Monday, October 27, 2014

Coursera Offers Special MOOCs

Coursera may have found a way to monetize its massive open online courses (MOOCs).  Its Signature Track of courses, which links coursework to a student’s identity for a fee, has had 4.7 million users and earned $4 million in cumulative revenues since its launch in January 2013.

Now, the online educational platform is set to take it one step further. Coursera launched Specializations as part of a strategy to create certification that carries more weight than the credentials earned from passing a single MOOC.

Coursera added 18 new courses to the track, mostly for in-demand fields such as project management, cloud computing, and data mining. Students have to complete a sequence of classes and pay $100-$300 depending on the number of courses.