What is Coursera? | Coursera Course Enrollment Process | Coursera Coupons| Coursera Course Fees | Top 50 Most Popular Courses on Coursera| All about Coursera
What is Coursera?
Coursera is a for-profit educational technology company founded by computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University that offers massive open online courses (MOOCs). Coursera works with universities to make some of their courses available online, and offers courses in physics, engineering, humanities, medicine,biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, and other subjects.
- In short, Coursera is a free online learning tool for everyone who has an account registered.
- Account registration is also free of cost.
- All courses offered by Coursera are “accessible for free”.
- Each course includes short video lectures on different topics and assignments to be submitted, usually on a weekly basis.
- Coursera courses approximate from six to ten weeks long, with one to two hours of video lectures a week. These courses provide quizzes, weekly exercises, and sometimes a final project or exam.
What do Coursera courses include?
Every course on Coursera is taught by top instructors from the world’s best universities and educational institutions. Courses include recorded video lectures, auto-graded and peer-reviewed assignments, and community discussion forums. When you complete a course, you’ll receive a sharable electronic Course Certificate.
How do I take a Coursera course?
To take a degree course, you need to enroll through the degree course enrollment process. You can also take a Coursera course for a Course Certificate if you can’t or don’t want to take it as part of a degree program.
Degree course assignments: Some degree courses on Coursera have extra degree-only assignments. These assignments won’t show up for people taking the course outside of the degree program. Degree-only assignments are designed to go with the rest of the course materials, so you should do them along with the rest of your work. You’ll see degree-only assignments underneath the course’s standard assignments.
How does taking a Coursera course work?
Below are the scenarios that are common in Coursera MOOCs.
Courses. They are offered by the best institutions of the world. Course instructors are good at teaching. You can find numerous courses to match your choice.
Lectures. Every course includes weekly lectures. They are intentionally made short between 3 and 10 minutes. So, you expect to watch lectures every week.
Quizzes. In many of the courses, weekly lecture are followed in-video and weekly quizzes. They are fun to do, because the questions are meanigfully designed. Additionally, you can re-take the tests and the last score is recorded.
Assignments. Besides quizzes, many courses include various types of course assignments. Many of them are usually given as a final task to apply your understanding of the topics, while some are given weekly. For example, in a twelve-week writing course offered by Duke university, we had a peer review twice a month. We had to finish many writing tasks by reviewing each other’s writings. I have to say and it is my belief that in terms of assignments, Coursera MOOCs are better than other MOOC platforms. You learn a lot.
Certificates. Coursera was the first to offer a verified certificate for your efforts made in a particular course (if they meet the passing score). I remember that in 2012 and 2013 years, Coursera used to award its life-long learners with “Statement of Accomplishments” (SOA)(that has technically no value if it comes to university credits). However, later they began to offer verified certificates for about 50$. So, if you do well and pay, these electronic documents can be included in your CV.
Discussion forums. This is one of the best features of Coursera. I have learnt on many MOOC platforms, but Coursera‘s discussion forums are the best. You will see.
Are courses completed on Coursera respected amongst companies?
It really depends on the company. Although more and more are beginning to recognize online work as valid, some still don’t. I would still advise including it in your resume as it will at least add some professionalism. Prove you are valuable by applying the knowledge you have acquired and how you’ve helped your organization move along. If you do not have that opportunity (not currently working), try to build a portfolio that will showcase what you’ve learned and how you applied what you’ve learned.
How to find a course on Coursera ?
If you are new to this platform and need some assistance for finding new course then you can use coursera search tool as well as cataglog. It will help you to orient results on the basis on your interest. Once you are able to find a course or specialization of your interest then you can view its full details by simply clicking on its title. Using the information page of Coursera users can easily enroll to different courses on this platform. If you want to subscribe for a specialization or course then it can be easily done over official website of coursera. The pricing details are already discussed in above section.
Top 50 Most Popular Courses on Coursera :
While Coursera does not published data on how many students are taking each course, I compiled this list of the most popular courses on Coursera by looking at each course’s search ranking on Google and the related activity on Twitter and Facebook.
1. Data Science
2. Machine Learning.
3. Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools
4. Writing Winning Resumes and Cover Letters
5. Responsive Website Basics: Code with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
6. Ruby On Rails: An Introduction
8. Game Design and Development
10. Gamification
12. Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies
13. An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python
15. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
16. Strategic Leadership and Management
17. Web Design for Everybody (Basics of Web Development and Coding)
18. TESOL Certificate, Part 1: Teach English Now!
19. iOS App Development with Swift
20. iOS Development for Creative Entrepreneurs
22. Foundations of Business Strategy
27. Entrepreneurship
28. How To Start Your Own Business
29. Inspirational Leadership: Leading with Sense
30. Photography Basics and Beyond: From Smartphone to DSLR
31. Social Media in Public Relations
32. Digital Analytics for Marketing Professionals
33. Foundations of Graphic Design
34. Foundations of Business Strategy
35. The Technology of Music Production
37. Cracking The Creativity Code: Discovering New Ideas
38. An Introduction to Programming the Internet of Things (IOT)
39. Content Strategy for Professionals
41. Big History: Connecting Knowledge
42. Introduction to Sustainability
43. Server Side Development with NodeJS
45. Entrepreneurship: Launching an Innovative Business
48. Java For Android
49. Strategic Career Self-Management
50. Basic Statistics
Conclusion
There is no doubt to say that Coursera offers valuable content or educators from various fields and provides opportunity to improve skills with valuable resources. The quality of course content is perfect for a beginner. The professors of courser platform offers course material with strategic planning so that learners can stay focused to their desired skill development. It is also possible to get enrolled into multiple courses at a time so that you can optimize your time in best possible manner. Coursera provides courses from top universities with quality content so students can avail opportunity to stay connected with world class professors. The interactive exercises and discussion forums assist in knowledge updates. Coursera offers best connectivity with global student community so that all can grow with rich skill set and can set a bright future ahead.