Coursera vs. Grovo, now part of Cornerstone LMS

The Coursera platform can be a useful part of your overall learning content portfolio if utilized correctly. It's fantastic for asynchronous courses that don't necessarily need a dedicated faculty member (though I'd highly recommend at least having some discussion moderators/student workers) and for offering MOOCs. The ability for the learners to contribute translations really makes it ideal for the international learning community - I am always amazed to see a course we launched with 2-3 languages to quickly have 10-12 more added. This feature really helps expand the audience reach and Coursera has such a large following already that it can grow seemingly overnight.

Incentivized

Grovo is fantastic for bringing a team of people up to speed and for teaching a few things to a large audience. We found Grovo to be lacking when specific training is required or when the training required a certain level of skill. Grovo is fantastic for broad training, less so for specific depth training

Incentivized

• Interaction: the student learns by doing. For programming courses, this means programming!
• Assessments: the courses I'd taken ask students to grade each others work with a rubric. This is hugely effective and permits tests and quizzes to be other than multiple choice.
• Creativity and enthusiasm of the instructors. Some of the approaches demonstrated real out-of-the-box thinking by the instructors. For example, the Rice Python course was a self-contained website requiring no installation of IDE on one's computer, and the final project was a working version of Asteroids.
• Low cost of entry: most of the course I enrolled in were free, with an optional fee for certifications. This really gives people the freedom to explore learning. It's almost like a Public Library of Learning.
• Coursera forces a weekly discipline on the user with lectures and assignments and this really motivates one to put in the effort.

Incentivized

• Ease to create trainings.
• Ability to insert GIFs and photos to help with visual aids.
• Ability to allow others to create trainings.
• Ability to track trainings (who has done it and who hasn't).
• Ease of tracking all training done.

Incentivized

• Some of the courses (very few) have some old information (more than 2 years), and in some areas like technology the information has to be very new and updated.
• Some professors or people doing videos are not good in front of the camera, they should train their people a little bit more for those things.

Incentivized

• Some videos/lessons leave a lot to be desired and could use more detail.
• There's always more room for some more advanced skills.

Incentivized

Constantly renewing already. One of my favourite MOOC platforms.

Incentivized

User-friendly and developer-friendly Web UI.

Incentivized

I’ve used it a couple of times and... that did great. They take their time, but in the end they solve your issues.

Incentivized

When we have had issues with Grovo not working or a problem with report we have always gotten an answer quickly. We have a rep that we speak to often to make sure we are satisfied with the system and is just a quick email away. It nice to know we have support that will get back to you in a quick manner as we rely on this software.

Incentivized

Coursera is familiar, intuitive, compatible and easy to use and implement.

Incentivized

I think Coursera has the best overall interface. I think you will find that different platforms go in different directions, and have different specialities. For the most part the differences are more in the types of courses they offer than one being particularly better than the other, so it comes down to content for me.

Incentivized

The elephant in the room for me, would be TreeHouse. Grovo is very similar to TreeHouse in the fact that they're both programs with lesson tracks, simple and short videos, as well as progress trackers. I would have to say that I enjoyed learning coding on TreeHouse over Grovo, based on the wide variety of native coding languages they have implemented. Grovo, although extremely similar and easy to use as well, doesn't stack up to TreeHouse in my opinion. Grove does, however, beat out Lynda in my humble opinion

Incentivized

• The greatest benefit of Coursera is access to quality courses on various subjects that you can either browse or dive in deeply. Customizable, flexible and accessible.
• Helps our department to recommend trainees courses on this website and gain important knowledge. Also, the courses are provided by big-name universities which helps students in their careers
• Developing and exploring professional skills.

Incentivized

• Zero impact. When we determined they were not a good fit for us, we decided to go another direction. I would certainly try them again however if they addressed my concerns as their service was excellent.

Incentivized