I guess one of the advantages of that approach is that you don't have to wait for the course to come around, and can do it in your own time. Additionally, I don't think the really big names like MIT are using Coursera much.

The advantages of Coursera are that you get assignments which are graded, and also the chance to interact with both other students and the course staff. So it's sort of a swings and roundabouts thing.

hS

I guess what that question really means is 'What do the universities get out of it?', which is a decent question. I guess part of it is advertising, and possibly funding, but I honestly don't know.

At the user's end, though, it's entirely free, other than the time commitment; the information is accurate, and conveyed by real professionals - AdmiralSakai mentions Andrew Ng of Stanford, who is apparently 'one of the world's leading experts in artificial intelligence'. So at least at the moment, there doesn't seem to be a catch.

Oh, they do require ownership of your immortal soul. Is that important?

hS

But, wait, what? Smallpox-eradication deniers? What exactly are they denying? I mean, I understand that there are some specimens locked up in the CDC and such, but...?

~Neshomeh

It really does depend on the course. From what I've seen, every course has tests/quizzes, and a fair number have peer assessment assignments. To run through my three examples:

-IntroAstro had no peer review stuff, but was a physics course. The weekly tests were stuffed with maths, and so took a lot of time - I think about two hours per week, and I'm good at maths.

-Instrumental Analysis had two levels of quizzes - the simple 'were you watching the lecture' type, which took about ten minutes each (two per week), and the more in-depth ones. Again, it was a science course, but chemistry - particularly instrumental chemistry - is way less maths-heavy than astronomy. I'd say maybe an hour at most for those tests, but less on some weeks. It also had three 'peer assessed' assignments, spaced out over the length of the course. These were basically essay question quizzes (the standard quizzes are usually either numerical or multiple-choice); I don't think they took that long, maybe 3-4 hours. Then you're required to mark some (peer assessment, remember?), but there's usually a decent grading rubric. Say an hour, hour and a half total per assignment.

-Archaeology had a weekly quiz which was entirely multiple-choice - basically just to check if you'd watched the videos and read the links. They never took me more than 10 minutes. It also had weekly peer-reviews, 'Archaeological Exercises'. We actually got to choose from three options each week, and the choices ranged from 'Find out about an archaeologist and write about the tools they had available' to 'Make a 3D model of something' to 'Write your name in Cuneiform'.

In that case, the assignments were great fun, but occasionally time-consuming. On the one hand, Week 1's applying archaeological terminology to my office took maybe half an hour. On the other hand, my video for Week 7 took about five hours, maybe more, to put it all together. In general, though, the expected time per assignment was 1-3 hours, and you only had to do one a week.

Then we were required to assess five other students' work. The grading was literally a score of 0, 1, 2 or 3, and a little bit of constructive criticism, but it still ate up time. Let's say an hour all told for each week's peer reviewing. Of course, the assignments offered enough scope that it didn't get boring...

So, a summary:

-IntroAstro: Maybe 4-5 hours a week watching videos and taking notes, and 2 hours answering tests.

-Instrumental Analysis: Maybe 2-3 hours of videos/notes per week, an hour and a half of tests, and three times in the 8-week course, about 5-6 hours of assignment and peer review work.

-Archaeology: Maybe 2 hours of (incredibly awesome) videos per week, plus half an hour of reading, ten minutes on a quiz, and a total of around 3-4 hours assessment/peer review per week.

And it looks like the courses themselves back me up on this - they all seem to claim either 4-6 or 6-8 hours of work per week. That's only about an hour each night!

hS

PS: Hi there, Toey!

Because Sakai is one of those teaching tools (kinda like Blackboard if you know what that is) that we use at my school.

It was just extremely fitting, shhh.