John Hopkins Coursera Data Science Specialization Track--Final Review

The John Hopkins Data Science Specialization track has been an interesting experience over the past 4 months, but not for the reasons you might expect. There was some good content here and there but on the whole, the data science track was disappointing. There's only so much you can cover in a month. Most of the courses jump from topic to topic too quickly to develop any real depth of understanding. On the plus side, you will gain basic R proficiency if you complete the R programming, getting and cleaning data, reproducible research and exploratory data analysis courses. On the down side, the content is often dull, skimps on depth and has little instructor face time. Coursera, edX and Udacity all have offerings that cover similar topics that are more engaging and cover the material in greater depth.

The most interesting aspect of the data science track is pondering the true motivation behind the track and what it means for MOOCs in general. The MOOC educational paradigm is still relatively new and it's no secret that the big MOOC providers--Cousera, Udacity and edX--are trying to find the right formula to turn "free" education into a profitable--or at least sustainable--endeavor. Both of the for-profit platforms, Coursera and Udacity, seem to be moving toward  paid "mini degrees." In the case of Coursera, mini degrees are specializations offered by universities like John Hopkins. Udacity recently pulled free certificates for its courses and is gearing up to launch paid "Nanodegrees" earned by completing courses in various focus areas. It remains to be seen whether these paid mini degrees will have any real value as job credentials, although Udacity claims its degrees will be recognized by several of its strategic partners like AT&T, SalesForce and Cloudera.

Given the push toward monetizing MOOCs, a cynic might question John Hopkins' motivation in offering the data science specialization. As I was taking the second wave of courses in the track, I noticed John Hopkins was rerunning the first month's courses again. Then, when I took the 3rd wave, all of the courses in the first 2 months were rerun. This month, all 9 courses are running again. Creating 9 short, lackluster and often lack-content courses that can be rerun every month at the cost of $50 each for those interested in verified certificates seems more like a business experiment than a genuine attempt at providing high quality educational content. I hope the big MOOC providers find a way to make money while continuing to provide top-notch content. It would be a shame if shallow month long courses became the norm.