Coursera is a learning management platform from the company of the same name in Mountain View, California.
$400
Per User Per Year
ITProTV
Score 6.5 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
ITProTV is an elearning platform that aims to allow you to ditch the boring slide shows and start really learning IT. The training is more like a talk show -- you’ll watch your ‘edutainer’ engage with a host and an online audience to create a better-than-classroom experience that you and your team will look forward to watching. The vendor says new content is added every day and the course library has more than 3,300 hours covering all of the major certification courses (e.g. CompTIA,…
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Pricing
Coursera
ITProTV
Editions & Modules
Team
$400
Per User Per Year
Enterprise
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Coursera
ITProTV
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Corporate memberships are available. Individual memberships are monthly or annual.
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.
I've encouraged co-workers and non-coworkers to watch the live streams of ITProTV. Unfortunately, my company currently uses CBT Nuggets (none of the people I've asked like it/utilize it), but those who do take the suggestion often ask the same question: Why do we not use ITProTV instead of CBT? I met a young man who was in his final year of college pursuing an accounting degree. He asked me about the IT industry. I suggested he look at ITProTV in order to see if there is a subject he's interested in. He immediately signed up, and while working two jobs and going to school, he managed to get his CCNA and pass the Microsoft 70-410 within 6 months. We hired him. If you just want to hone your skills, ITProTV delivers. If you are seeking certifications, ITProTV delivers. The only demographic that I can imagine where it would be unsuited, is simply for those who are ignorant that nearly every industry involves some form of technological understanding. ITProTV is good for end users "non-IT personnel", as well as those supporting end users.
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.
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.
The episode download feature could use a little work (speaking about the Android experience). When you download the episode, you need to go to downloaded in ITProTV instead of just playing on the normal episode content screen. It works well for what it is, but it would be nice to have the downloaded content play straight from the episode screen.
I've had a few little issues with the Roku. It works great, but there have been a couple times when I needed to contact support because the Roku kept saying I wasn't a subscriber. The problem mostly resolved itself, but I still occasionally get the message. It isn't a huge deal since I can still access the content on Android or through a web browser.
I would like to see an al la carte for school education. Currently, we must contact a sales rep for one-off trainings, like A+, Network+, etc. (the sales reps are phenomenal... so that isn't much of an issue!)
Using ITProTV has been a cakewalk. Not once have I wished that we went with a different vendor. The content stays updated. My technicians are improving their skills. We can train when we need it and access the content required. We are improving all the way around.... why wouldn't I want to renew?
Let me start with... their chat really works. You aren't chatting with a bot. When we first looked into purchasing ITProTV, I opened a chat on their site. One of their sales people, Brandon, contacted me quickly and by phone. I totally thought I was chatting with a computer, then the phone rang and Brandon introduced himself. I was blown away. Then, on the two occasions when I contact support, I did it through the chat. Not only did my problem get resolved quickly, a tech named Jessica followed up via email a couple days later to make sure the issues hadn't continued. Fantastic!
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.
Previously my team used the Microsoft on demand training which has everything you could ever dream of from Microsoft in the same format as ITProTV. It did have the latest and greatest Microsoft training because it is Microsoft, but it only had Microsoft and nothing more. The cost was the other issue. The On demand workshops subscription cost a lot more than my budget would allow. I would have been forced to pick who was getting training and who was not which would most likely cause some friction between the team members.
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
