I'm fascinated by Coursera and other MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). It's both surprising and not at the same time that less than 10% of enrollees (if I recall correctly from the book College (Un)bound) in these classes ever wind up finishing. Unsurprising if you take the signalling theory seriously, because these MOOCs don't hold a candle to a traditional four-year degree where you pay lots of money and get a sheepskin, so there's less payoff in the end. But the high dropoff rate is surprising because I figure that a sizeable chunk of people who enroll in these classes (a) know that it's not really going to further their career but is merely for education's, and so (b) take classes that they're genuinely interested in. People therefore must be dropping these classes because they underestimate the time commitment or they overestimate their interest in a subject. Both completely understandable, but lamentable. Thanks for being a part of the 10%.
I love the opportunity to take these 3 music courses because, yeah, I'd wanted to take stuff like this in college but I couldn't. There is an option on Coursera to buy the course certificate so I can "officially say I've officially done it" for $50 but to your point - yeah, this is completely unrelated to anything except my curiosity and pleasure, so I certainly won't be spending my money on that. I did pretty well on the 1st test but not that well on the 2nd. At first I thought "Oh, well, I passed," shrug and started to move on. Then I was like "But wait fuck this! Do you want to retain the knowledge that you're here trying to absorb just for funsies or what?" Like, why take a Rolling Stones course to know more about my Rolling Stones albums only to barely pass and immediately forget it? There was a definite mentality left over from college courses and grades and passing being what mattered that I had to fight a little. For the poetry course I never completed, honestly, as I started to go through the course I became less interested as I saw the grading structure and learning expectations. Basically just 4 quizzes/exams of 30 questions or so each. I wanted to learn about poetry but I didn't want to sit through lecture and get quizzed on it, I guess I really wanted something which would have had more challenge to me and more discussion. More challenge would have meant like writing assignments, and discussion of course is an issue with online courses anyway, so it makes sense that Coursera just wasn't that good of an option.