[bitL]

I see the current MOOC divided into 4 styles:

- if you want academic rigor, you take edX and to some extent Coursera

- if you want to learn something between academic and practical you never did before while working full time, you take Coursera courses

- if you want to train yourself on some of the latest trends, you take Udacity

- everything else that is outside big companies/academia you seek on Udemy and similar platforms

I am happy with all these, I initially spent most of my learning time on Coursera, then moved mostly to edX for big-name university curriculum and now I am taking Udacity's self-driving car nanodegree and maybe later AI nanodegree if I get in.

You simply need to choose what you want and then look at the appropriate platform. I am very happy we have now different shades of a good thing and I applaud to all people making this possible! Big thanks!

[umbs]

IMO, this is a very clear summary of major MOOCs available for us today.

I have taken courses on all the above MOOC offerings and completed courses to varying degrees. For a Software professional, the rigor in increasing order is: Udemy, Udacity, Coursera and edX. Of course, this is a very high level generalization and depends on each course/professor.

[sjnair96]

Thank you for that! I seem to be in an eternal "paralysis analysis" stage when deciding what to study. I have gone years searching for the right tutorials/courses so that I can learn most efficiently. I know this is unhealthy and actually really inefficient, but I still do it :(

[dwaltrip]

Change always starts with a single small step. Completing a single lesson, even if you don't finish the rest of that course, could be that step. Do it for future you! =)

[sjnair96]

It's not that starting a course is hard, it's deciding which one that is hard.

[dwaltrip]

Force yourself to pick one. It won't be the perfect course, but that's fine. As long as it is decent, it will be time well spent. Especially since doing so will help you overcome analysis paralysis for future situations.

You could even try putting your top few choices in a hat, and letting chance decide. Perhaps your visceral reaction after randomly picking one will help reveal what you actually want.

Also, this may be completely off base, if so disregard this paragraph, but have you considered looking into mindfulness? Over time, it can help with getting past these brain blocks. It's personally been very helpful for me.