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Coursera Commits 'Cultural Vandalism' As Old Platform Shuts (i-programmer.info)
Reader mikejuk writes: Coursera has announced that 30 June is the date when it will shut down the servers hosting courses that were the first, free, offerings on its platform. The new model isn't just a revised interface, it is also a new monetization model, and presumably the decision to throw out all the original free content, by shutting the platform, is motivated by greedy commercialism. You could say that the golden age of the MOOC (a course of study made available over the Internet without charge to a very large number of people) is over with the early enthusiastic pioneers doing it because they were passionate about their subject and teaching it being replaced by a bunch of "lets teach a course because it's good for my career and ego" with subjects being selected by what will sell.
Closing down the old platform is an unnecessary destruction of irreplaceable content. Coursera needs to rethink this policy that goes against everything it originally stood for. The courses affected are from the early days of the MOOC that are likely to be important in the history of their subject. The most relevant for us, but far from the only one, is Geoffrey Hinton's Neural Networks for Machine Learning which gave a "deep" insight into the way he thinks and how neural networks work.
Something has to be done to preserve this important record -- they don't have to turn off the servers just because they have a new platform.Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central has written about ways one can download Coursera's courses before they're gone.
Closing down the old platform is an unnecessary destruction of irreplaceable content. Coursera needs to rethink this policy that goes against everything it originally stood for. The courses affected are from the early days of the MOOC that are likely to be important in the history of their subject. The most relevant for us, but far from the only one, is Geoffrey Hinton's Neural Networks for Machine Learning which gave a "deep" insight into the way he thinks and how neural networks work.
Something has to be done to preserve this important record -- they don't have to turn off the servers just because they have a new platform.Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central has written about ways one can download Coursera's courses before they're gone.
Being in the middle of taking a Coursera course right now I can state that the content is still free if you audit the course. Auditing a course gives you access to the lectures, coursework, and the forums. You cannot submit coursework for a grade, nor receive a final grade and certificate (if you pass) unless you have paid for the course.
Having taken several of the original free courses I was concerned at first but once I read through all the fine print I think it's a fine way to monetize the system. Free for those that want information and a charge for those that want proof of having taken the course.
They induced people to donate it by representing that they would make it available.
You want to create a course for people to see. Somebody offers to host it if you create it. You put in your effort. How do you feel when they don't hold up their end? Especially if you don't happen to notice until the only copy is no longer available to you?
Coursera appropriated that content and is denying access to it
Hogwash. Coursera didn't "appropriate" anything. They just made it available, for free. Then they stopped.
Agreed. No company or internet service who hosted something for FREE has an obligation to keep hosting said content for FREE forever. They're not "denying access" to content; they're just not going to host it anymore.
If the original creator failed to keep a backup, that is not Coursera's fault.
It surprises me that people haven't figured this out about the internet yet. I realized it 20 years ago.
Two rules that constitute the grand oxymoron of internet content durability:
(1) Once you put something on the internet, it may be on the internet FOREVER. (Corollary: Be careful what you post; it could follow you for the rest of your life.)
(2) Anything that's on the internet could disappear FOREVER at any time. (Corollary: If you actually want to preserve something, you need to download it and be responsible for preserving it yourself.)
Unfortunately, many people haven't caught on to this. A century from now historians will be looking back in puzzlement at the "Dark Decades" between the end of paper records and the beginning of more permanent digital archives, where huge amounts of electronic content was created but then lost forever. Meanwhile, I'm sure most of the meaningless Tweets and Facebook posts of drunken party photos will still be around for historians to assess....