Pros & Cons
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- Matriculated degree programs with colleges and universities
- Partners with private corporations for job-specific skills and certificates
- Robust language support
- Well-designed video player
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- No longer has truly free courses
- Could improve some navigation options
Coursera Specs
| Some Courses Free |
Not too long ago, Coursera reigned as an Editors' Choice winner for free online learning services because it hosted video lectures from real universities at no cost to you. Although it's still an excellent place to pick up a new skill, the for-profit company has drastically cut back on how much it gives away. Now, you need a $59-per-month subscription or an individual, flat-rate course to get anything useful. Coursera is still a worthwhile option, especially if you're looking to gain a job-specific certification. However, Khan Academy offers excellent academic instruction for free, earning it our Editors' Choice award.
Plans and Prices
Coursera lets you "preview" a course for free, meaning you get only the first module (instead of all the lectures) and any graded assignments and other elements related to it. However, the first module typically is a single video lecture introducing the class. It might include the first real lesson, or it might be merely an overview of what's to come. A company representative said that the new version of what's free "better reflects how the content was intended to be experienced," but it comes across as putting the meat of the courses behind a paywall.
(Credit: Coursera/PCMag)If you want the courses in full, you have to pay for either a subscription to Coursera Plus ($59 per month or $399 per year) or a flat fee per course, many of which are $49 for six months of access. Coursera also has projects and guided projects, explained in a moment, which are generally much shorter and cost less money, about $10.
The $59-per-month cost is high compared with Khan Academy (free) and MasterClass ($120 per year), though the value depends on what you plan to accomplish. For example, if you intend to take several test prep courses before an exam in two months, the cost is very reasonable. But if you're thinking of joining just to explore what you might learn, it's not.
You can get a seven-day free trial for Plus, though it requires payment details. The Plus membership gives you anything labeled "free" (a serious misnomer) or "Plus," which includes some 10,000 courses, projects, and certificate programs, as well as some AI content and features.
Coursera hosts other kinds of courses, too. As mentioned, projects and guided projects are shorter learning experiences focused on a specific software (ChatGPT, Excel, Google Analytics, etc.) or skill, such as business analytics. These short courses task you with completing a project as you learn, and they may prove useful to job applicants due to their specificity. Similarly, you can take courses toward a certificate for a particular employer, which is again useful to some job candidates.
In addition, Coursera is the platform some colleges and universities use for their distance learning matriculated degree programs. To pick up those lessons, you must apply to a college just as you would if you were attending in person—and the price depends on the program. In these cases, Coursera is effectively the platform you use to take your classes and complete your degree work.
Inside a Coursera Course
To test Coursera, we enrolled in The Science of Wellbeing from Yale University and First Step Korean from Yonsei University. In past rounds of testing, we took courses called Establishing a Professional Self Through Effective Intercultural Communication (National University of Singapore) and Write a Feature Length Screenplay for Film or Television (Michigan State University, audit mode).
(Coursera/PCMag)Before you enroll in a course, Coursera summarizes what's included and how long it might take to complete. It lets you know if the course is part of a larger program, which languages and subtitles are supported, and how to pass the class. You can also see an average user rating and the syllabus.
The commitment times aren't always accurate, though. The course on screenwriting, for example, grossly overestimates how much time you need for the content in Weeks 1, 2, and 3. The video lectures and assignments in those weeks are extremely short. Other courses had more accurate estimates. Because you work at your own pace, you can power through material as fast as you want.
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Videos, Readings, and Dashboard
Videos are used prominently for the courses' lectures. Sometimes the videos are only two or three minutes long. Other times, they're 15 or 20 minutes. The video player has controls for adjusting the playback speed and toggling on closed captioning or subtitles in multiple languages.
Below the video player is a transcription of the current video, which is one of Coursera's nicest features. You can highlight anything from this block of text and save it as a note, and Coursera will link it directly to the relevant point in the video. That way, when you review your notes, you can jump to the right place to rewatch the lecture.
Some courses also have readings. Readings are included on the screen, although some instructors link to or provide references for long texts, such as academic articles and books.
(Credit: Coursera/PCMag)When you enroll in courses, Coursera saves each of them and your progress in them to a page called My Learning. It's a dashboard where you can see how many days in the current month you've completed some learning. It's a helpful view, but you can't always jump to it from every page. It should be more prominently linked.
Other navigation design choices could be improved, too. Browsing for courses is a clunky experience sometimes, for example. The search bar auto-completes your searches before you've even had time to think, and when you land on a page of suggested courses, the filters are not necessarily helpful. When searching for a Korean Language class, more than 2,000 results are classified as Computer Science courses—likely because they are available in Korean, even though there's a separate language filter.
Pop Quizzes
Coursera courses can incorporate quizzes. Some are modules that appear on the left side of the screen, so you know they're coming. Others pop up during a video lecture, pausing the video, and you complete them to continue the lesson.
When you reach a quiz, it tells you what amounts to a passing grade and how many attempts you have at passing before you're locked out for a set amount of time. For example, you might have two attempts at getting 80% correct or better, and if you fail twice in a row, you might not be able to retake the quiz for eight hours.
Accessibility Features
Courses are taught in a variety of languages, not just English. These include Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, though exactly which languages are included depends on the course.
Another feature that makes Coursera more accessible to all learners is the transcription that appears below the video. As you scroll through the transcription, the video player shrinks a little but stays in view. In a nice touch, the audio syncs up with the text to highlight each phrase or sentence as it's spoken.
(Credit: Coursera/PCMag)