Coursera vs. Khan Academy vs. LearnUpon

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

Khan Academy is a great supplement for things you already have learned, or as a mid-level course (versus a deep dive or high school/university level course). It is great for a paced learning environment if you want to casually refresh yourself on a subject or learn something new. I don't think this should be a replacement for structured learning, or if you struggle in self-paced learning environments. There have been times I would like to have been able to ask a professional (like an instructor) when struggling with a subtopic, which is possible in a classroom setting.

Incentivized

I think LearnUpon is a great LMS for an organization that focuses on internal learners, aka, employees. It's very easy to create courses, enroll learners, and mark attendance. For an association such as mine, more support would be helpful for appropriately setting up the store to reflect member and non-member accounts. In addition, it's difficult to do outside-the-box functions like transfers and refunds.

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

• The UI is great and easy to use.
• There is a broad selection of courses, subjects, and instructors.
• The classroom integration option is awesome.

Incentivized

• Integration with video conferencing platforms (primarily Zoom).
• Timing out releasing of course materials and exams so students can't get eyes on something an instructor is not ready for them to see yet.
• Customization of our store front and courses with regard to branding and graphics.

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

• On my iPad, to change the language of Khan, I need to change the language of my iPad in the settings
• It can be a bit messy and the category are a bit too generic, not enough per level category
• Sometimes the quizz are too simple, it would be nice to have an extra difficult one as a bonus

Incentivized

• There are issues with users who have an account in more than one LearnUpon portal. If a user has an account in an existing LearnUpon portal, and they want to create an account in another LearnUpon portal, then they have to be invited to the new portal by an Administrator. but the user has no way of knowing that its a LearnUpon portal until they can't sign up. Its very confusing for the learner.
• An email address is required in order to set up an account. We serve many providers who don't have email addresses for all of their staff, so this is a huge issue for us.

Incentivized

Constantly renewing already. One of my favourite MOOC platforms.

Incentivized

We've been a customer for six years and I don't see that changing anytime soon. We're very happy with LearnUpon.

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

I've only had to seek support one time. There was a glitch in one of my lessons and I submitted an email. The glitch was fixed by support within a few days, but I would've liked for it to be faster. However, I don't have a big complaint there because it is a free service.

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

I personally found Khan Academy much better suited for adult learning of difficult or larger topics. Not so much for smaller changes that can be communicated via email. But it was more engaging and I found the information easier to digest. Change management can be tough but with the right tools it can be a breeze.

Incentivized

LearnUpon's interface and immersive experience blows the competition out of the water. LearnUpon understands the "big picture" of online learning and how to provide a system that is easy and fun to use for users at any level. LearnUpon's knowledge of their own platform, and their impeccable client support is unparalleled. LearnUpon understands our business and learning needs better than any competitor. Now that I'm using a different platform at another job, I miss LearnUpon every day!

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

• It's has helped a lot of my coworkers to grasp some basic finance and computer science stuff when previously they have no idea.

Incentivized

• We have not implemented it yet due to unforeseen issues with a different vendor, but we have launched two pilots and it has been very well received.
• The expected outcome is a lot more revenue because the catalog we have in our current LMS (Absorb) is very poorly designed and ineffective.
• Another expected outcome is that people will be excited to learn more and be better ambassadors for our company.

Incentivized