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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.
So, some people are pissed off that someone that was free now costs money. How is this cultural vandalism? What the fuck is cultural vandalism anyways? Did someone graffiti some ethnic restaurants?
It's their platform. If they want to change it up, start charging or whatever, that's their right. People sure do whine a lot in 2016.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
You can't claim that someone is committing cultural vandalism and in the same breath provide instructions on how to preserve something. Just because someone created something or provided a host platform in the first place doesn't obligate them to preserve that platform at that price for eternity.
It's free. Download it. If you want to preserve it then do so, but don't have a whinge when someone else doesn't want to.
It's like the neighborhood vacant lot when I was a kid. The owner back then didn't seem to mind that we set up a great bicycle racetrack on it with jumps everywhere. We also built a treehouse in one of its trees. Then one day the owner decided to build a house on it. The construction equipment came in and started digging up our racetrack. We all complained and whined to our parents who told us that the property owner could build a house on his property if he wanted. We were not paying for anything and had no rights at all with respect to the property.
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 fucking stooge! Slashdot should be ashamed of itself for taking part in this false flag operation. Clearly the decision to monetize content is motivated by Satanic vampirism! Death to these unholy monsters and anyone who supports them!
Breakfast served all day!
Business is way more complex than that. Human group behavior often appears as something simple, especially when it isn't. In business, this often produces an effect whereby everyone in a business has honest, benevolent intentions, and manages to build a shambling, evil empire; actual malicious intent and selfish greed are rare events, but common outcomes.
Coursera has, for a long time, been molding itself into a corporate service platform. In reorganization, aligning the business with its strategic goals would rightly include removing out-of-scope practices such as providing open, free online courses. The major failure in that model is in evaluating those practices in the context of their *impact* on the business, rather than on the business strategy: not thinking about how the world interacts with you or how your actions will be seen by the world leads to taking actions that upset the population.
There's a lot of middle-class radicalization and social justice warrior stuff going on in this summary. There's even a direct attack on colleges and professors ("Let's teach a course because it's good for my ego"--teachers are all selfish assholes, right?), as if the entire practice of teaching is a pox on society, while the practice of learning is something cherished and valuable.
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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.
There's a lot of middle-class radicalization and social justice warrior stuff going on in this summary.
Indeed. Coursera is a for-profit company, so no one should be surprised that they engage in "greedy commercialism". That is what enables them to grow as a business and pay people salaries. They are not a charity, and should not be expected to behave as one. MOOCs are far from dead, and much of this same content can be accessed on Youtube, along with hundreds of other courses.
Disclaimer: I have competed several MOOCs, mostly free courses from MIT. I have never taken a course from Coursera.
You make it sound as if this is somehow a feature of big, complex organizations. But good intentions frequently yield disastrous outcomes even at the individual level. Ultimately, it isn't people's intentions that matter, it's actual outcomes.
As for Coursera, their "good intentions" may simply be running into financial reality: the MOOC space is crowded, there is a lot of good free content, and big name universities are not necessarily at an advantage here. Good intentions don't come to fruition if the people with the good intentions can't figure out how to pay for them.
I'm going to go out on limb here and suggest that it might have less to do with greed and more to do with the fact that infrastructure and people cost money. As much as I would like it if everything in life were free, it isn't, which means that the people that build and maintain their infrastructure need a salary (not to mention what I imagine are non-trivial hosting costs), and that money has to come from somewhere.
As someone who works at an educational institution that creates MOOCs on Coursera, I can tell you that any courses that disappear after June 30th will have done so because the CONTENT CREATOR (the universities, professors, etc.) decided to not migrate them to the new platform. The migration is not a terribly difficult chore, so you can blame the content creators for deciding to not migrate... and maybe they did so because THEY, not Coursera, were tired of giving content away for free.
And anybody who thinks this is the end of free MOOCs hasn't clicked the "Enroll" button for any courses on the new platform. I just went to a random one and am presented with "Purchase Course - $49; Commit to earning a Certificate-it's a trusted, shareable way to showcase your new skills." OR "Full Course, No Certificate; You will still have access to all course materials for this course."
Different: Yes. No Longer Free: No.
You cannot trust an entity to keep your data online for (what appears to be) free interminably. In the US, the web is not a public resource (tax supported, then free downstream for all.) It is a commercial resource, where presence requires upstream expenditure.
That means someone, or someone(s), somewhere, has to support the model with actual money. When the reasons to support that model go away -- and there are many ways that can happen -- so will the data.
You want your data to remain available? Keep a copy of it yourself and make it available. This, if nothing else, gives you control over whether it it available, or not. You can, of course, put it up somewhere like Coursera or GitHub or YouTube or Wikipedia or one of these so-called "cloud" services if you are so inclined, but rest assured, these large entities are burning through money at a fairly good clip, and that means all data (and service) you offer in such a way depends on that for-money model at one level or another.
The thing is, it's their for-money model, not yours. So your control is almost always nil. When you, on the other hand, set up a cheap little website to offer your "stuff", then the expenditure is yours, and so is the control. That's the basis for a good relationship between you, and the people you want to be able to access your data.
You have a network connection. If you have unlimited data (and if not, why not?) ask your ISP for a static IP, set up an easy to use LAMP stack, and have at it. If you do have limited data... first, try to change ISPs, because really... that's terrible. If that doesn't work, there are all manner of services out there where you can set up shop on the cheap, and if they go away, you can just move.
And... if you're not motivated enough to do that... well, there you go. Nowhere, that is.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.