A Review of Coursera's New Platform

Now you may be thinking that I'm a bit late as Coursera's 'new' platform actually came on stream over a year ago but there are a few reasons for posting now: the old platform is to be completely phased out by the end of March, there were still changes being made throughout 2015, I wanted to complete a few courses myself and, finally, I haven't actually posted on this blog for over a year!

The platform changes will be most striking to students who are familiar with the older system but there are also some changes announced in recent weeks and months which will impact all students. I'll try to separate the changes in the interface from policy changes as far as possible.

So today I will look at the user interface, existing students will notice a complete change in look and feel. The old platform was effective but not terribly 'slick'; it did the job but wouldn't win any prizes for graphics design. Here's a shot of an old-style course:

The course was navigated using the strip on the left to access lectures, quizzes, peer assessments and forums. It was quite easy to use (once you knew what you needed to do) although the options could vary a lot as instructors were free to move and rename options. The big problem was that the system did not really integrate different learning resources; videos were pretty much stand alone and, in many courses, were the only resources. Where instructors wanted to include readings or even instructions various workarounds had to be used, such as having weekly 'course pages' which linked to the resources.

The old platform didn't work very well with self-paced courses which, as I predicted a long time ago, were set to become a bigger feature of Coursera and so we move on to the new (or current) platform; it certainly looks more professional:



It also integrates all learning elements into a single sequence so that students are guided, in this example, from the syllabus to an introductory video then on to pages describing the required resources and so on to further videos etc. This is far more structured than previously while still allowing the student to dip in at random if they prefer.

There are, however, some features that just don't work as well in the new platform. Downloaded videos, for example, don't have an identifying file name--they are all just 'index.mp4'. Now for the majority who simply stream the lectures this won't make any difference but there are a sizeable minority who don't have access to fast enough broadband and will need to download. There are also many who choose to archive courses locally as they go (remember there is no guarantee that courses will continue to be available in the future). For either group the lack of useful file names means an extra bit of pointless work which is made worse by the tendency to have more and more, shorter and shorter videos.

Discussion forums were always one of the most important features of Coursera. They have sometimes been a little rowdy but never dull and you could almost always get a near immediate response from a fellow student. For some reason, discussion forums seem to have been sidelined by Coursera in the new platform. some courses have even abandoned them altogether. This seems very odd.

In terms of overall operation there have been changes in grading and in peer assessments. Grading has been simplified. In the past, in order to pass students needed to reach an overall target score which was made up of different elements such as quizzes, exams and peer assessments each of which could have a different weighting. This reflected the way that conventional university courses grade. Since Coursera always lacked a progress page (in contrast to edX) it was up to students to work out for themselves whether they were passing a course. The new platform simplifies this tremendously: to pass a course you must pass every element. This is actually more rigorous than the old system which allowed students to fail individual assessments but still pass. Now it could be possible for one student to score 90% overall but fail (because you didn't pass one assessment) while another student passes with 60% (by meeting the minimum pass level on every assessment). However, in practice there is really little reason for a student to fail an assessment as most (in fact all that I've seen so far) allow unlimited resubmissions.

Peer assessments have changed a bit, I guess in order to fit the self-paced model better. In terms of operation, the main change is in the movement away from phases to a continuous model. No longer are there separate periods for submission and assessment; as soon as you have submitted your work you can go on to assess others. The biggest change, however, is one of principle: the process is no longer anonymous. Now I find this strange as anonymity in assessments is generally regarded as a 'good thing'. Previously students knew neither the identities of the those they were assessing nor of those who assessed them now both of these pieces of information are available.

There has also been a big shift in how courses are scheduled. Formerly, Coursera followed a model largely based on that of traditional colleges. Courses opened on a particular date, assessments and exams had definite ('hard') deadlines and the courses closed at the end until they were repeated (if, indeed, they ever were). The big advantage of this system was that as the whole group of students ('cohort' in educational jargon) were at about the same point they could offer each other more support and the instructors could respond to queries without potentially impinging on still-open assessments. The disadvantage for students was that they had to fit themselves around the timetables and could easily miss the start of a course which might not be presented again for a long time. The disadvantage for course providers was that material they had spent time and money preparing was, essentially, lying idle between presentations.

From 2014 Coursera began a shift towards self-paced courses. Indeed, all the courses initially offered on the new platform were self-paced. After running with this for some time and, apparently, considering offering all courses as self-paced they decided that there were too many students finding it difficult to motivate themselves without deadlines and that support was lacking in forums. The decision was made to introduce scheduled courses on the new platform but in a modified form: Although there were start and end dates and assessment deadlines, assessments would actually remain open right through the course. This meant that most of the advantages of cohort-based courses (which Coursera now calls 'session-based') would return while students had much more flexibility within the course structure. Pure self-paced courses still remain and probably make up the majority of the catalogue. Even these courses suggest deadlines for assessments but these deadlines can be ignored or even turned off. Sadly, self-paced courses often seem to give an impression of being preserved in aspic--unchanging and unsupported by instructors--and can give a rather sterile experience.

So how do I feel about the changed platform? My first impression was not very positive; it seemed that presentation was being put ahead of usability, however, after working through a few courses I can see some of the stronger points, such as the better integration of mixed media. I think that for many of us the change in platform is too intimately linked with other, less welcome, developments in Coursera (which I'll address in another post) which colour our impressions. This is very similar to the situation over at the Saylor Academy where their move to a new platform also coincided with a major  restructuring. The new Coursera platform has the potential to deliver more structured courses and to handle better a mix of lectures and readings. The reasons why it may fail to fully deliver are part of another story which I'll come back to later.

Is the Quest for Accreditation a Worthwhile Aim?

Over the few years of the MOOC revolution, one thread has run throughout: the quest for accreditation or credit transfer. Every survey indicates that students would welcome formal credit for their on line courses but when such schemes are available diminishingly few ever take them up. So how can we square this apparent paradox and does accreditation actually matter?

The problem is that most MOOC students have absolutely no intention of using the courses they take in any formal academic situation--even if it were possible. The research suggests that the overwhelming majority of students already hold first degrees and a significant proportion hold higher degrees. I suspect that most answer positively when asked about accreditation simply because it seems like a 'good thing'. Maybe I don't want or need it but others might.

Another factor that may be driving apparent student support for accreditation is one of quality assurance. If a course is accepted for credit by a reputable body then that gives some confidence that it meets objective academic standards. Even if we are only taking courses for fun or personal development it gives us a nice warm glow to know that it is valued by others.

There is one other reason, rarely commented on, for the relative lack of interest in credit transfer and that is the US-centric nature of such schemes. At best, most schemes achieve an ACE (American Council on Education) recommendation which basically suggests colleges might want to consider giving credit for a course. However, this applies only in the US and so is pretty meaningless to the large section of students who live elsewhere. I should add that pilot schemes here in the UK have fared no better; a MOOC run by Edge Hill University (coincidentally, where I completed my graduate teaching qualification), the first to offer UK university credits, failed to persuade any of its students to pay for the certificate--not even the participant who subsequently enrolled on a full degree program at Edge Hill (for which he paid £9,000 per year).

For all the reasons outlined above, I have been quite dismissive of accreditation, noting that it added little value in employment terms and was irrelevant to most students. However. . . as those who have read my previous post will know, there has recently been a seismic shift in the landscape of credit bearing courses in the form of a full degree based fairly and squarely on free online courses. Now this may only be a first step (and, in fairness, I should add the Thomas Edison State College launched an Associate Degree programme, again using Saylor Academy courses, almost two years ago) but it suddenly brings into sharper focus the potential value of accreditation where that can form a significant part of a full programme of study. I still have reservations about the value of accrediting individual courses, even for those in or about to enter higher education but it is difficult to argue that a $5,000 degree doesn't offer good value.

Saylor Academy and the $5,000 Fully Accredited Bachelor's Degree

Back in the dawn days of MOOCs (ie 2012) there was much talk of the impact these disruptive innovations would have on the traditional academic world. Four years later and there was little sign of this coming to fruition. . . until 12 January. On that date Saylor Academy announced a new partnership which signalled a radical rethink in the costs of acquiring a fully accredited Bachelor's degree. For just $5,000 it is now possible to gain a Bachelor's degree issued by a recognised US university. Wow!

The programme is a rather complicated patchwork of input from three different organisations: Saylor Academy, who provide half the course content overall, Qualifi, a UK-based award issuing body who will accredit the Saylor courses (and provide their own courses in the third year), and City Vision University who present courses in the second and final years and award the actual degree. Given the difficulties in getting courses recognised and the added complication of credit transfer between bodies in different countries it took bold vision on the part of all three partners to put together this package.

Let's look a bit more closely at the details. Firstly, it should be said that there is only one major on offer--Business--although there are two optional tracks, Business Enterprise (Entrepreneurship) or Business Management in the third year. Next, this is planned as a four year programme of study but there is considerable flexibility to extend or reduce the timescales. Finally, payment is modular; you only pay for the courses as you take them and there are no registration fees. This means that the first year costs only a few hundred dollars. This gives a low risk entry point for those who have been out of education for a while and want to test the waters but could provide valuable evidence of commitment to potential sponsors.

The programme relies heavily on Saylor Academy courses. Ten are to be taken in the first year, five in the second and a further five in the fourth year. These courses themselves are entirely free and all required (electronic) texts are supplied free of charge. There is a fee for the remote proctoring (invigilation, in UK terms) of the exam for each course. This service is provided by an independent organisation and currently costs $25 per exam (but this may well increase a little--which is why the official figures seem to be a little higher).

Qualifi endorse the Saylor courses and rolls them into recognised UK qualifications (which means the student also collects a Level 4 Certificate and Level 5 Diploma along the way). The fee for this and the production of a transcript is $100. They also run the third year of the degree programme comprising six instructor led courses in one of two tracks: Business Enterprise or Business Management. This costs $800 for accreditation and course support.

City Vision University pop up in the second year where they provide five instructor led courses (which, incidentally, also completes the required programme for an Associates Degree if that is as far as you want to go) costing a total of $1,300 for tuition. They reappear in the final year with another five senior-level courses costing $2,000 and, of course, also issue the Bachelor's Degree to successful students.

Now that all seems a bit complicated so I'll offer two summaries. Firstly the course schedule:

• Year 1 
• 10 x Saylor courses
• Year 2
• 5 x Saylor courses
• 5 x City Vision courses
• Year 3
• 6 x Qualifi courses
• Year 4
• 5 x Saylor courses
• 5 x City Vision courses

And the costs:

Associate’s Degree Cost

$600 Saylor Proctoring Fees

$100 Qualifi Credit Endorsement and Transcript Fee

$1,300 City Vision Tuition: 5 Associate’s Degree Courses

$2,000 Total Two Year Cost of Associate’s Degree

Bachelor’s Degree Cost

$2,000 Cost of Associate’s Degree

$800 Qualifi tuition & accreditation + Athena support for Year 3

$200 Saylor Proctoring Fees in Year 4

$2,000 City Vision Tuition for 5 Courses in Year 4

$5,000 Total Four Year Cost of Bachelor’s Degree

Saylor courses are self-paced and can be taken at any time. Qualifi offer multiple presentations per year and City Vision's 8 week courses run five times per year. So, in principle, students could take longer than the schedule suggests or work faster and complete in a shorter time. However, remember this is effectively a full-time study load. Saylor courses, for example, have guidance times of 110-120 study hours which makes for 25-30 hours per week in the first year.

I was amazed when I saw this programme first announced. The total cost is around a third of the tuition fees for a single year at a conventional university here in the UK! Nothing I have heard since from Saylor or City Vision (both of whom were kind enough to answer some of my questions) has changed my view that this is really an astounding opportunity. Entry is open, there are no prerequisites or admissions selection processes, it is available worldwide* (at least to anyone with internet access), costs are modular and the first year costs are less than the price of a coffee and muffin per week (at least here in the UK), City Vision have also confirmed that they do not plan to have any cap on registration numbers. In total students can gain UK Level 4 and 5 Diplomas, a US Associates Degree and a Bachelor's degree--and all from the comfort of their own home.

I admit that I am sorely tempted if only for the novelty value of having a US-awarded degree on my CV!

* I am guessing that US sanctions may exclude students from one or two countries but I've not yet had that confirmed. I'll update this if I receive any more information.

The Changing Face of MOOCs

It has been a little while since I last posted (two years--really?) and so it is not surprising that there have been a number of changes. What is perhaps more surprising is the relatively slow rate of evolution. Given all the excitement engendered by the launch of the first MOOCs (the New York Times called 2012 "The Year of the MOOC") we might have expected to see an explosion in the number of courses and student enrolments, innovative approaches on both existing and new platforms, and a growing acceptance of MOOCs by both colleges and employers. The reality has been rather less earth-shattering and distinctly more incremental.

In this first post of 2016 I'll just touch on a few areas of change and look at some broader issues. I'll return to discuss them in more detail in later postings. To capture two years in a few words, I would characterise 2014 as a year of consolidation and 2015 as a period of restructuring.

2014 saw very few significant changes in the MOOC marketplace. The two major players, Coursera and edX, continued to expand their range of courses. Among the smaller players Futurelearn, which had debuted in late 2013, collected more partners but failed to make a big impact on the world scene while Open2Study seemed to stall offering no new courses at all. Udacity had effectively left the MOOC field in late 2013 'pivoting' its offering towards paid vocational courses.

Both Coursera and edX had introduced versions of verified certificates in 2013 and continued to promote them in 2014. As the only successful revenue source for MOOCs to date this was particularly important for Coursera who were relying on a substantial raft of venture capital in order to keep afloat. Once again mirroring each other, both the major players had also introduced the concept of sequences of related courses building towards an overall certification, XSeries in the case of edX and Specializations for Coursera. 2014 saw the steady growth of such sequences. During 2014 these sequences were mainly constructed from existing or already planned courses.

So 2014 really saw nothing too dramatic happening. A few courses here and there gained (US) college accreditation but there were not the seismic shifts predicted by some in the education industry. So how did 2015 shape up? More of the same or some surprises?

2015 will, I suspect, be seen as the year when finances really started becoming a central concern. If in nothing else, this can be seen in the attitude of providers towards free certificates. By the close of 2015 both edX and Coursera had essentially stopped issuing free certificates. This can only be explained as being a response to the need to promote their verified certificates. The problem both had faced was that the verified certificates offered little advantage to students: colleges weren't interested in non-accredited courses and employers, frankly, didn't care so long as candidates had skills that they wanted. The only way to persuade more students to pay for certificates was simply to remove the option of free certification.

Coursera finally began to update its user interface and move, as I predicted a couple of years ago, towards self-paced courses. Although synchronous ('cohort-based' in Coursera's terms) courses continued to be offered they were outstripped by the growth of self-paced courses, many built on the resources originally produced for what are already being called 'traditional' MOOCs. The new interface looked a lot slicker but seemed to perform less well in terms of functionality. Forums, previously the heart of Coursera, were curiously side-lined (with some courses having no forums) while the peer assessment system was also changed to accommodate the greater flexibility required for self-paced courses. One rather odd decision was the removal of anonymity of peers; not only does the reviewer know the identity of the student they are assessing but the student also knows who marked their work.

Over at the Saylor Academy, a resource that is shamefully under-promoted, radical changes were underway. In late summer of 2014 it had been announced that there were some 'mainly cosmetic' changes coming up. By early 2015 it became apparent that these changes were 'root and branch' rather than cosmetic. Having rapidly expanded their portfolio of courses, built around the idea of duplicating the ten most popular US college majors, to over 300 they found that the money generously provided by their benefactor Michael Saylor simply didn't run to supporting such an ambitious programme.

Saylor decided, therefore, to cut down to around a third of the previous total focusing their efforts on two full college curricula (Computing and Business) and a selection of other courses for which they had been successful in obtaining accreditation. Although I am on record of being sceptical in regard to accreditation of MOOC courses dramatic events in the first weeks of 2016 (about which I'll write on another day) were to force me to reappraise my position. Saylor also moved the surviving courses on to a new Moodle-based platform and introduced a rather better forum system.

In some ways 2015 was disappointing for MOOC enthusiasts; free certificates disappearing, platforms shrinking (Saylor Academy) or apparently going into suspended animation (Open2Study) and still no real progress on accreditation (for those who cared) or a real answer to the ultimate question, "Who pays the bills?"

Maybe 2016 will be more exciting. . .

Open2Study: MOOC... or MOOC-lite

Open2Study is one of the lesser known learning platforms based, for once, not in the US but in Australia. It is backed by Open Universities Australia who are providers of accredited online and distance qualifications. So, what has Open2Study to offer that differentiates it from the major players like Coursera or edX?

Open2Study currently offers around thirty courses and is growing this total slowly but steadily, adding a few more each month. The courses have a slightly different focus to those offered by the big US players with more attention to vocational topics and less paralleling of existing university programmes. The distinctive feature of Open2Study is the highly structured nature of its courses; every course is the same length, shares the same internal structure and even appears to have had its videos shot in the same studio. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this approach, as we shall see.

All Open2Study courses are four weeks long. While this makes them accessible to more potential students it also imposes a tremendous limitation on how much material can be covered. Most of the courses are clearly intended to be introductory but four weeks can be rather short even to meet that ambition. Courses repeat on a five week cycle with all courses starting on the same date. 

Each course has the same structure of a weekly series of 8-9 video lectures, each around 5 minutes in length. This gives about 45 minutes of lecture time per week and, as few courses have any other elements, that's it for learning. There is a single multiple choice question "Pop Quiz" after each segment (other than the last) and then a module assessment consisting of five similarly styled questions. The pass mark is 60% average across the four assessments but, in truth, most students should be getting 100%. Assessments can be repeated if you want to improve your score (or learning). Assessments open at the start of each week but can be taken at any time up to the end of course.

The videos all appear to have been produced in the same studio with the speakers usually appearing against a black background and being shot from a two camera set up. I find this a little distracting as the producers have a tendency to use far too many shots from camera two which is at an angle to the speaker showing them in a semi-profile talking to the main camera. 

Most videos also make use of a clear screen 'whiteboard' with the presenter writing from behind the panel and the image being flipped horizontally so the writing is not mirror-imaged. This has the side-effect of making most presenters appear left-handed but possibly only those with my nit-picking nature would notice that! While it makes a change from the usual run of Powerpoint presentations, I wish they would buy some new markers as the speakers struggle from time to time to write clearly with fading pens! A quick mention should be made hear of the anonymous young lady who provides many of the illustrations drawn in 'real time' on the same board; she is clearly a very skilled artist and should have some credit.

I should also mention the course forums. The set up does not really encourage participation (in my view). The forums seem to be very fragmented and visible only while you are completing a particular module so, having made a comment and moved on to a later section, it is unlikely that posters will see responses or follow up on the discussions. In practice it is unusual to see a discussion getting past one or two responses. This is, in part, down to the relatively low numbers participating (500-1000 registered students seems typical) but the forum design also plays a part. In fact, it is possible to access earlier discussions but the site doesn't tempt you to do so. Instructors do not interact on the forums although there are some 'Learning Facilitators' who drop in mainly to address technical and administrative issues.

There are some advantages to the fixed design of courses: it is easy to find your way around, once you've completed your first course; scheduling is straightforward as they all run for four weeks; there is less scope (from the operator's side) for technical issues and it should be more straightforward to roll out platform improvements. The disadvantages are equally unsurprising: the four week courses are very short; there is no scope for additional activities such as peer assessed writing or programming exercises; assessments are pretty unchallenging.

Courses are quite variable in quality of content, despite the uniform production, but the short length means that there is little reason not to complete the courses, once started. Certificate's of Achievement are issued (as pdf files) to those who reach the 60% threshold and, unusually, show the percentages gained on each assessment (on a second page). There is clear signposting from the course page to (paid) accredited courses offered by Open Universities Australia - although I wonder how many will be interested in following up on those.

An additional progress indicator is offered through the use of 'badges'. These seem to be popular in some quarters--although they seem rather juvenile to me--and reward participation in social aspects as well as study activities. The badges are not (yet) integrated with any external badging such as Mozilla OpenBadges although I understand they are planning to address this in the future.

Overall, some interesting areas of study--I've not seen an introduction to nursing offered elsewhere--but all at a very superficial level. If you want a very brief introduction that will neither take too much time nor tax you too much then take a look. It makes a change to hear a different accent but, to be honest, some of the speakers really aren't that good. Open2Study needs to think about offering longer courses or having multi-part courses as the four week pattern is very restrictive. They should also consider introducing more active learning activities beyond simply watching videos and they really need to rethink the forum design.

What's the Point of Coursera's Signature Track?

The question of whether or not to pay for the Signature Track option offered on many of Coursera's courses regularly crops up on the discussion forums. Even those who are already paying for the option are frequently unclear or mistaken as to its benefits. Here's my view, for what it's worth.

In my opinion, most students will see no benefit from the use of Signature Track and I'll explain why. Firstly, we should be clear what Signature Track is and what it offers. Signature Track is an identity verification service. Through the use of photo identification, web cam monitoring and keyboard profiling (basically recognising how you type) the operators can say that the person taking the course is the person named on the certificate. What the scheme does not offer is any accreditation of courses or certificates. Signature Track certificates share most features with the standard (free) Statements of Accomplishment; they are delivered electronically as pdf files, they do not indicate a grade and they are non-accredited. Unlike the standard Statements of Accomplishment, they carry both the Coursera logo and that of the content supplier (ie the college or university presenting the course). The free certificates carry only the Coursera logo although they do name the content provider.

Will colleges accept Coursera courses for credit? I've seen no indication that any college has accepted a course for credit with or without the benefit of Signature Track. There are, I think, a couple of reasons. Firstly, Signature Track, while verifying the identity of the person at the keyboard, does not replace proctored (in UK terms, invigilated) examinations. There is nothing to stop the student having a supporter 'off-camera' feeding them the answers or, indeed, from registering multiple accounts in order to access the examination in advance of their Signature Track attempt. Secondly, if I may be forgiven some cynicism, the colleges have a vested interest in recognising only paid courses for credit. If they were to routinely recognise free courses where would that leave the faculties formerly offering the courses? General Education courses, for example, seem particularly vulnerable as they are effectively standalone, so don't need to match later courses in terms of content, and seem to be relatively poorly valued by many students. These courses do, however, by dint of the large numbers required to take them, generate significant income for colleges. I would suspect that, for example, PSYCH101 or CS101 courses taken by many hundreds of students as a part of their Gen. Ed. requirement cross-subsidise more advanced Psychology or Computer Science courses taken by much smaller numbers.

So, will employers accept Coursera courses as adding a benefit to applicants or employee's CVs (resumes)? Here, in my experience, the situation is quite different from the world of academia. Employers are generally far less wedded to the concept of 'accreditation'. I've taken many professional development courses over the years, some costing up to £500 per day (say $750) but few have ever had any external accreditation. Indeed, I used to present such courses. But does Signature Track offer any additional benefit in this market? I don't think so. I've never been asked to confirm my identity on a professional development course and employers have never questioned this. Both in my former career as an engineer and in my more recent work as a teacher, employers are happy to take development claims at face value. It is important, however, to recognise that most employers are looking for evidence of vocationally relevant training rather than primarily academic courses so the direct benefits might be marginal.

There are some very limited circumstances in which Signature Track might have benefits. A small number of courses, for example, offer the option of proctored examinations in order to obtain credit for a course. In the two I have seen Signature Track is a prerequisite of registration for the examinations. I have also seen one or two students report that employers will only accept courses as fulfilling development requirements if they take the the Signature Track option (although I suspect this arises more from lack of understanding on the part of employers then from any inherent value).

The final point I would make is that this is largely academic (so to speak). Research indicates that most students of MOOCs are already graduates and a high proportion actually have post-graduate ('graduate' in US terms) qualifications. Few will have any intention of seeking credit for the courses undertaken here. From discussions, it seems that many view Signature Track as a cross between a vanity product and a way of offering financial support to the course supplier and Coursera. The profits from Signature Track are split between Coursera and the course providers. Those taking an altruistic view should, of course, remember that Coursera is a for-profit corporation, not a charity, and Signature Track is merely one of the ways that their operations are being monetized.

Coursera: The User Experience

I talked in very broad terms last time about Coursera. This time I want to look at how the user interacts with the platform and how well the various features of Coursera courses work. The advantage to course providers of using a platform like Coursera is that much of the technical work has been done and is (by this point) working meaning that the academics can focus on what they do best; teaching. The disadvantage can be that sometimes the fit between a course and the platform is not perfect - but that's something I'll come back to in a future  post.

So. let's take a look at a typical course. Once registered and logged in you will arrive in the main landing page. Here's one I am studying a the moment:

To the right you will see upcoming assignments and newly posted lectures. To the left you can see the main navigation strip which gives you links to all the sections of the course. The parts which you will probably visit most regularly will be the video lectures, which are the core of most courses, the forums and the assignments. In most cases there are both quizzes and peer assessments which will each have their own button. On this course, unusually, there is only peer assessment which, for some reason, the course providers have chosen to call Peer Responses - which was almost guaranteed to cause confusion when the first assessment came around.

The naming and arrangement of the navigation button is one of the most irritating features of Coursera. Clearly, the course providers are given free rein in naming the buttons and choosing the order in which they appear. What this means is that those who are taking more than one course will spend far too long looking blankly at the navigation bar wondering where, say, the Discussion Forum button has gone. Here are a few I took at random from current and past courses:

Sorry for the large images today. As you can, hopefully, see, there is very little in common between these courses - take a quick scan across and see how long it takes to spot the Discussion Forum link on each course. Now, I'm certain each course designer is sure that their layout best suits the material but perhaps this is an area where Coursera could reasonably lay down some stricter design rules.

Among the useful buttons there are also some which seem pretty much unused. There is always a Join a Meetup link although I've never heard of anyone actually doing so - I guess that Coursera has some arrangement with Meetup. There is usually a link to a Course Wiki although this feature is both rough around the edges and underused. The Wiki is still in beta, it often asks for a separate login (which requires the same credentials as the main site) and really does seem to be an afterthought bolted on to the structure. There is little evidence that the wikis are widely used. With a few honourable exceptions, most content on the wikis appears to have been posted by staff - not quite the point of a wiki.

The one thing you won't see anywhere is a Progress button because, for some reason, Coursera is convinced that nobody is interested in how they are doing points-wise. This means that working out your current percentage requires a tortuous collection of points from peer assignments, quizzes and exams. These then need to be weighted in line with the individual course policy - except that is often not given in detail (e.g, "the quizzes will account for about a third of the marks")  or, in some cases, not stated at all! For Coursera courses, the first thing I do when starting is to make up a simple spreadsheet to calculate my running total. I will then know when I've done enough to pass and also be able to calculate whether a 'Distinction' is still within reach.

Discussion Forums are undoubtedly one of Coursera's strengths (as is also the case with edX). Due to the very high numbers of students looking at the same material at the same time support is rarely more than a few minutes away. If you have a problem a post will normally see a quick response. There is, of course, some petty bickering, points scoring and randomly bad behaviour from the online equivalent of schoolyard bullies (and often with the same level of maturity) but overall it can be a major asset for those with the time and inclination to participate. Although it may not replace a night in a student union bar, it is undoubtedly more productive in addressing problems with understanding!

Take care when posting on the forums, particularly on a busy thread, as the default setting is to subscribe you for email updates. This can mean that, after posting on a couple of topics, you come home to find hundreds (literally) of email updates filling your inbox. This is exactly the opposite of Saylor.org where the default setting does not subscribe you where, given the quiet boards there, it would be sensible to do so.

Next time I'll look at one or two courses in more detail and see how they work.