Coursera FAQs

Coursera is an entrepreneurship company that partners with top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. It was founded by two Stanford University computer science professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, in April 2012. As of July 17, 2012, Coursera has partnerships with 16 universities, including GT. Classes offered on Coursera are designed to help students master the material. Students watch lectures taught by world-class professors, learn at their own pace, test their knowledge, and reinforce concepts through interactive exercises. When students join a Coursera course, they are also joining a global community of thousands of students learning alongside them. Visit http://www.coursera.org to learn more.

On Thursday, September 13, 2012, the Provost held a Town Hall on Online Education. The video of that event may be viewed on the Provost's website: http://provost.gatech.edu/town-hall.

C21U is the Center for 21st Century Universities, Georgia Tech’s living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education. C21U led the development of Georgia Tech’s strategic partnership with Coursera and may be viewed as the laboratory for learning about MOOCs.

PE is Georgia Tech's Professional Education division. PE is working with C21U to produce the GT courses offered on Coursera. They provide implementation of the courses, including instructional design, video capture, and advising. Visit the PE website to learn more: http://gtpe.gatech.edu.

CETL is Georgia Tech's Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning. CETL enhances the learning and teaching environment at GT by serving primarily as a faculty development center, particularly in areas of educational technology. Visit the CETL website to learn more: http://cetl.gatech.edu.

MOOC is an acronym for a Massive Open Online Course designed for a very large enrollment, offered on the World Wide Web by an educational institution and typically free of charge.

There are numerous platforms available that currently offer MOOCs. In addition to Coursera, some of the most well-known sites include Udacity, edX, Kahn Academy, iTunes U, and YouTube EDU.

The most profound difference is that MOOCs dramatically extend the reach of a course through open enrollment that is available to anyone, anywhere who has access to a computer and the Internet. Also, MOOCs do not require a student to have direct affiliation with a brick and mortar institution and typically do not award credit. Although some traditional online courses are simply for enrichment, most offer credit.

If your primary goal is to increase your knowledge on individual topics and have access to some of the best minds at premier universities in the world, then a MOOC is right for you. If you seek a direct path to a degree, then a traditional online course that offers college credit is likely a better choice. However, the landscape is continually evolving, and many of the current MOOC platforms are exploring options for the future to offer courses leading to a degree.

It depends upon which platform best fits your needs and those of your students. In addition to reaching more online learners than a traditional online course, Coursera courses are typically shorter than a semester in length, running 5-10 weeks with 2 hours of "lecture" time per week. For assistance in determining which platform is right for you, Please complete and submit the form at http://c21u.gatech.edu/coursera/proposals. C21U's Mike McCracken will respond to your inquiry.

The technology behind these online courses will continue to evolve rapidly and will provide educational tools and abilities that serve traditional Georgia Tech students in ways that would otherwise not be possible.

There are very few risks associated with Coursera. You will invest time and think more deeply about your courses than you normally would because that is the nature of the medium. The rewards depend entirely on how successful your courses are. Successful professors immediately gain a worldwide following, which enhances your personal brand as well as Georgia Tech's. You gain an enhanced ability to collaborate across institutions (we have already seen novel collaborations appear). By establishing yourself on a global stage you gain the possibility of reaping rewards—professional, monetary, personal—from that recognition. And should Coursera revenue streams arise, you will share personally in those revenues.

No. Coursera is not a replacement for courses offered in a classroom environment or traditional online courses offered by GT.

In the near term, there is no immediate impact. We are learning more about students, their interests, new technology platforms and formats, and how Georgia Tech can create relationships with students beyond the Coursera platform.