[jimbokun]

Just browsing through the Coursera Computer Science listings, it looks like they are rapidly approaching the point where you could put together a CS curriculum superior to what you could get at any single school. The people they have teaching a lot of these topics are some of the best in the world in their field. The Micahel Collins NLP course looks really thorough and up to date, for example I took a similar course a few years ago, and I remember reading papers written by him.

As has been said by many already, of course, the remaining nuts to crack are high quality interaction with other students, professors, and TAs; and accreditation.

But the dis-intermediation of large universities may be nearer than we think.

[platz]

An attempt to design a reasonable computer science curriculum using just Coursera courses, where “reasonable” is a curriculum that roughly mirrors the coursework required for a four-year university computer science degree: http://www.thesimplelogic.com/2012/09/24/you-say-you-want-an...

[misiti3780]

the only real problem with coursera is everyone is posting their solutions to github, so its gonna be impossible for them to prevent cheating. i agree with you though, that the flexibility it is offering is amazing

[ChuckMcM]

There is an interesting practical question here. Why cheat?

If you are taking a class voluntarily over the Internet, what benefit would be gained by cheating? I presume that a large fraction of people who are doing volunteer coursework are doing it to learn, not to keep a GPA up for some other reason (sports eligibility, scholarship requirements, parental expectations, Etc.) so looking at other solutions on Github might actually enhance the experience for you if you look at other solutions. If you find a way to do it better than the other solutions that could be a goal in itself.

This is one of those things I find most intriguing about 'free' classes on the Internet, the value equation is shifted around.

[salman89]

It depends on the purpose of your education. In an ideal world, it would be just to learn, but I think employers at some level look at grades/school as a qualification process.

[ChuckMcM]

I see where you are coming from but were I interviewing you I would never even think to wonder about a self reported grade in a volunteer class. If the topic was important to the position I'd ask you to talk about it and tell me what you learned. I would hope I could spot you trying to feed me a line.

At the end of the day, as an employer, I am looking for 'learners' not 'cheaters.' If it turns out that an employee's personality/choices lean toward the cheating side I try to manage them out of the organization as smoothly as I can.

[waterlesscloud]

If it were a traditional class at a traditional school you'd just assume they actually learned it?

[ChuckMcM]

Hmm, that is a fair question. I think I would give more weight to a class if they took it when they didn't have to, rather than having taken is a part of a requirement for a degree.

[misiti3780]

if you are never going to tell future employers, etc that you took the courses, there is no reason to cheat. if you plan on adding these things to your resume, with numbers associated with them, there is definitely an incentive to cheat. most people on the site right now are there to just learn, but coursera is hoping the ladder will eventually happen. it is a catch-22 ... sort of