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Comment by _xhok | Hacker News Reader

I'll probably get shot down for being that typical negative HN comment, but do MOOCs like Coursera actually do much in the way of making education more accessible or society fairer? All the content offered on Coursera already exists on the internet. Really motivated people will aggressively look for study materials, and they generally don't have a problem finding it.

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.

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As someone has taken a lot of MOOCs, I have no idea if Coursera makes education more accessible but they certainly make certain teachers and professors more accessible and those professors have a lot of knowledge to offer. A lot of universities don't have open courseware and even if they do the recordings are beyond terrible.

I can personally vouch for this having taken Algorithmic Thinking course by Rice Univ.

> Really motivated people will [...]

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.

Additionally, I think it's a misleading thought pattern to divide the world into motivated/unmotivated individuals since motivation can vary within a person.

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).

Also motivation can vary heavily by conditions. In some cases, the difference between strong motivation and utter lack of it can be structure that lets you start and maintain a feedback loop of positive feelings.

I started out thinking this way some years ago (which is also why I never went for higher degrees in college). But after taking a couple of MOOCs every year from last 4 years, I've realized that a good (or even somewhat good) instructor can inject thoughts and ideas in a way that reading books, blogs and presentations cannot. Something as simple as the way the content is organized also gives some insights; for example, what concepts are closely related. Andrew Ng's treatment of Machine Learning and Sedgewick's treatment of Algorithmic thinking stand out in my mind. But it's not just them; even the relatively unknown instructors of courses I'm taking right now have always given some insight that books or blogs haven't - and I do read a lot of them too.

Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but I've found no place other than Coursera/EdX offering high quality quizzes and assignments, with feedback, even if just automated. Texts and videos explaining all kinds of topics are abundant, but the most valuable learning experience comes from practice, and that is rare.

I think that coursera is moving away from quizzes with feedback. I'm currently doing the ML course by Andrew Ng and the quizzes do not have feedback when you answered correctly or incorrectly. The archived ML course (with the old coursera interface) still shows the feedback for quizzes.

Some people learn by being taught, some people learn by doing. MOOCs cater to the first.

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...

Personally I think both needs are met by moocs. If you want to be taught watch the lectures. If you want a more practical self directed approach do the exercises. Most people will do both

Disclosure, I work for Dataquest.io but prior to getting the job was a student and a massive fan.

I believe we offer an awesome alternative for learning DS with a 'learn by doing' approach.

Founder of https://www.CourseBuffet.com here. I would say it is a mixed bag. There are without a doubt people getting real value out of MOOCs who otherwise would not be able to take these courses. This being said I talk to a lot of people about MOOCs and I am still surprised how many people don't know about them. Actually one of the first questions I am often asked is why do they offer free courses!

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've googled seemingly tons of different combinations of keywords to find out if a product like yours existed before starting to build it myself. Which search keywords most often lead users to coursebuffet? (and how did I miss them!)

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.

1.I will say it for sure isn't MOOCs That being said our SEO leaves a lot to be desired. Something we are still trying to figure out. Not sure why we are not ranked higher.

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.

Yes, they do make education accessible. Consider courses on AI for Robotics, Probabilistic Graphical Models. Learning these topics directly with the books and without the forum support is at least 3-4x tougher in my opinion. And for people who believe that everything is available on the internet - you are wrong! There is material from grad courses in AI that is very difficult to approach directly from the papers or the books. An example is the Reinforcement Learning Course on Udacity.

Khan Academy started out with Youtube videos and grew into a web site with quizes and tests. I don’t know if you can call it a MOOC but it teaches subjects well enough.

I guess they rely on donations, and advertising on Youtube?

According to Wikipedia it's a non-profit. I believe Google donated ad-free YouTube for the channel. Income is indeed donations.

"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."

Thank you, I learned that it is a non-profit now and had donations go to keep them going.

After reading the replies, I now think my first assumption was wrong, and that Coursera does in fact offer substantially more than raw stacks of torrented pdfs.

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?

some MOOCs are free. Some or not. That beats "nothing is available for free"

I've found courses valuable but depends on the instructer and my own level of motivation.

It doesn't make it fairer - studies have shown that overwhelmingly those already privileged take online courses (no, individual examples to the contrary don't count - this is about numbers, statistics, not the edges of the distribution). Especially for the better courses you should really already have had quite an education. And you need time and fast Internet access.

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.

>studies have shown that overwhelmingly those already privileged take online courses

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.

Percentage matters only if you care about the rest of humanity. If you are happy with having a prosperous minority you are fine. It's a matter of choice, you are right, there is no hard line set by the universe.

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