My first experience with Coursera

Why Coursera ?

Apart from University, most of the professional learnings I had were via other “non-conventional” means such as Youtube videos and plain-text tutorials.

Learning this way, can have many advantages, for example:

• You can learn at your own pace
• You can watch and repeat over and over without being pressed by deadlines and exams
• You manage your own curriculum by chosing the topics you actually want to learn

However, it can become hard to prove the knowledge and skills you aquired online witouth any kind of “valid proof” or ceritificate. Sometimes, the best way of proving your skills is to just do it, and that is why I think showcasing what you can do is very important.

Recently, I was encouraged to take on a course for then getting a certifcate. So this is what I did. I went on Google and searched a topic I have known and learned but which I would like to further develop and prove my knowledge with a certification.

Pytorch is a library used for Machine Learning which is a is a hot topic that hasn’t stopped trending. Coursera offered an intermidiate course my IBM on it so I decided to give it a try.

The issue I always have with these type of courses is that you don’t necessarily have the same “starting level” with the course itself. You may need to go over topics you are familiar with before actually starting learning something new. Which I think is fine for the most part, since it is always good to revise and refresh some concepts.

First impressions

Compared to what you can usually find on Youtube and other websites, the course seems to be very “cheap” whith a synthetic voice over and poorly made slides. But the explanations and concepts are still very simple and easy to understand. I was just suprised that the average quality of the course is not in par whith what you would normally have on a free platform.

Is it actually worth it ?

I guess no.

But I did a 7 days free trial and managed to complete the course within that timeframe.

I did learn new things and I think that the overall experience is decent. But I don’t think it is worth the starting price of 45 Euros per month.

What next

I still cannot find a good course on AI which is better than what you can find freely online. I guess the price you pay is just for a fancy certificate to put on LinkedIn? Am I missing anything here?