Coursera is the biggest massive open online course (MOOC) platform founded in 2012 with over 1900 courses currently being offered. The website today is nothing like what it used to be in 2015, especially after moving to a new system in mid-2016. It’s not surprising that Coursera remains the alpha in the MOOC industry since it’s an oligopolistic market with universities mostly sticking to the same platform over time. But it’s mind-blowing to know that highly competent people can create a great platform and then destroy it a few years later.
So what happened? For each good feature they added, they removed five other great features. After the 2016 update, course providers are no longer allowed to place a promotional video in the course description and old videos are removed. Users could no longer click on professor names to see their profiles, which took Coursera a year to fix this problem. Professors should deeply appreciate the reappearance of their profiles, because not only are links to university profiles gone, the catalog of all university providers has also been deleted recently.
Coursera has redefined MOOC to be Monthly Open Online Course, as most of the courses now are running a new session every month, and even allowing students to switch sessions if they miss any deadline, helping procrastinating students strengthen their habit of ignoring deadlines. With so many ongoing sessions at once, course sizes have decreased dramatically and the discussion forums are now for roam, as students stare at the blank screen and wonder why nobody complies when the professor asks them to write down their thoughts in the forums. Forum posts are never kept from session to session, strangling the only way left to revive the forums. The Meetup.com collaboration with Coursera is gone too, and the Coursera experience is now predominantly solitary. Continue reading “The Deterioration of Coursera”
MicroExploitation, MacroExploration 