Coursera vs. Lalilo by Renaissance

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

The students love to work with Lalilo. They love to earn the badges, treasures, and stories. I love that I can look at the reports and see if my students are proficient, or still needing help in specific areas. Lalilo is a great way to reward students for at the end of each week for working hard throughout the week.

• 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

• Lalilo allows each student to be placed at the exactly right level for their skills.
• Lalilo makes learning to read fun by using badges that students earn for each skill.
• Lalilo gives students the ability to request easier or harder lessons based on their current skills.

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

• I like the progression that the students go through in order to practice concepts they are struggling with, but I wish they had videos or some way other way for the students to practice other than just asking questions.

Constantly renewing already. One of my favourite MOOC platforms.

Incentivized

It has been very useful to our students and staff.

Incentivized

User-friendly and developer-friendly Web UI.

Incentivized

Students can easily access through their shared password storage for instantaneous login. I have never had an issue with them getting kicked off or having content that doesn't fit a need.

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

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

Lalilo is a helpful program for our struggling readers. It gives an alternative to LLI, SRA, or OG - which are all utilized within our elementary settings

• 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

• For a student who only knew 18 alphabet letters when beginning Lalilo, the student has increased overall performance to recognizing 80% of the "ut" family of words.
• Students in grades 3 and 5 are increasing their reading levels from K and 1 to the end of year 2.

Incentivized