The Two Biggest MOOC Providers Adapt How Their Courses Work

Personally I don't mind paying the relatively small fees that Coursera is charging for certificates. Right now I'm paying for the courses in the Johns Hopkins "Data Science Specialization" and the Stanford Machine Learning class. Those I like the idea of having some verification for, so I can mention them on my resume or whatever with no questions.

OTOH, I'm doing a Calculus class just for my own edification, and I'm not paying for any certificate or anything on that. Not sure one is even available, but I don't need it. Same for pretty much all the maths classes I'm planning to take. I want the knowledge, don't care about paper credentials.

I haven't used Udacity or EdX yet, but what Coursera is doing now seems pretty reasonable to me.