Re:Ask HN: Which of the major MOOCs provide better credentia...
by mindcrime on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @03:39PM
(#15127012)
I would like to know what's your opinion on which of the major MOOCs (Udacity, Udemy, EdX, and Coursera) is better as a credential to add to my resume and impress future employees.
Speaking only for myself, I would weight the presence of courses from Coursera, EdX and/or Udacity about the same. Udemy courses I would give less weight too. I wouldn't say it would be 0 for Udemy, but from what I've seen there's a really wide variance in terms of the quality of content there. That makes it harder to assign a lot of weight to those, since I don't have time to go review each of those courses myself.
OTOH, I've taken Coursera, Udacity and EdX courses myself, so I feel like I know a little more about how to weight them.
Again, this is only one person's perspective. Take that for what it's worth. Also, as others have alluded to, having a portfolio of projects you can show of is probably even more valuable. And a portfolio project doesn't necessarily need to be super fancy / involved, just something (or things) that can demonstrate that you have the skills that are on your resume. Bonus points if the code is open source and shared on bitbucket, github, etc. Note that at least when I look at code, a couple of things I care about are:
1. Is there any documentation? If so, how clear / complete is it?
2. Is the project simple to download, deploy/install and get running?
3. Is the code clear / understandable / maintainable?
Speaking only for myself, I would weight the presence of courses from Coursera, EdX and/or Udacity about the same. Udemy courses I would give less weight too. I wouldn't say it would be 0 for Udemy, but from what I've seen there's a really wide variance in terms of the quality of content there. That makes it harder to assign a lot of weight to those, since I don't have time to go review each of those courses myself.
OTOH, I've taken Coursera, Udacity and EdX courses myself, so I feel like I know a little more about how to weight them.
Again, this is only one person's perspective. Take that for what it's worth. Also, as others have alluded to, having a portfolio of projects you can show of is probably even more valuable. And a portfolio project doesn't necessarily need to be super fancy / involved, just something (or things) that can demonstrate that you have the skills that are on your resume. Bonus points if the code is open source and shared on bitbucket, github, etc. Note that at least when I look at code, a couple of things I care about are:
1. Is there any documentation? If so, how clear / complete is it?
2. Is the project simple to download, deploy/install and get running?
3. Is the code clear / understandable / maintainable?