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Abhinav Sharma
I used to work at Coursera, but the following is my personal opinion about new credentials in general, of which the Coursera Specialization is one. I'm also not in touch with what the company's strategy for credentials is. I left right around when Specializations were being announced.
The tl;dr here is that no, not yet. It's not a well recognized credential yet but if things go well, it'll accumulate value over time.
Put simply, a credential has value if it implies success. It is simply a signal that you have potential for success because others who have completed it before you have had success in the field. No more, no less.
A credential serves as a proxy for knowledge by ensuring the following:
Building a credential is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Coursera needs to get people receiving these credentials to be successful so that they can show a correlation (I'd argue that would suffice over strictly provable causation to get the marketing wheels spinning). Then, as the data points start to come in, you need to make sure 1 and 2 hold up.
At this point, its too early and we simply do not have the data to show that a Coursera credential (specialization or verified certificates) implies professional success.
This doesn't in any way mean that there's no valuable knowledge on Coursera. On the contrary, it's one of the best curated sources for knowledge about specific things on the internet.
Basically, the Specializations growth loop looks like the following.
But as it stands now, a handful of companies and pockets of people here and there know about it, I know for example that most people in the Valley know about Andrew Ng's ML class. Some universities are accepting Coursera classes for advanced credit, teacher professional development programs use it, etc.
It seems like the credential is in its infancy but growing. Only time will tell (and this will likely vary by class since the bar is set by instructors, not Coursera) if they manage to hold a high bar and low false-positive rate as the number of seekers grow.
It's a really smart team over at Coursera so I trust they'll do the right thing.
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I used to work at Coursera, but the following is my personal opinion about new credentials in general, of which the Coursera Specialization is one. I'm also not in touch with what the company's strategy for credentials is. I left right around when Specializations were being announced.
The tl;dr here is that no, not yet. It's not a well recognized credential yet but if things go well, it'll accumulate value over time.
Put simply, a credential has value if it implies success. It is simply a signal that you have potential for success because others who have completed it before you have had success in the field. No more, no less.
A credential serves as a proxy for knowledge by ensuring the following:
- High bar: You do need to possess a high degree of knowledge and put in substantial effort to achieve that credential. If anyone could have one, it isn't a very valuable skill to have.
- Low false-positive rate / academic integrity: If you have a credential, then there should be a high chance that you can demonstrate you know what the credential claims you know.
- Enough data points for 1 and 2 to be statistically meaningful.
Building a credential is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Coursera needs to get people receiving these credentials to be successful so that they can show a correlation (I'd argue that would suffice over strictly provable causation to get the marketing wheels spinning). Then, as the data points start to come in, you need to make sure 1 and 2 hold up.
At this point, its too early and we simply do not have the data to show that a Coursera credential (specialization or verified certificates) implies professional success.
This doesn't in any way mean that there's no valuable knowledge on Coursera. On the contrary, it's one of the best curated sources for knowledge about specific things on the internet.
Basically, the Specializations growth loop looks like the following.
- Get people with Specializations to demonstrate success and/or help connect them to the job market, etc. Whatever it takes to show what specialization => success.
- Market the success of people with Specialization certificates in order to get others to take it
- Repeat, continually improving quality and volume (and sometimes, balancing the two).
But as it stands now, a handful of companies and pockets of people here and there know about it, I know for example that most people in the Valley know about Andrew Ng's ML class. Some universities are accepting Coursera classes for advanced credit, teacher professional development programs use it, etc.
It seems like the credential is in its infancy but growing. Only time will tell (and this will likely vary by class since the bar is set by instructors, not Coursera) if they manage to hold a high bar and low false-positive rate as the number of seekers grow.
It's a really smart team over at Coursera so I trust they'll do the right thing.
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
