Coursera

The project includes courses in physics, engineering, humanities and art, medicine, biology, mathematics, computer science, economics and business. The courses last from about six to ten weeks, with 1-2 hours of video lectures per week, the courses contain assignments, weekly exercises, and sometimes a final project or exam.

Unlike projects such as Academic Earth , the project does not offer individual lectures, but full courses that include video lectures with subtitles, text summaries, homework, tests and final exams. Access to courses is limited in time; Each homework or test should be completed only in a certain period of time. Upon completion of the course, subject to the successful completion of intermediate assignments and the final exam, the student is issued a certificate of completion.

As of 2014, most of the courses are presented in English , there are courses in Chinese , Spanish , French , Russian , Portuguese (more than a dozen), several courses are available in other languages. At the same time, subtitles in many languages ​​of the world are actively added, which are created by students on a voluntary basis. To create subtitles in Russian, the “Translate Coursera” project was launched, in which at the beginning of 2015 15 thousand participants were registered and 30 courses were translated.

Among the courses of famous lecturers published in the project are Machine Learning (Andrew Eun), Probabilistic Graphic Models (Daphne Kohler), Automata Theory ( Jeffrey Ullman ), and Scala Functional Programming Principles ( Martin Odersky ), “Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior” ( Dan Ariely ), ( Gary Burton ).

In 2012, Coursera began working with Stanford , Princeton , the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania . 12 partner educational institutions were added in July 2012, and another 17 in September 2012. In February 2013, the project announced another 29 partner universities. As of 2014, the number of partners is 108. Among the universities collaborating with the project are Johns Hopkins University , California Institute of Technology , University of Edinburgh , University of Toronto , Columbia University , University of Pennsylvania ^[6] , Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology , Higher School of Economics , Novosibirsk State University .

In late October 2013, Coursera teamed up with the U.S. Department of State to create training hubs around the world. In January 2014, the State Department ordered that access to courses from Iran , Sudan, and Cuba be blocked.

About 38.5% of students live in the United States. Countries such as Brazil , China and India are leaders in the list of foreign students, and the site also has a significant audience from Russia , Germany , Spain , the UK , Canada , Australia , Colombia , Ukraine and Thailand ^[7] .

Web forums are available for the courses, and some students also arrange personal meetings for training using social networks ; there are communities with regular student meetings. The Coursera Code of Honor prohibits copying responses, so discussions should not contain exchange of answers, but only useful discussions.

Peer-graded review format allows you to discuss the answers of colleagues and get from them additional information to the lecture and food for thought.

The stated mission of the organization is to educate millions of students from all over the world, changing the method of traditional teaching ^[8] .

In January 2013, Coursera announced that the American Educational Council approved five courses recommended for credit in US colleges:

• Algebra from the University of California, Irvine
• "Beginning of Mathematical Analysis " from the University of California, Irvine.
• "Introduction to Genetics and Evolution" from Duke University .
• Bioelectricity : A Quantitative Method from Duke University.
• "Mathematical analysis, functions of one variable" from the University of Pennsylvania .

At the end of such courses, an on-line online exam (via a webcam ) is held in an accredited examination service, the service costs $ 60- $ 90.

The exact business model of the project is not disclosed, it is assumed that monetization is possible through the sale of certificates with the brand of the university or for testing with an identity confirmation. Other options: a search system for workers and employers, paid personal support or tutoring, advertising on the site, the transition to a model of paid education (for students at universities) ^[9] .

The cost of developing digital materials for one course is estimated at $ 15-30 thousand. The platform can provide up to about 50 thousand students in each course ^[10] .

In September 2013, the project reported revenue of $ 1 million by paying students for confirmed certificates ^[11] . The contract between Coursera and participating universities includes a brainstorming list of ways to generate revenue. ^{[ specify ]} , including fees for confirmed certificates, acquaintance of students (with their consent) with potential employers and recruiters , tutoring, sponsorship and tuition fees. As of December 2013, the company raised $ 85 million in venture capital. John Derr suggested that people would pay for “valuable, value-added services.” Any income stream will be shared with schools receiving a small percentage of income and 20% of gross profit.

The project purposefully reduces the cost of conducting courses due to the system of automatic assessment of homework and tests, where possible; Both formal and statistical estimation methods are used.

From 2015-2016, active monetization has been carried out. Since 2015, free completion certificates have been unavailable ^[12] . Paid verified certificates became available ^[13] , “Specializations” appeared (a single purchase of a verified certificate service for several courses related to a common theme; the number of specializations is planned to increase ^[14] ), the possibility of introducing a monthly subscription to specializations ^{[14] is being considered} . Some of the courses in 2016 were completely removed from access for non-paying users ^[15] , for others, only lectures, but not tests, were available for free.

Coursera runs on the nginx web server on Linux computers rented from Amazon Web Services . Data is stored in Amazon S3 , and site searches are performed using , which indexes more than 4.3 million documents on the site. Monthly Coursera databases using the Amazon Relational Database Service process 10 billion SQL queries, and the site serves about 500 terabytes of traffic.

• For some courses, it is strongly recommended that you purchase books by course authors. Amazon pays the platform for purchases made from course pages ^[16] .
• Some experts believe that the spread of free online education from large universities may lead to the closure of small colleges ^[17] . The expansion of online courses of elite American universities can seriously affect the Russian regional institutions. ^[18]

As of January 2014, the service is not available to users of Cuba, Iran and Sudan as a result of US sanctions against these countries. The company is working to renew access for residents of these countries to at least some of the courses.

• - a project with massive online courses from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University
• Udacity
• MIT OpenCourseWare
• Khan Academy
• Futureureearn
• Mindvalley

• coursera.org - Coursera official website
• Universities Reshaping Education on the Web // The NY Times 07-17-2012
• Is Coursera the Beginning of the End for Traditional Higher Education? // Forbes 2012-07-17
• Coursera on YouTube