MOOC Credentials You Can Earn and A Learner Review Site

Open Culture is such a fabulous source for free diversion and learning—films, interviews, reads. And courses.

In addition to the 650 free courses listed there, on Friday they shared a list of 200 more courses known as as MOOCS, with information about types of credentials offered as part of the learning experience: http://www.openculture.com/free_certificate_courses:

Free Courses Credential Key


CC = Certificate of Completion


SA  = Statement of Accomplishment


CM = Certificate of Mastery


C-VA = Certificate, with Varied Levels of Accomplishment


NI – No Information About Certificate Available


NC = No Certificate

Also helpful was the list of course that have start dates, and those that don’t. So the list can be viewed 

by month, with ongoing enrollments to the “evergreen” courses appearing at the bottom. While these completion credentials are not college credits, such credentials may offer a bridge for those evaluating courses for the assignment of college credit.

After looking at the Open Culture list, I went off in search of MOOC review sites and found http://coursetalk.org. Platform, number of reviews, ratings, and individual remarks about the course experience are included. In testing the site, I took a title on statistics from the Open Culture list and popped it into the search window of coursetalk—here are the results for this course to date: http://coursetalk.org/intro-to-statistics-st101-udacity. I also looked at one on business operations from the business category of courstalk; this one had 73 very-satisfied reviewers: http://coursetalk.org/an-introduction-to-operations-management-penn

In looking at ratings in the review site, we see the value of the courses for learners in the workplace as well as learners who might have a more academic reason for enrolling in the courses.