Expand your Institutions reach with Coursera
March 29, 2022

Expand your Institutions reach with Coursera

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Coursera

Coursera is used in many cases to offer free courses to peak the curiosity of potential students. We also use it to reach a large pool of international learners who would not normally have access to our content. It is also an excellent tool for allowing staff in other divisions free access to course content from other divisions serving as an excellent professional development tool.
  • Staff Training.
  • Professional Development.
  • Lead Generation.
  • International Outreach.
  • The UI or the LMS could be more modern/intuitive.
  • The quiz/exam tool is limited especially in line video knowledge checks.
  • Login can be confusing if you have multiple accounts (Personal/business/employer etc).
  • Analytics reporting dashboard is pretty basic.
  • Require little day-to-day over site.
  • Excellent customer support.
  • Shopping Cart great for generating passive income.
  • Quiz tools can be limited.
  • Discussion Boards are a bit dated vs tools like Slack or Discord.
  • SCORM seems to be rather limited and buggy in my experience.
We've looked at or used many different LMS platforms including Blackboard, Learnshare, Canvas, Cornerstone, SABA, and many others. Each has its pros & cons but I feel Coursera given its brand recognition and built-in following it's a great value for any organization. I would not want to build out an entire MBA or other MASTERS level online program on it but it is a great way to allow potential students to experience your institutions content for a low price (of free).

Do you think Coursera delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Coursera's feature set?

Yes

Did Coursera live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Coursera go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Coursera again?

Yes

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.