Coursera shuts access to old platform courses
reachtarunhere.github.io
reachtarunhere.github.io
BTW you have until June 30 to download your courses.
Most of the content for these MOOCs is created by professors as part of their jobs, so this content is owned by their universities. I bet a vast majority of professors would prefer their MOOCs to stay open.
Most of the work has been done already, and the quizzes and exercises are automated, so there's no practical reason these videos couldn't be hosted on YouTube and thrown into an open source MOOC framework like EdX's and continue to serve millions for a few hundred a month in server costs. Except that Coursera is explicitly forbidding non-private use of these courses.
For what it's worth, Free Code Camp gets about 1/8 of the traffic Coursera does, and our (non-opportunity) costs are pretty minor. I don't think hosting these MOOCs would add much to the burden.
If only the individual professors who created these MOOCs could give us permission to host these courses. But there's no way we're going to get anywhere with the university bureaucracies themselves.
FreeCodeCamp's a great project. However, I always wondered about your long-term goals and "business model" (if there is one).
You're offering to integrate old Coursera courses into FCC. But what if you change your mind about openness further down the road ? Couldn't FreeCodeCamp become the Udacity/Coursera of tomorrow ?
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Would suggest that anyone could take their curriculum and rehost it with attribution if they were to "go private".
We have turned down all offers of funding specifically to avoid a situation where an investor could try and force us to do otherwise. We will remain free and open source.
Top universities already have plenty of brand recognition and get way more applicants than what they can accept. The monetary value of any additional marketing is probably very close to zero for them.
Every once in a while people call into question the value of higher education and ask whether MOOCs mark the end of traditional universities. I find it ironic that when top universities flex their muscles and start asking those people to pay up for classes - the same classes that you otherwise would have had to go through admissions and tuition to get into - they're being called money grabbers.
The judgment on exercises that is helpful to the students in traditional universities is a factor proportional to the size of courses. On the one hand there is automatic testing, that's feasible in basic matters. Take Khan Academy for example. A test that anyone can do with advanced knowledge is a simple application.
The motivation to really learn, that some get from deadlines, is learned and it's less direct than an actual want to understand a topic. In that sense, while a job doesn't need to become a passion, the drive to really dive deep into a topic comes as part of a hobby and so the tax payer would probably not want to afford that. But that is a different topic and I'm biased against taxes.
In any case, costs could probably be reduced so much per student, that it needn't be the driving factor, far from the tuition that is payed now.
You can apply that reasoning to any large organization: once it's known/famous for its excellence, an overwhelming majority of their marketing investments have small return. Still, they continue to invest in marketing because they know that this excellence has to be maintained. That's exactly what they should use MOOCs for - and they initially did
Expecting a service without giving anything in return is the definition of "greedy".
Coursera's about page used to say this: "committed to making the best education in the world freely available to any person who seeks it".
Now they have removed every instance of the word "free" https://www.coursera.org/about/
Nothing wrong with being a for-profit company, but they went from optional paid certificates to deleting old MOOCs and making new ones exclusive for those willing to pay, every day their monetization tactics get more aggressive.
Also check this video from 3 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUO3Pk0nOCM
If you care so much about the poor, you might as well subsidize a MOOC for them, instead of demanding Coursera to do so.
Sheesh, people really over-dramatize Hacker News threads. We aren't a legislative chamber debating a bill. We're an assortment of techno-hipster liberals and wannabe-entrepreneur libertarians, commenting on (often trivial) current events over coffee on a Saturday morning. The moral outrage-over-the-outrage-over-the-outrage-over-the-outrage gets comical after the first couple recursions.
How is that for an outrage over an outrage? :)
This amazes me. Are you leaving out more significant details? I cannot begin to imagine this happening where I live, in London. Being hired based on a MOOC? Did you go on to do some impressive projects which got you the job?
It was a music company so I put my hacky Perl skills to work and crawled youtube, songkick, musicbrainz and made a small music discovery website with cool features such as predicting the popularity of an artist based on social media metrics. I was like "I can do that look lol".
They called me for an interview, I showed them my notebook full of ML notes and they asked me to start on Monday.
Huh? Udacity has numerous free courses. They've never made a free course non-free. Any new paid course is developed with new material, and they're still churning out free courses.
Here's one of the gems from the early days of Udacity - Peter Norvig's Design of Computer Programs: https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--...
And here's one of the early machine learning courses: https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-machine-learning--ud...
Please forgive me some mistakes, I wrote this a bit in a hurry.
===========================
1) Spawn a virtual server on DigitalOcean.
I am using the 40$/month in order to have 40GB of space, but my plan is to shut it down in a day or two.
The advantage is to have storage space AND super-fast connection.
If you don't want to spend money, here is my referral code:
https://m.do.co/c/867be540644c
This will give you 10$ credit for free.
2) Install screen, python-virtualenv, python3, python3-pip
3) edit ~/.bash_aliases:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
alias download="./coursera-dl -u <<username>> -p <<password>>"
alias download_preview="./coursera-dl -b -u <<username>> -p <<password>>"
name the virtualenv "coursera", and place it in the root home directory
5) patch to use python3:
* pip3 install -r requirements.txt * patch coursera/coursera.dl:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
Add this lines at the end of the file:
cd coursera
source bin/activate
cd coursera
The setup process is done. Here is how to use it:
1) Start a screen session: `screen -S coursera`
download_preview compilers-004
you can download more courses in parallel by creating another window (C-a c) and typing donwload_preview $coursename.
- recsys-001
- hwswinterface-002
- eefun-001
- experiments-001
- gametheory-003
- crypto-010
- pgm
- cariesmanagement-003
- algo2-003
- analyze-003
- audio-002
- ml-005
- sna-2012-001-staging
- spatialcomputing-001
- organalysis-003
- compilers-004
- modelthinking-006
- ggp-003
- algo-009
- intrologic-005
- automata
- linearopt-002
- matrix-002
Please add below this comment other coursed that can be downloaded.
- scicomp-003
- mmds-002
- comparch-003
algs4partI-010
algs4partII-007
https://class.coursera.org/algs4partI-010 -> algs4partI-010
https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning/home/welcome -> machine-learning
I will work on figuring out the slugs next. For you now, you will need to signup for the course and figure it out. You can also find the same the list on Class Central where you can filter by subjects or sort by rating: https://www.class-central.com/collection/coursera-old-stack
//////////Grab archived urls
var archived = document.getElementsByClassName("link-button primary"); var archivedUrls = []; var slugs = []; for (var i = 0; i < archived.length; i++){ archivedUrls.push(document.getElementsByClassName("link-button primary")[i].href); } //////////////////////////////
function getDatas(LLL){
$.ajax({
url: LLL,
dataType: 'text',
success: function (data) {
var re = /F[a-zA-Z0-9-]*-0\d{2}/;
var info = data.match(re)[0];
var fixeInfo = info.substring(1);
slugs.push(fixeInfo);
console.log(fixeInfo);
}
});
}
function myLoop () { // create a loop function setTimeout(function () { // call a 3s setTimeout when the loop is called console.log(archivedUrls[ii]); getDatas(archivedUrls[ii]); ii++; // increment the counter if (ii < archivedUrls.length) { // if the counter < 10, call the loop function myLoop(); // .. again which will trigger another } else { console.log('Type "slugs" to view all slugs gathered'); } }, 1000) }
myLoop(); // start the loop
audio-002 eefun-001 experiments-001 hci model-thinking-006 recsys-001
Thanks!
- ac-005: Analytic Combinatorics
- aofa-006: Analysis of Algorithms
- neuralnets-2012-001: Neural Networks for Machine Learning
- nlp: Natural Language ProcessingI was enrolled in the 2013 edition of Analytic Combinatorics, but it seems that I am out of luck - no access to the materials either way. :-/
Does anyone happen to have the name of the 2013 edition? Or is it by design that these can no longer be accessed?
I can see a case for a torrent with the courses mysteriously appearing on some torrent site and someone linking it here, though. Man, those cheeky pirates! They can't leave anything alone.
(I don't personally have bandwidth for something like that, sadly. Of course I'm also not a pirate.)
Have some heart. This is completely Ethical. What about millions of people around the world who does not even have bank account to pay. Remember the authors does not get screwed. Their life will not get modified drastically. Only the undeserved people who are making money out of them.
An old saying I remember from my days in the ebook scene: "Those who want the knowledge will always find it."
But quite frankly... now that such content is not freely available anymore, I expect that to begin circulating on the p2p networks anyway.
- nlp
- machlearning-001
- maththink-004
- mmds-002
- pgm-003
- gametheory-003
- compilers-003
https://gist.github.com/bburky/40317e6375b1262b1a1fc31072acf...
Just use it as a User Data file on DigitalOcean or elsewhere.
Edit: After doing this, I realized coursera-dl has a Docker script already. You may prefer it: https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl/tree/master/deplo...
curl "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11881767" | grep -Po "[a-zA-Z0-9-]*-0\d{2}" | sort | uniq
curl "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11881767" | grep -Po "[a-zA-Z0-9-]*-0\d{2}" | sort | uniq | awk '{print "# " $0}'
What I realized is that even on the internet nothing lasts forever, and that I should always download stuff I like, just in case...
list of available courses, in format: course_session_id, course_link
[1] https://www.edx.org/about-us
[1] https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programmi...
They along with their institutional partners are missing out revenue from people like me who'd like to pay some amount, but not the amount they fix. I'm happy to pay some amount without a certificate. They should consider giving a pay-what-you-like option for all their courses.
Having unsuccessfully tried such a pricing model myself, I have serious doubt about it's viability. Majority will not pay anything, very few will pay reasonable amount, and some will pay very little but will be very high maintenance.
Payer: God dammit, I paid for your service and I want one hour of your support time. Company: How much did this payer paid? 50 cents! We need to hire someone who will take 30 cents to support this payer for an hour.
This is one of those pricing strategy that sounds good and people will claim to support but in reality wouldn't.
Leanpub and Gumroad are two services that follow this strategy. I don't know if they are successful ventures, but I notice they have maintained this pricing strategy since their inception and never changed or stopped it.
Leanpub says "...the pattern we have seen with multiple books, about a third of people will pay the suggested price, a third will pay the minimum price and a third will pay somewhere in between. Finally, the odd person will pay more than the suggested price" [1]. Some anecdotal experiences of individual authors [2],[3],[4] support it.
[1]: https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq [2]: http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626 [3]: http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-l... [4]: http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-wan...
A quick 'back of the envelope' estimate of revenue and cost of BandCamp service (enough public info available) seem to suggest this pricing model might have low profitability.
When coupled with our sliders which clearly show the (very high, 90% minus 50 cents) royalties that are earned by the author(s), and with our free update distribution, we get a lot of benefits for our authors, including:
1. When there is a low or a free minimum price, readers who otherwise could not afford a book can get it legitimately. This can help build a community around the book. For example, https://leanpub.com/rprogramming has over 80,000 readers (free + paid), and while it has a free minimum price, it is also our top book by lifetime revenue.
2. Quite often, there is so much extra income earned by readers paying above the minimum price that it entirely offsets refunds. (We have a 45-day 100% refund policy.)
3. Because of the royalty transparency, variable pricing, 45-day refunds and the fact that readers are supporting authors by buying in-progress books, there's a very, very low amount of nastiness. I really like seeing author and reader email; quite often "I love Leanpub" is part of the sentiment, regardless of whatever issue is occurring. (We also sell completed books, but much of what Leanpub is based on is our writing workflow and our focus on selling in-progress books...)
Your page for Roger Peng's R Programming book also contains a link to Lulu for those who prefer print.
Does following that link bypass your system or are you collecting some kind of fee for that? I'm assuming Dr Peng gets a reasonable chunk of coffee money from Lulu directly as usual.
Cheers
That said, having used Lulu myself in the past (back in 2006), Lulu pays good royalty rates on print books and ebooks, and we recommend that all our authors consider using Lulu or Amazon CreateSpace to produce a print book once their book is done. If you search "Leanpub" on Lulu, you'll see a handful of Leanpub books there.
To help our authors produce print books, we have two features:
1. Print-ready PDF export. Click a button, get a PDF with proper page numbering (alternating sides), chapters always starting on the right page, no cover image (since Lulu and CreateSpace have wraparound cover upload features), etc. I think that most of our authors who have print books, including Dr. Peng, went this route since it's a lot easier than the second choice.
2. InDesign export. Click a different button, get InCopy (ICML) files. These can be given to a designer who is good at InDesign, and he or she can make a beautiful custom-designed book. Our InDesign export is pretty basic compared to the print-ready PDF export, but our hope is that it's a better starting point for a designer than a Word document with a bunch of formatting that they need to throw out.
For us, making the print book production process as easy as possible just adds to the value created by using Leanpub. We want to create more value than we capture, and this helps with that...
Cheers
Not sure if it's applicable outside that market, but it might.
I don't know if unlocking everything by default would work that well.
Also, funny thing, looking at payment logs you can clearly tell the average is often purposefully inflated by some people (I guess the dev studios).
I feel a more apt pricing strategy would be to provide free/low-cost yearly access to students and a free basic course + paid advanced courses to non-students.
Now that I think about it, I would like to see that as an option.
https://class.coursera.org/algo-003/lecture Algorithms 1, Tim Roughgarden
https://class.coursera.org/algo2-003/lecture Algorithms 2, Tim Roughgarden
Edit: https://class.coursera.org/compilers/lecture/preview Compilers, Alex Aiken
What else?
https://class.coursera.org/crypto-010/lecture
and
https://class.coursera.org/crypto-preview/lecture
but I think the first one is newer.
There's also
https://class.coursera.org/ml-003/lecture
So I guess yours is newer.
Found as well:
https://class.coursera.org/automata/lecture
https://class.coursera.org/hci/lecture
https://class.coursera.org/pgm/lecture
And others. I just did a Google site search:
site:class.coursera.org
And click around. Some are not available though.
Speaking of this, I got an email about the following issue:
The Coursera boneheads decide to do this. What does this mean for the crypto II class?
DELAYED AGAIN! It's been delayed for YEARS. YEARS I say. Another delay because of asinine greed.
... But they're gonna get a hell of a bill this month, I guess.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wUt5G0Kst8g5P0ftQqXk...
ps: First time I create and share a google sheet, so far I added the 3 that asked, sorry for the delay.
http://imgur.com/rdPhclR http://imgur.com/MzQesnK http://imgur.com/9iN21V7
cd /D/Videos/Courses/
./coursera-dl/coursera-dl -u <<email>> -p <<password>> compilers-004ps: 004 didn't work, only 003
pps:
tested these: - progfun1 - proglang-002 almost worked.
proglang-002 didn't even begin downloading.
https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Compilers/...
Sad to see they're going to downhill though.
Socrates had his teachings and live lectures online, with recorded classroom, and feedback, for all to comment on, with his replies. It may have only been 'live' for 20/40 years of his life/teaching life/sharing life, but it would be amazing today.
MOOCs offer this opportunity for humanity, to record teachings in increasingly diverse formats that are free for others to use and experiment with.
It often feels like an avalanche of books, courses, materials - we need simple paths through this mess. We need to keep people right in the sweetspot - not giving them too difficult material, but also not too easy, just right enough to maximize learning. And this perfect gradation of difficulty can be reverse engineered through machine learning over student activity logs.
Another area they need to invest in is the practical side. Course takers need more examples, tests, problems and projects. Only by applying the concepts in reality will students gain firm confidence in their abilities.
I don't think the "short course" format is the best. It might be better to have a graph of concept nodes, each equipped with its own instructional materials, problems and tests. The graph can be expanded gradually to include more concepts and to reduce the gradient of difficulty for the more problematic ones.
People who bang their heads against difficult material and don't grock it might feel discouraged and give up. But if they can build confidence that everything is taught gradually and without too violent jumps in difficulty, they might improve the dropout rate.
It really gets on my nerves when people don't expand their acronyms when introducing a topic. Of course there are exceptions, but is MOOC really that common an acronym?! I just find it a bit inconsiderate.</rant>
Also, it's beginning to be big in public policy. A couple of years ago, the California state senate was debating a bill to allow students to use MOOC courses for actual state college credit. That bill has since been shelved: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/01/controversial...
In defense of the submitter, expanding the acronym may have pushed the title over the character limit.
It's sort of like expecting a post about a web framework to explain HTTP.
I haven't tried it yet. Just was asking around how to save course materials (videos, slides, notes, etc) of an old platform course I want to return to sometimes. Got this advice:
> app which can help you download all the
> materials at one go.
> https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl
> Doesn't work all the time, but for old
> courses should work.I've used coursera-dl to archive courses I've taken part in for some time now.
I was considering deleting my archive recently but now I'm really glad I didn't.
However, it doesn't download the quizzes or exams though. You still have to make a local copy of the html pages (easy, but time consuming in firefox for example) or take screenshots.
Apparently, management is sweeping the problem under the rug, and forcing a false rhetoric that the departures were good. Even their Glassdoor page[1] seems doctored now. Sad times.
[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Coursera-Reviews-E654749.h...
More power to KhanAcademy and MIT Open Courseware! For staying true to their mission of providing Free Courses...
Also, I'm taking their Android nanodegree course on a scholarship and I can say that even that uses their existing free courses for teaching purposes and nanodegree mostly just provides you with projects and deadlines.
Nonsense. Udacity now have paid "Nanodegree" courses alongside their free ones. They haven't removed their free courses, and in fact continue to release new free ones.
Also, their paid courses come with grading and code feedback from humans, so it's not like it was scalable as a free option.
Further, they guarantee you'll get a job based on the Nanodegree courses or you get your money back.
I don't agree that the golden age is necessarily over though. The MOOC space is getting crowded, just look at all the offerings at https://www.class-central.com
MOOCs by government-backed traditional universities from Europe / Asia is taking over a large chunk of the "market" meaning that Coursera, Udacity, etc. is finding it difficult to get any returns.
Never heard of that site, but I browsed through the first page of CS videos[0], and all but two courses were just links to Coursera courses. The other two were links to edX.
You can see all the providers we aggregate here: https://www.class-central.com/providers
And universities here: https://www.class-central.com/universities
It seems to me that it's actually the internet that improves accessibility and fairness, through which curated collections of study materials are then delivered as MOOCs. Which is terrific, but then it's hardly shocking that they'd eventually have to monetize themselves. We've seen worse attempts to crack down on the internet.
Edit: to add to my comment and agree with others in this thread "MOOC" confuses people. Sometimes I have to remind myself and say free online courses (even though some are not free).
I have to say it's super quick and I like the interface (just signed up), what does the stack look like if you don't mind?
Edit: Now that I think about it, I have tons of questions, I'll stick to "Will you monetize it / Will it remain free"
2nd Edit: I realize now that my google kungfu is weak.
2. Rails/mysql
3. yes will remain free.
4. Monetization and an other questions just email me bruce@coursebuffet.com
What we do that is different than others is examine each course we list. We then classify it by assigning it a subject and number that roughly reflects what level it would be at a US university . Is it a first year 101 course then say for intro to micro economics it is Econ 101. This is incredibly time consuming but we think it enables us to give users results that are more informative and they can see like choices clustered together.
The other major benefit is we can offer the CourseBuffet Degree Paths (https://www.coursebuffet.com/degree) that replicated a Bachelor's degree using free MOOCs. These paths are platform independent so one is not locked in to Coursera, edX, etc. We also now have Minors that replicate academic minors for Econ and Philosophy.
I'm not a big fan of this argument, which I see here too often. Really, truly motivated people don't need the Internet either. For any obstacle to learning, you can always say that it's not a problem because somebody, somewhere makes through.
I took exactly one Coursera course, Odersky's Scala course. But it was a great experience. Going through the material on a schedule with a bunch of other people got me to work harder than I would have on my own. I learned way more than I would have without the structure. Does that mean I wasn't "really motivated"? Sure, I guess. But the point of having educational institutions, rather than just giving everybody library cards and turning them loose, is to make it easy for a large number of people to learn.
So if it's suddenly harder for people to learn, even if they aren't judged truly worthy, I'm willing to call that a bad thing.
I've successfully learned quite a few difficult things without Coursera etc that I was highly motivated to learn. And I've learned more things via Coursera that I was less motivated to learn (or didn't even know I wanted to learn).
I guess they rely on donations, and advertising on Youtube?
"The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization,[8] now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, Google, the O’Sullivan Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and other philanthropic organizations."
I know this, because I am in the second (you may be too). I'll dig around looking for the information because I am using it right at that moment and NEED to understand it.
I did a Coursera Machine Learning course, my first University level class after being out of school since the early 90s. I learned how about matrices (had very little math experience before), I learned about transforms, I tried to figure out what all the cryptic symbols meant, but MOSTLY, I learned how to answer the test questions.
I don't feel I really have any more understanding of machine learning today than I did before the course. Different strokes...
I believe we offer an awesome alternative for learning DS with a 'learn by doing' approach.
But that's just my second point. MOOCs are a substantial service built on top of the free internet. Surely that costs money? And surely the fact that MOOCs are increasingly charging for stuff (and taking measures to make sure users pay) is not a sign that "social fairness" is deteriorating, but simply the usual costs of building anything at all?
But it certainly makes it more accessible!
Myself for example, as a CS degree holder and IT consultant, over the last few years I received quite an education in anatomy, physiology, statistics (focus on medicine, biology and public health), chemistry, org. chemistry, medicinal chemistry (drug development), neuroscience, etc. Several hundreds of hours of lectures. Plus lots of others like history of architecture, "first nights" from Harvard (classical music, several courses), equine care, equine nutrition, Apacher Spark (Berkeley courses), and a lot more.
There is no way on earth I could have learned much esp. about the medical subjects any other way. You have to be really, really dedicated to try to put the pieces together just from random sites Google gives you - that's more for when you already are deep(er) into a subject and need something specific. You can of course, but since I have a life effort/benefit analysis would prevent one from doing so.
Why does the percentage matter? If 100 million people take MOOCs, and only 1% of them are poor and actually need them, then they still helped a million people! That's nothing to sneer at.
Second, what is your source, because I'm skeptical of that. And just because someone is "privileged" doesn't necessarily mean the courses have no value to them. They may have an education, but probably not in the thing they are studying on MOOCs. A bunch of people have learned about machine learning through MOOCs, for example.
The old content would have been perceived as having a historical value, as being among the first courses published in the first actual MOOC platform, not to mention the tremendous value those courses contributed by successfully reaching wide audiences around the world, changing many lives. Now they are making a bad image out of themselves.
Coursera has been getting progressively worse. There is no community engagement. I cannot be surprised or engaged by non-discussion going on, which is also the case with edX, by the way. I have done mentorship in one of the paid courses at Coursera and all I could do was to mechanically answer technical questions. Nobody cared about the critical aspects, nobody cared about generating interesting and thought-provoking discussions, even when some mentors have encouraged it. As mentors, what we were doing was just free technical support for the course providers.
Further, the recent content is at best feels like "best seller" stuff for whatever trending industry anyway. Even the UI has been getting slower.
This example provides the meaning of backing up (and further sharing) data stored in the cloud. Mostly we do not think it would be necessary to backup since the data is going to stay there "forever", right?
As a final note, I was surprised that nobody mentioned FutureLearn (https://www.futurelearn.com). It is a new MOOC platform with somewhat "European" feeling to it. I have surprisingly had the best community experience with quality discussions in one of the courses provided there. The overall content is very diverse and interesting. And yes, the UI is faster!
We are really excited to have you in the course Cryptography II! We’re reaching out because this course is being moved to our new platform which is why your enrollment in the June 13th session of this course has been cancelled. That said, you’ll be able to take the course soon on our new platform in Fall 2016. Our entire team is working hard to create the best learning experience possible for you and we really appreciate your patience with this small delay.
Heck, I record all of the presentations I do, and they get posted for free on the intarnets. I put a fair amount of work into them - why hide them?
You will want to use a lapel microphone with a wireless transmitter/receiver, though.
Educators tried to use "OPEN" word from OPEN Source World, but could not keep it that way... Coursera and Udacity guys should stop using OPEN word please...
I'm a bit confused about which courses will be removed and which ones will stay. Is there a list of courses that are present on the old platform but not on the new platform? Also, I don't know where I'd access the old platform and where I'd access the new platform. Am I right in thinking this is a course on the new platform?
https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer
If so, where do I go to see the old platform?
I'd be happy to pay a bit for it if that's what they want. Or is their view that Geoffrey Hinton teaching neural networks in 2012 is just kind of cruft cluttering up the internet?
https://blog.coursera.org/post/145882467032
The most important thing to know is that hundreds of courses will NOT disappear from Coursera. The vast majority of courses have already or will be updated and transitioned to our new platform in the coming months. Please read the blog post for more detailed information.
I'd also like to address questions around the payment model on our new platform. Coursera is 100% committed to our mission of providing universal access to education, and the move to our new platform does not in any way affect our mission. Anyone who demonstrates that they are unable to afford the cost of a course or Specialization can apply for financial aid. You can learn more about our financial aid program here:
Otherwise keep calm and mind your own business ;)
(probably not, since they had no certificates etc, and I don't see them going along with paid-for-quizzes courses, but it doesn't hurt to ask)
Maybe they will be moved to the new platform. A lot of courses on the old platform have moved to the new platform over the past year.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_H50uBwsok6ZGxzbjU0cUU0OW... https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_H50uBwsok6d2w4YlVQcjNNSG...
hope it works :)
Thanks!
Thanks for all the free courses for the last couple of years. I understand the need to be profitable and make this a real business so you don't have to fire all your good employees who have helped provide free education for so long.
I for one welcome what you are doing - as I understand that's is impossible to sustain a free model forever.
All the best!
I understand that they are both businesses that need to take care of their finances if they want to survive. Nonetheless, I am still disappointed - when they started out some years back they were all full of vigour and idealism about free education, and somewhere along the line they have been quietly dropping that idealism. They didn't even try to explain why they were doing what they were doing and why they were changing. In essence, they betrayed who they were at the beginning, and that's what makes me sad.
So thank you, Udacity and Coursera, for who you were and what you gave me, but I fear our roads shall part here...
It's not a bad move, and it's totally legit, _but_ it hints at a stronger effort to get money.
Regarding the "movement" thing, I had the same feeling with my first 3 large MOOC (AI which begat udacity, ML & DBs which begat coursera). But not anymore :/
And, by the way, the quality of the course material on edx is arguably better. It's a shame that coursera's got way more recognition somehow, apparently.
Learners who want a verified certificate but need financial assistance can learn more at https://support.edx.org/hc/en-us/sections/203392988-Financia....
I don't mind paying a small fee (still much cheaper than going to any other school) seriously. I understand that's not the topic people are arguing about here, but anyway.
ps: about downloading the courses pdf and videos... it's really the low hanging part, in the sense that lots of universities have open pages with lectures and sometimes videos too. What MOOCs brought were exercices + auto graders (+ student group).
Wow. Really? Do I want to even read what this is about? Fine.
"Of late we have seen MOOC providers caring less about the students and more about the $$$".
Oh boy, here comes the assault on reason.
"they should stop the game of telling people that they care for students and are here to “provides universal access to the world’s best education”."
Yeah, that's enough for me. Tarun Vangani needs a reality check.
Coursera has brought much good to the world. It has to provide good to the world in an economically sustainable way.
It would be great if the Macarthur Foundation gave its $100 Million grant to Coursera so that it could continue to focus on its mission. Hopefully, Coursera qualifies and applies for it.
Freemium doesn't just entice customers; it also denies oxygen to competitors.
The specific difficulty for courses is reputation - but wikipedia has managed it, so it's possible.
What a shame. Farewell, free learning.
You realize all the time you've spent whiling away so much time, imagining that it's all building up to something even better than yesterday's tide of serialized data streams, that your youth has faded, and you're still just staring at a lightbulb masked behind a screen of wires, listening to air disturbed by oscillating magnets, and nothing more.
But the worst part of this, is looking up, only to find a city full of similar people all still hopelessly enthralled by the discharge of so many lithium-ion batteries perturbed by some nearby electric coil.
Starting with mathematics, the a theoretical machine, augmented by a language hierarchy gleaned from linguistics, with models based in real biological and physical systems. Even today's hotness in machine learning with ANNs is founded in an attempt to understand intelligence based on the physical structure of the mind.
Perhaps much of this can be recreated without being exposed to mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, philosophy, linguistics, and other fields. But I imagine the insights needed to develop the first ANN model, the first language designed around a CFG would've taken far longer to develop in that narrow worldview.