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Comment by kiloreux | Hacker News Reader

While what the OP mentioned is True , what i really think is that the real value of MOOCs is not in the certificate (it not that much important especially from MOOC providers) but the opportunity that it creates for people to gain knowledge , and personally speaking , MOOCs have changed my life , i live in 3rd world country where the quality of education is worse than you can imagine, but thanks to Coursera, Edx and Udacity , i managed to learn so many things , so what we should focus on , is that the opportunity it provides for people around the world to learn new things and change their lives in one way or another is the true factor that should be considered in the MOOC revolution .

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This is a really great observation. For many people they have been raised that it doesn't count unless you get the certificate. That has elements of truth to it in the job market, you need an independent third party to say that you have learned the material. However, for just as many people it has really about accelerating their ability to be effective by rapidly absorbing the knowledge and learning of people that have come before, which then allows them to push forward with that learning already in place. And that does change lives, and villages.

IMHO this is what distinguishes exceptional software engineers. They're not just trying to get a job, do well in their classes or otherwise satisfy external ideals. They just want to experience their own excellence as an end in itself. In the job market pretension is extremely effective. You can likely make a better living by optimizing appearances and neglecting actuality. If you're not able to evaluate a person's abilities you desperately need an independent third party. Notably, this doesn't imply that it's an effective pedagogical practice.

A person simply intent on becoming more than yesterday has no one to fool. Their capacity for self-evaluation is preserved. They can enter into an autodidactic loop that isn't utterly bound on I/O. I suspect this is much more effective than traditional education, albeit much less convergent and measurable.

Coursera has increasingly pushed non-participation in a course's verified certificate process as a signifier of lower status as a student. Originally, certificates were a mark of academic performance and the business model was more akin to a dual license open-source project where the non-paying community was just the non-paying community; the verified certificate was solely a value added proposition based on the value of verification. The change has been that certificates have shifted toward a mark of consumer status.

There has been a trend toward attaching stigma to taking the courses for free. Removing the certificates from free tracks is an obvious part of it.

Private Universities and diploma mills have attractive business models for some organizations and operators.

this!

Once someone learns something -- they can put it into practice (or not if they were just learning for fun).

It makes sense that in the future, rather than a certificate, examples of putting learning into practice would become more important. It is certainly easy to show proof of practice already with smartphones, cheaper computers and great publishing tools.

portfolio trumps certificate :)

In some fields you just can't experiment at home (often because the capital expenditure is too high), think some chemistry, some rocket design, some metallurgy etc. You need to get a job to build your portfolio, and you need a piece of paper to get the first job.

In chemistry rather for legal reasons.

This is true, but only to the extent that we're looking at the current state of moocs - which don't offer access to those kinds of equipment.

When we start seeing that happen, we're back to the focus on ability to show work, experiments behind them, and the ability to describe the work in great detail to a potential employer in order to get the job.

also , for new college grad jobs in chemistry, rocket design, metalurgy -- these can most certainly be done at home, or civilian grade facilities. See also Amateur Rocket Society and the kinds of things they're up to http://www.space-rockets.com/arsa.html

I have some very strong doubts that a MOOC will ever be able to offer the laboratory experience that you'd get at a traditional university (I'm not talking entry level). To do a lot of the EE work I've done in the past, you really need to know what you're doing, and a lot of the equipment, like a good vector network analyzer, is both incredibly cost prohibitive (new ones can reach a quarter of a million), and really take some expert knowledge to operate effectively (i.e. someone should be there with you to ensure the you don't break the machine). MOOCs may be good for CS, and they may be good for teaching entry level knowledge, because of the way the accumulation of very expensive equipment and experience/intelligence surrounding the field, at least for the immediate engineering fields I've been exposed to. I think it's still far better (if not the only decent way) to have a faculty mentor present and have a lot more close cooperation (as atleast I did when I was in university) when learning a lot of the specialist EE knowledge I got back when I was in school. I doubt you'll ever see MOOCs progress much in this regard, nor would I want to hire an engineer who did not have some level of hands on design and lab experience described above.

Also to deflect a potential counterpoint: most of the very expensive equipment will probably never be any cheaper because it isn't built in enough quantities, and for things like good RF equipment, everything needs to be carefully spec'd and machined, and the manufacturing is very time and resource intensive (you're getting your money's worth on a good spectrum analyzer or network analyzer, typically).

hmm - yes I have the similar doubts about programming at the advanced "building something very complicated level" with a analogous experience in my current project with machine learning and cloud infrastructure.

Totally agree about having a person present -- but moocs don't preclude that - see "inverted classroom" concepts.

back to complicated high-end equipment :

* there are people who have electron microscopes of their own - http://hackedgadgets.com/2013/01/01/garage-scanning-electron... .

* usb protocol analyzers used to be 20k (if I remember correctly how much catc's were) ...and now they are available for < $100 or can be made with open source parts.

Its hard to imagine ahead of time, but many exotic things come down in price and complexity when smart people come along and imagine a need for them in their garages or similar lower-end-than-original setting.

fun discussion!

To do a lot of the EE work I've done in the past, you really need to know what you're doing, and a lot of the equipment, like a good vector network analyzer, is both incredibly cost prohibitive (new ones can reach a quarter of a million

I have less than $10K in my HP8510C, thanks to eBay, but I'm also lucky that I'm not into organic chemistry or something else that would get me added to the no-fly list as soon as I tried to equip my lab.

In some states like Texas, the brave, patriotic drug warriors have successfully outlawed common glassware. After all, why would you want an Erlenmeyer flask or a reflux condenser if you're not cooking meth? Eventually, I'm sure it will occur to them that I could use my VNA to optimize the radar cross-section of a homebrew drone to evade the air defenses at the White House, and that'll be the end of that hobby.

I took a Modern History class on coursera[0] how would I show proof of it? I also took one in macro economics, which also seems somewhat hard to show :)

Some subjects are inherently less practical and/or difficult to produce evidence for.

[0] which was among the best of more than a dozen classes I've taken across a few MOOCs, highly recommended! https://www.coursera.org/course/modernworld

Okay, good, so lets play this out a bit.

You're claiming these courses, and you also claim you did well and learned something.

So...

Scenario 1 you're interviewing for a job:

Interviewer has knowledge and experience in the area of question.

They ask you "tell me about XYZ - you have taken courses on the subject? <looks at your resume>".

Your answer is:

  * "blah blah blah blah blah ..lots of juicy details about the cool stuff you learned." 
  * "blah blah blah, where you learned it from" 
  * "blah blah what you did in the course" 
  * "yada yada, here's an essay I wrote, citing sources".
  * "foo bar baz I got a article published in a magazine or did a talk at XYZ"
  * "I built this thing for XYZ ..check out these pictures"

Your answer is not:

  * "Here's my credential in XYZ"

Scenario 2 you're hanging at a local meetup for XYZ, you know, "doing the networking"

Someone says "FOO in XYZ subject is cool"

You say: "No doubt! I took a course on on XYZ on coursera. I did a whole section on FOO, it was sweet"

You do not say : "here's my credential"

Scenario 4 you're on a date

You do not say : "here's my credential(s)"[1]

Scenario 5 you're hanging with your significant other, having a intellectual discussion (I guess the date in #4 went well)

You do not say : "blah blah blah - I have credential(s) - yada yada, I'm right"[2]

[1] whatever credential(s) is a euphemism for -- you can never lead with this on a date :) :) :).

[2] this never works

Scenario 6 you're interviewing for a job and personnel manager has hardly any knowledge about the topic (very usual).

Personnel manager: "You claim that you have knowledge in [topic]. What do you have to prove this kind of knowledge?

Me: "I attended course in [provider] and completed it successfully with distinction. Here's the certificate..."

Scenario 7 - again job interview

Personnel manager: "You claim that you very actively continue to educate yourself. What can you offer to prove you claim?"

Me: "Here's a list of certificates that I earned on Coursera for the last year alone. These show my individual initiative in self-improvement in quite a range of skills that could be important for the job."

Alternate answer: "The increasingly difficult and diverse projects I have completed drew on all of the new knowledge I was gaining, and speak for themselves."

The personnel manager (again: they usually have few knowledge about the topic) is usually not able to assess whether these projects were really difficult or just smoke and mirrors.

On the other hand, checking the certificates is easy...

is the "personel manager" you describe really the state of hiring? As a company it seems you would miss a lot of talent by filtering this way.

First: This kind of personal manager a hate object in German programming and engineering circles in about the same way the pointy-haired boss does in US ones.

I openly can't answer this question for reasons that are off topic here. But I have good reasons to believe that the stories are often true: If you just look at job advertisements you'll very often see very contradictory job requirements that by simple logic and knowledge of, say, programming can hardly be satisfied and simply make no sense for the job. No, say, programmer with the faintest knowledge about his job would write such a job advertisement. On the other hand, if you know the typical hire process, where often the personal manager has a say...

ok got it - thanks for additional context.

And this is what's wrong with employment, and why so many unqualified people get in.

Look, I say this as a teacher who offers degree classes, and as a student earning a certificate that says I can teach...

You can earn certificates without learning a damn thing.

fair enough.

I haven't had many of those myself - but that may be a selection bias due to not having accumulated credentials. Have to admit, no body has ever asked me to prove I went to university but they have consistently asked for the types of answers I describe in scenario #1 above.

In the case of the hiring I do, our "personal managers" are code surfacing resumes based on their content and then a lightweight screening before they come to me. That screening might include a check to verify experience or references. Then I never ask for credential -- only discussion and proof of work (again - maybe a bias of me and those like me).

> portfolio trumps certificate :)

Not on my home country. If you don't have the certificate good luck going through HR.

good point. I've also lived in non-US countries and saw that.

So question for you is - in your country is the need for the certificate increasing or decreasing?

Increasing, it doesn't make sense to decrease, given our society.

As I said, without papers certifying the knowledge one has, the application will just be tossed into the garbage can.

The only way to workaround that, like every southern country in Europe, is if you know someone that knows someone....

Also for any IT related job, applicants are expected to have at least a 3 year duration degree, with preference given to those with a 5 year duration one.

I would love to see numbers on innovation, compensation, and quality of life of developers in the USA versus Europe. I have my suspicions on how it'd turn out, but a full exploration would be fascinating.

howe do you think it would turn out?

I suspect (based on nothing more concrete than heresay) that European developers have less stress, American developers make more money, European developers have better health care and fringe benefits, and American developers are more prone to trying something insane just to see if it works.

Completely agree. I switched out of the finance/accounting industry to be a software developer because I fell in love with coding. I would not have been able to learn the skills to make that switch (while already working full time) without MOOCs and other awesome online resources to guide me along the way.

MOOCs help us reach the goal that any motivated, bright individual can learn the skills necessary to reach their potential. Obviously we're still far away from that - but free online courses are certainly one step in the right direction.

How did learning new things change your life?

What's the point of asking, if learning the answer won't change yours? :)

By acquiring knowledge and skills that can be used to get a job or at least an internship, start a business and expand your expertise beyond what is possible locally. Just a guess.

is this a serious question?

Yes. He says it changed his life. I just wanted to know how.

Although that it's not important how MOOCs changed my life , but i will tell you how , i was raised in a poor family (like really poor) , i got my first computer when i was 16 years old , and saw the internet for the first time when i was 18 years old , i always had hunger for knowledge and learning new things but never could go further than reading some old books from the high school library , when i first got the internet access it was just the beginning of the MOOCs and i was amazed by the opportunity it gives , given that i always loved computers and the "magic" behind it , i started my first MOOC at that time which was CS50 by David Malan in HarvardX (Edx) , and never stopped MOOCing from the the three platforms , now thanks to MOOCs and of course practicing on my free time i am a 20 years old full stack developer, i am still a junior developer ,but i gained enough money to change the situation of my family from worse to the better, while most of my peers still studying in our system (I am studying too and graduating this year from electrical engineering) , the real difference is between our education system and the MOOCs , i have to emphasize that there is no way to compare the quality , and of course the price (which is free) , i really encourage everyone to never stop learning from MOOCs because knowledge and new skills can create a completely change a life .

Similar to my experience. My parents always had high levels of debt and lived close to the breadline. I remember once there was a bit fear of home repossession. They managed to get my a second-hand PC from a friend when I was ten. Had 4gb HDD and Win ME. Cannot remember the other specs. They ran a cable to my room so we could share internet access.

Unrestricted, undisturbed internet access has had a net positive effect on my life. I learned to program using the internet, I was able to learn other subjects at my own pace in which ever order. My test scores jumped from low-end in the class to up there with the highest. This continued through high school and came out with above average grades. I suspect I would have done better if I'd have recognised and sought treatment for attention deficit disorder.

Learning new things changed my life very much for the better. That is why I continue to do so fifteen years later.

I think you're missing one thing though. Recognition makes it possible for more people, which otherwise wouldn't or couldn't, to have that same experience.

First, congratulations!.

Second, while MOOCs are MOOCs are great, they don't fit every type of person.Are people in your country organizing to give the support needed to make MOOC a good fit for everyone ?

Great story.

My first MOOC was also David Malan's CS50x on edX; what an incredible teacher! He brings such a unique enthusiasm and joy to the study of Computer Science. In case you're reading this, thank you Professor Malan!

That's really awesome to hear! I work on the Stanford edX team, but we don't see a lot of feedback from our off-campus users (even though there are lots of them). It's great to know that MOOCs are actually helping people out. In case anyone hasn't heard of our site (it's a little smaller than the more well known ones), we run a public edX instance at lagunita.stanford.edu and maintain forks of the edX repositories at github.com/StanfordOnline.

Kiloreux and others who have benefited in similar ways, PLEASE email your stories to Coursera, edX, MIT OCW, or any other sites whose MOOCs have helped you. Sometimes, they are sitting in a meeting room discussing whether to discontinue some free aspect of the service, and your story will be enough to convince them to keep it going a little longer.

You might feel insignificant off in some far corner of the world, but when the creators hear your voice, they REALLY care what you think.

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