Learning new skills is nowadays easier than ever before. You have better resources than you could have only imagined 50 years ago. One of those awesome resources is Coursera. They offer thousands of helpful courses for learning new skills online with other enthusiastic students and skillful teachers.

Coursera.org Review

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Name: Coursera
Website: www.coursera.org
Founded: 2012 by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng of Stanford University
Price: Free Courses Available
Field: Online Courses for Learning New Skills (Including Languages)

Overall Rank: 83 out of 100

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What Is Coursera.org?

Coursera is a place where you can learn new skills on almost any subject including new languages. It’s a catalog of thousands of online courses from around 150 different universities from all around the world. You can study courses from Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Peking and so on. You name it.

They have already had more than 25 MILLION learners and the number is growing each and every month. Coursera is a huge movement and they provide a great value for people who want to upgrade their skills.

Coursera offers also Specializations and University-recognized degrees. In this article, we will concentrate on courses because they are more relevant for us as language learners.

Most courses are in English but you can find courses also in many languages like Chinese, Spanish, French, and even Dutch. One option for learning is that you take a course in your target language about the subject that you like. If you are studying, for example, Chinese, you can take a cooking or programming course in Chinese.

But of course, you can take a language course for Chinese course as well.

Coursera Language Courses

What language do you want to learn? Just write for example, “Spanish Language” in the search catalog and it will show the coming courses. I found several Spanish courses. Have a look at this “Learn Spanish: Basic Spanish Vocabulary Specialization” -course in the picture below:

Actually, “Learn Spanish” is a series of 4 courses in Coursera and you can go through them one by one. Each course lasts 4 weeks and it requires 3-4 hours of studying per week. You can see all the information regarding these courses in a great detail on their website.

Most of the courses in Coursera last 4-6 weeks but they also have some self-paced courses where you can go through the course material at your own pace. During a 4-week course, you can discuss with other students on the forum regarding the subjects of the course.

Would you like to learn Chinese? There are tons of courses available for you in Coursera. Let’s look at “Mandarin Chinese 1: Chinese for Beginners” course for example.

As you can see, this course lasts for 5 weeks with about 3 hours of studying per week. It’s created for beginners in Chinese. Did you see the magnificent user rating?

This course has achieved an average user rating 4,6 out of 6 stars based on 78 user reviews. Quite impressive, huh? It seems that students are greatly satisfied with courses in Coursera.

How Does Coursera Work?

It is said often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. So, let’s start with a picture. Have a look below:

Points 2 and 3 area bit shady in the picture but I will explain it here. First of all, they offer high-quality and interactive video lessons. The length of the video varies depending on the course. You can see that in the picture there is a cooking course and videos are 8 min, 4 min, and 5 min. Not very long so you will stay very focused.

On some courses, the videos can be longer like 20-30 minutes depending on the subject. But I can guarantee that there are no boring 2-3 hours lectures like in some universities.

After video lessons, you will have a short quiz/test where you can test your skills. Then in the end of the course, you will have an exam and afterward, you will receive a certificate. You can put a certificate on your CV and into your LinkedIn profile as a proof that you really mastered a new skill.

Language skills can be a way to upgrade your salary for example.

Coursera Pricing

As you probably saw in a picture above, their courses cost about $29-99 depending on the course. They also offer free trials so you don’t need to pay anything if you are not satisfied. You just need to remember to cancel the trial if you don’t want to continue.

All in all, courses are not expensive or what do you think?

Coursera Reviews

Most of the reviews that you can find about Coursera are positive. Let’s have a look what Maria wrote about their courses. She had completed at least 25 courses and here is her review:

Coursera works very well for upgrading your skills. Here is a bit longer review from another person who also gave 5 out of 5 stars for them.

It’s hard to find complaints regarding their courses. Usually, people are satisfied with the quality of the training. Videos are high-quality, things move forward and they are learning new skills every week.

However, I found a few complaints regarding their pricing system. Actually, almost all of the complaints I found were related to the pricing.

I think that in this example of Shannon, it was mainly her own carelessness that she didn’t remember to end the free trial. However, I have seen some complaining that the marketing of the course prices is a bit shady. For example, at first, they offer a course for $39/month or $197/year but then the next the next time the options are $39/month or $197 for 6 months.

I recommend just being careful. Most of the complaints that I have found would have been avoided if the client would have been more careful. Read the terms carefully and don’t forget to cancel your free trial if you don’t want to pay.

Pros & Cons:

Pros:

• You can find thousands of high-quality courses from 150 universities
• They offer great videos on their step-by-step courses
• Coursera is a good resource for upgrading your skills and learning languages
• You can go through the lessons also on your smartphone
• You get the certificate after the course

Cons:

• Some people were dissatisfied with the pricing. (You just need to read carefully and there shouldn’t be any problems.)
• Usually, you need to pay extra for the certificate

Conclusion – Is Coursera Worth It?

Definitely, yes. They have put a great effort for offering high-quality courses so that you could learn new skills. You can find lots of positive reviews on the Internet about their courses. On the other hand, you can also check negative reviews so you can avoid the same inconvenience that they had.

The rating for each course also varies so before enrolling into a course, you can check how much is the average rating for that specific course. It can give you a good picture if former students enjoyed it or not.

I recommend being careful with the payment terms because I found several complaints from their past members.

Coursera at a glance…

Name: Coursera
Website: www.coursera.org
Founded: 2012 by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng of Stanford University
Price: Free Courses Available
Field: Online Courses for Learning New Skills (Including Languages)

Overall Rank: 83 out of 100

 

Have you ever taken courses through Coursera.org? What kind of experiences did you have?

Have you used other similar services like Udemy for example?

Let me know in the comments below! 🙂

I would love to hear what you think about Coursera. I promise to reply personally to every single comment that I receive below.