a percentage earned in the class when the certificate was completed.

 

Are these of any real value? I am not 100% clear but taking and surviving a chem class taught by Duke University where only approximately 400 certificates were given at the end is not a bad talking point for interviews if Coursera comes up. ;) I have simply been packaging them on the transcripts with other at home work.

 

My dc's can't go the Community College route because of where we live. Although the calculus class she took and passed is AP level CD it is doubtful she will be able to take the CD AP and will have to do the AB level in the spring because of availability. I am happy she will have a little bit extra to show, honestly don't expect the credits to transfer but since the price was relatively cheap it seemed worth the effort.

[Grantmom]

I wasn't thinking of getting any kind of college credit for the Coursera course, I just was wondering in terms of your high school transcript, if you used a Coursera course as part of your curriculum for a high school class, if it would be of any benefit to have that verification when you apply to colleges.  Just wondering if it would be helpful, or a waste of money to have that verification.

[Chrysalis Academy]

I wasn't thinking of getting any kind of college credit for the Coursera course, I just was wondering in terms of your high school transcript, if you used a Coursera course as part of your curriculum for a high school class, if it would be of any benefit to have that verification when you apply to colleges.  Just wondering if it would be helpful, or a waste of money to have that verification.

 

Same question here.  Would it qualify as an outside verification of mommy-grades/mommy classes?  Maybe it's too soon to say, but it will be interesting to see how this develops.

[Grantmom]

I know, I mean I wonder as this type of learning becomes more popular, if in 4 years colleges will prefer to see the verification that you did the course.  In that case, I'd gladly pay the $40, but if it's not that essential, of course I'd rather put the money elsewhere.

[Grantmom]

I am thinking that, if it is a course that you are using as a stand alone course, then it may behoove you to do the verification.  But maybe if you are just using a course as a supplement to a curriculum you are doing, maybe it's not as important.  ??  I have no idea though!

[mumto2]

Thus far I am thinking it is fine to have a free certificate. :)

[flyingiguana]

I might be helpful for dual enrollment placement, for example taking Calculus 2 at a CC after taking Calculus 1 via Coursera.

 

 

But you're still going to have to convince the college that that certificate from Coursera means something.  And I'm not sure a lot of colleges have had that discussion yet.  So it may be kind of crap shoot as to whether the college will accept anything through Coursera.

 

I've seen similar problems with people taking distance courses from colleges -- or courses for the casual learner from a big name university.  Back when distance courses weren't common, they might not have been covered in the accreditation of the university.  And this is probably still the case for the sort of community ed that some universities provide.  Just having the university name on the certificate does not mean that course is part of the accreditation, nor that a college you want to transfer into will be able to assess the transfer creditworthiness of a particular online course.

 

The bottom line is that each college may have to ask a professor or dept to assess the Coursera course to see if it really covers what they would like in a transfer course or a prerequisite.  Professors are busy.  They may not get around to it quickly enough.  And they may decide no in the end.

 

I've seen students take courses at cc that they wanted to transfer into a 4 yr college -- but the professors studied the syllabus and eventually decided it just wasn't the same course as what they were teaching, wouldn't provide the student with the background necessary to go on in further courses, and wouldn't be what they would consider as having been a class in their major/dept.

 

Professors do not like to put a stamp of approval on a course that covers less than what they would consider to be minimum knowledge.

 

*Some* Coursera courses may cover all necessary topics well, but a ton of them don't. 

Even though a university stuck their name on the course, allowed one of their professors to give the lectures, and collected a bit of money from selling the certificate this will not necessarily convince a professor at another institution that it was the same course with the same name as what the brick and mortar university would have taught.

 

They may also have concerns about students cheating and getting someone else to do the work for them.  This would be a lot easier in the coursera situation than in a brick and mortar school.

 

It's not all about making money, btw -- professors and colleges are interested in maintaining their accreditation so their degree will mean something to their current and future students.  Who they may actually care about beyond the pay check.

 

[flyingiguana]

If a college is going to accept Calc 1 through coursera to place into Calc 2, they're likely to have a placement test that will do the same thing.

[flyingiguana]

I have to admit that some of my opinion is coming from having tried out numerous Coursera courses -- and I'm assuming that any professor that went in to verify whether a course was any good or not would have the same concerns I've had.

 

The Coursera courses tend to do a number of odd things.  Some cover very tiny parts of a topic, and spend huge amounts of time on stuff that isn't all that pertinent to anything.  Others just kind of ramble without getting anywhere.

 

The most successful so far that I've seen seem to be the ones that are the actual taped lectures from a classroom -- I'm thinking of the MIT Lewin physics course here.  However, when they went to put that together as an online class that one could get credit for, they must have put a lot of thought into how they could get around the cheating problem.  So they came up with a lot of homework and test problems that are NOWHERE on the web.  They were extremely hard, and it was impossible to get any sort of help (like the sort one would get from a tutor or the professor in a live class).  I'm sure this helped immensely with the problem that anyone could search the web and copy homework answers if the problems were the normal problems one would see in a regular class.  So they probably reduced the cheating (although it didn't get around the problem of just getting someone else to do the work for you and calling it yours). 

 

But...... this made it impossible for someone who didn't already know the material to do the class successfully.

 

I was doing this with my daughter.  And while I could figure the problems out, she had no clue.  There were NO easy problems to ease the students into understanding.  And I suspect that it would have been pretty difficult to do that class without a whole lot of physics background -- in fact, many of the people who seemed to be sticking it out were all on the discussion forums talking about they'd done these sort of problems back when they were TAKING physics.

 

The "TA"s running the course were not providing any useful help because they were too worried about giving away the answer.

 

So that, apparently, is not the way to go about reducing cheating.

 

Coursera still has a lot of bugs to work out.

 

The lack of a professor/teacher/tutor to work with the individual student in math/science courses is a big drawback with those courses.

 

This actually makes me wonder if it's even possible for a student to do well and get a certificate if they don't have someone irl guiding them through it.

 

Also, while the Lewin lectures are great, they are not the full course.  They do not include the TA sections or all the hw help the kids sitting in that lecture were getting (and those kids you see on the screen were getting a lot easier hw problems).  As many of the Coursera courses tend to only present *lectures* and then toss hw at the students they aren't going to be a full course.

 

I just don't see them taking over education any time soon.

[In The Great White North]

 

 

The most successful so far that I've seen seem to be the ones that are the actual taped lectures from a classroom -- I'm thinking of the MIT Lewin physics course here.  However, when they went to put that together as an online class that one could get credit for, they must have put a lot of thought into how they could get around the cheating problem.  So they came up with a lot of homework and test problems that are NOWHERE on the web.  They were extremely hard, and it was impossible to get any sort of help (like the sort one would get from a tutor or the professor in a live class).  I'm sure this helped immensely with the problem that anyone could search the web and copy homework answers if the problems were the normal problems one would see in a regular class.  So they probably reduced the cheating (although it didn't get around the problem of just getting someone else to do the work for you and calling it yours). 

 

Is this the same as the MIT Lewis course on EdX?  I can't find one on Coursera anymore, so we started this one today and I hope this one doesn't have that issue.  I have no interest whatsoever in a certificate or grade (the NCAA wouldn't accept it anyway) and aligning his lectures with a physics book I have on hand will be a pain.

 

[Kathy in Richmond]

Is this the same as the MIT Lewis course on EdX?  I can't find one on Coursera anymore, so we started this one today and I hope this one doesn't have that issue.  I have no interest whatsoever in a certificate or grade (the NCAA wouldn't accept it anyway) and aligning his lectures with a physics book I have on hand will be a pain.

 

Yes, it is. Lewin's course is on edX, not Coursera.

 

The homework is tough, for sure, since they tried to make it similar in difficulty to the on-campus version of the class.

 

If you want more problems for practice, look at the e-text that's posted as part of the course. There are tons of practice problems, many with solutions, in each chapter.  They tended to have a wider range of difficulty.

 

The class followed the e-text in order if I remember correctly from last year, and clearly stated which chapter correlated with each unit of study.

 

The folks on the message boards were helpful, so speak up if you have a question.

[Grantmom]

I don't assume that one would get any credit at all for a Coursera course, I was just wondering if doing the verified certificate had any value, or not really.  I agree that they are not going to be taking over education any time soon.  There is tremendous benefit to interacting with a teacher on a regular basis.  However, there are some awesome courses there, and they can be used in conjunction with other efforts to really augment and learn so much more.

 

Honestly, you can take an AP US History class from PAHS, and get an A, and have that verification that you did it, but if you get a 1 on the AP test, then your A doesn't mean much.  So I think that is the case with many things when it comes to what do colleges look at.  Even in b&m schools, you can have one student get an A in chemistry at School X who has a super laidback easy teacher who really doesn't teach anything, and another student get a B in chemistry with a really rigorous teacher who has a PhD.

[In The Great White North]

 

If you want more problems for practice, look at the e-text that's posted as part of the course. There are tons of practice problems, many with solutions, in each chapter.  They tended to have a wider range of difficulty.

 

The class followed the e-text in order if I remember correctly from last year, and clearly stated which chapter correlated with each unit of study.

 

Is this the Dourmashkin text?  I can find 5-6 examples in each chapter but no practice problems.  Was it in a separate link?

[Kathy in Richmond]

Is this the Dourmashkin text?  I can find 5-6 examples in each chapter but no practice problems.  Was it in a separate link?

 

Just checked my 8.01 archives. Yes, it was Dourmashkin. I'm afraid I had that text confused with the text for MITx 6.041, which I took at about the same time. The latter had a surplus of practice problems in its e-text. Sorry for the confusion! Anyway, now I remember using Halliday & Resnick for basic practice problems in 8.01. It was fairly easy to match up sections as I went...physics topics in any 1st year mechanics course are pretty much the same.

[regentrude]

My personal opinion: I can't imagine having a certificate ( as opposed to ACE accredited standardized college credit) matters at all. Colleges don't require any proof for the courses you have on the transcript (unless they are actual college courses, then they want an official transcript form the college). I don't even see a mechanism for providing this info, besides listing the certificate in the course description.

I'd be inclined to skip that part. Since there is no standardization in the certificates I have a hard time imagining colleges give them any weight - if they want substantiation for mommy grades, they will look at standardized test scores.

 

I mean, just take the composition course, for example: writing is only peer-evaluated by other students, not by a qualified instructor who knows how to write. I have a hard time imagining that a certificate for a course where all feedback comes from people without expertise is very valuable.

[MarkT]

I have to admit that some of my opinion is coming from having tried out numerous Coursera courses -- and I'm assuming that any professor that went in to verify whether a course was any good or not would have the same concerns I've had.

 

The Coursera courses tend to do a number of odd things.  Some cover very tiny parts of a topic, and spend huge amounts of time on stuff that isn't all that pertinent to anything.  Others just kind of ramble without getting anywhere.

 

The most successful so far that I've seen seem to be the ones that are the actual taped lectures from a classroom -- I'm thinking of the MIT Lewin physics course here.  However, when they went to put that together as an online class that one could get credit for, they must have put a lot of thought into how they could get around the cheating problem.  So they came up with a lot of homework and test problems that are NOWHERE on the web.  They were extremely hard, and it was impossible to get any sort of help (like the sort one would get from a tutor or the professor in a live class).  I'm sure this helped immensely with the problem that anyone could search the web and copy homework answers if the problems were the normal problems one would see in a regular class.  So they probably reduced the cheating (although it didn't get around the problem of just getting someone else to do the work for you and calling it yours). 

 

But...... this made it impossible for someone who didn't already know the material to do the class successfully.

 

I was doing this with my daughter.  And while I could figure the problems out, she had no clue.  There were NO easy problems to ease the students into understanding.  And I suspect that it would have been pretty difficult to do that class without a whole lot of physics background -- in fact, many of the people who seemed to be sticking it out were all on the discussion forums talking about they'd done these sort of problems back when they were TAKING physics.

 

The "TA"s running the course were not providing any useful help because they were too worried about giving away the answer.

 

So that, apparently, is not the way to go about reducing cheating.

 

Coursera still has a lot of bugs to work out.

 

The lack of a professor/teacher/tutor to work with the individual student in math/science courses is a big drawback with those courses.

 

This actually makes me wonder if it's even possible for a student to do well and get a certificate if they don't have someone irl guiding them through it.

 

Also, while the Lewin lectures are great, they are not the full course.  They do not include the TA sections or all the hw help the kids sitting in that lecture were getting (and those kids you see on the screen were getting a lot easier hw problems).  As many of the Coursera courses tend to only present *lectures* and then toss hw at the students they aren't going to be a full course.

 

I just don't see them taking over education any time soon.

 

One of my good friends went to MIT and this sounds just like his college experience. it is a very selective school focused on STEM so I would expect this.