Hello,
If you have taken online classes at Coursera (preferably programming classes), please help me with my situation.
I spent 4 weeks taking an online programming class on Coursera and I just finished it. Since I did not buy the course(pay for certificate), the quiz and assignments are all optional to me. I watched all videos but none of my quiz/assignment is submitted since I didn’t pay for the course.
The problem now is if I put this class onto my college app(UC’s) I don’t know how I can prove to colleges I actually took this class. I was unable to find any certificate or proof that I did watch all videos and completed everything, since I did not pay for the class (I think)… Is there any way I can prove to colleges I actually took the class? I’m very afraid I won’t be able to prove it if I’m asked to prove !!
You should have the enrollment verification in your user profile. Maybe a screenshot would suffice if the UCs want to verify. However, if you didn’t actually take the quizzes and submit your assignments for grading, I’d question whether it’s worth it to include that activity.
If you go to your Coursera main screen (after logging in) and click on your initials in the upper right corner it will bring up a menu on the left of 3 items, one of which is “Accomplishments”. Go to Accomplishments and do the screen shot as Whenhen suggests for recording… check also and see if there isn’t a button to link the course to you LinkedIn page which then captures it for others to see. Excelsior!
@whenhen@Sunjock13 Coursera did not allow me to submit my quiz/assignments, telling me that I have to pay for the course first or else I can’t submit them. How can I verify then >_< ?
@whenhen@Sunjock13 For clarification purposes - I can access quiz and answer questions too, but I can’t submit the quiz. On the bottom of each quiz, there’s a button called “upgrade to submit” , which requires me to buy the course . Do i really MUST pay money to prove the efforts/time I’ve put in in the past month T__T.
Now you’re seeing why some might choose to pay for the certificate. Neither your assignments nor your quizzes were graded which brings into question what you actually learned. You can certainly verify your programming skills in other ways, but from an outsider’s perspective you may as well have watched Netflix given the lack of proof that you actually did the assignments.
That’s Coursera’s business model. Don’t like it? Should have taken a class from another, cheaper online education provider.
@whenhen yes, that’s true. In my situation though, please realize I will have to pay a huge amount of money given the amount of courses I’ve taken at the same time. Outsiders will definitely doubt what I actually learned, but the question I have here is different – I’m asking if there’s any other way to prove to college admission officers…not about the perspective of an outsider.
If you don’t want to pay for the certificate to show you officially took these courses, I think you could just list them as an EC e.g. self studied x using coursera.
If asked to prove it, you could explain that you didn’t pay for the certificate and send them copies of all the programs you wrote. But I doubt anyone is going to ask for proof of this, it’s not particularly unusual for people to audit online courses, and colleges don’t generally care that much about self-studying.
@mathyone@me29034 I’m listing Coursera courses in the “Extracurricular Classes” on UC application. I’ve heard that it’s usual for people to audit online courses, which is pretty much what I did. Thanks for the advice!
@“Erin’s Dad” Yes, i would love to show my interest in computer science.