I still get substantial value out of Coursera. I started with Andrew Ng's original Machine Learning course way back when, and recently completed classes that I thought were well worth my time on Claude Code, Crew AI, AutoGen, and MCP.
While not revolutionary, a recent improvement is AI-based review, which is much appreciated for it's near instant review.
From a transformative perspective, I like the AWS Skill Builder SimuLearn classes. They say teaching is one of the best ways to learn, and I found the chat-based role play where you are the expert to be very interesting.
MOOCs have always given value to a certain group (about 3% of people who are motivated to self learn) and are basically useless for everyone else. Which is why they are primarily virtue signaling devices to fluff your LinkedIn.
When I started learning to code for data science I appreciated the lectures and examples. Once you reach a certain technical level these MOOCs aren't really helpful though.
> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype.
I would disagree, I saw a lot of people, especially in the Data Science field that got up-skilled by back then free Coursera.
Never took off because employees care zero that you took a Coursera class. Might as well watch YouTube videos or take local community college classes.
Sometimes I wonder what an MOOC-like education that went all-in on signalling/credentialism would look like. You convince some real down-on-their-luck university to lend you their name to provide eduction for lower income adults, you rent a big empty room with folding chairs in downtown where people actually live a few nights a week, a contracted PhD with a tweed jacket and a blackboard lectures in person, curriculum straight from an old edition textbook with pen-and-paper tests.
What would it cost without the overhead of a whole university around it? Would adults attend?Would employers accept it? Hard to change eduction more than a little at a time, since the buyer is literally buying a "you did it" certificate for 10s of 1000s of dollars, they are justifiably risk averse. The person examining the credential also doesn't want to do individual research on every single person's eduction.
MOOCs are still going strong at India's NPTEL , which started distributing university-level video courses for engg in 2008:
- 5m subscribers, almost 2B views on youtube
- 30m enrollments
- 600+ courses every semester in 22 disciplines
Anyone from the world can signup. Proctored exams are optional and cost about $11 per course. Not taking VC funding and setting up local chapters for supporting students seems to have worked out well for them.
Website: https://nptel.ac.in/
ACM report about this from November 2022: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3550473
Former-director of IIT Madras has talked about how NPTEL came together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV-QoGegFLY
MIT OCW is now what I rely on via YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mitocw/courses
When did Udacity fell off the MOOC discourse? That's my first experience with MOOCs; have fond memories learning robotics with Sebastian Thrun there. I used to prefer its short lesson and frequent quiz too.
Anyone have a resource for archived MOOCs?
Simple idea.. delivers value. Gets a monetary evaluation. The product is already too good.. water down the product and paywall what was previously free. All too common of an internet story
It's the customary bait and switch.
is edX still free for auditing?
> MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype.
I don't get this gloom and doom about MOOCs.
A substantial amount of people have transformed their lives by learning from MOOCs. I am one of them.
It’s not the usual suspects like, "people don't have self-discipline", "one learns much more in university", etc. that have limited the perceived influence of MOOCs. It is pure credentialism that is behind MOOCs not reaching their full potential.
Everyone is all about skills untill the hiring time comes. Now companies want the students of the best colleges, the best degrees, etc. Students with proper skills might not even get through the door without the proper degree.
I did projects with skills that I learned via MOOCs, I answered questions in interviews with the knowledge that I started getting from MOOCs. But it was my Master’s in CS which ultimately mattered in my getting interviews. In that degree, they still teach GOFAI, "soft computig", and fuzzy set theory, "expert systems", and more things from the 80s.
MOOCs matter, MOOCs are loved and studied by a serious set of students and professionals. But they still can't get you interviews for most roles in most companies. In frontier AI labs, they are now basically treating PhDs as the minimum qualification for most roles.
MOOCs + projects + self-directed learning, even if you are very good, offers you little in terms of career opportunities. That's why they have not been apparently "transformative".
I know the arguments about making hiring easier for companies, etc.