Reflection
I finished a coursera course that IBM provides. It is about introduction to Linux commands and shell scripting. I use linux as my daily driver but I did not know a lot about shell scripting. I knew some commands before although it taught me new commands. However, I took this course especially for shell scripting.
I think the course was kind of easy. It was designed to finish the course quickly without too much effort. There were videos and readings then the student is tasked to do a graded quiz. The quizzes were not difficult and they seemed everyone can do it with minor effort. There was also web based virtual machines to tests the things that the content covered. I think they were decent and great addition but they gave too much guidance and hints to finish them. Also, they were not graded except for the final homework. Readings had default screen readers so, they were good for being accessible. The videos were decent enough but the voice over was too robotic which affected my performance. All the grading were done by AI but the final homework had AI and peer grading options.
The advantages of the MOOCs are they are easy to access. They make a good starting point although the videos might be not high quality. Getting a certificate might motivate people to pursue what they are studying. The disadvantages are being designed to be easy to finish. They were not giving too much challenge possibly due to low compilation rates. Feedback and videos being robotic might demotivate the learner. I think using AI for feedback is a good addition but never interacting a real human might be a problem. The course had a peer review option for the final homework but preparing that was way difficult than the AI option.