An era of Coursera - Learn World’s Best Courses Together with 9 Million Others for Free

If you could learn something new, what would it be? What's the next thing you want to learn?

At some point, most us would have wanted to learn something new and interesting. There is a lot of content online on various topics but it is not really an instructor led course. It does not matter if you are a student or working professionals, enroll in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) to start learning your favorite course in a structured manner together with lot of people across the world.

I have joined Coursera in 2012 to complete a course on An Introduction to Operations Management from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania. This is one of the best platforms for online courses.

Coursera is an education platform that partners with top universities and organizations worldwide, to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Currently (Sept 2014) this site has over 9 million users from different parts of the world in 748 courses from 110 institutions. All these courses are "accessible for free”. Few courses are offered in signature track to earn a Verified Certificate from the University. Coursera app is available on iOS and android.

It offers interesting courses in different areas of Business & Management, Computer Science, Economics, Education, Engineering, Math, Law, Medicine, Humanities, and Social Studies. Some of the top universities which offer courses on Stanford University, Princeton, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University and Ohio University.  The lecturers for all of the courses have a great experience in teaching.

I really like the way courses are organized. The teaching methodology is quite different and is really effective. Typically each course has start date and will be of 6 to 10 weeks length. Each week 3 to 6 short video lectures will be posted along with quiz or assignment for that week. This gives us enough time to understand the content and also participate in discussions to clear the doubts. As there is a huge participation from different parts of the world, discussions are quite lively and provide lot of learning. Sometimes there is a final assignment or quiz depending on the instructor. On successful competition of the assignments within the deadline, users get a statement of accomplishment certificate.

Course content is will managed. Each course has a page for managing the course material, lecture notes, quizzes, assignments and discussions. Even after the course closure, users can access the course archive to go through it in a self-organized course schedule, but without any statement of accomplishment. Here is how a statement of accomplishment looks like..

In my opinion, it’s a great platform for online learning which provides one of the best alternatives to class room learning. Not only that you get to attend the best lectures from the top lecturers but you can network with likeminded people around the world.

Start with your first online course at Coursera.