>"Is there any advantage to cheating in Coursera? Coursera doesn't offer certification."

Yeah. I thought the whole purpose of the open courseware initiative was placing the learning of content ahead of the "credit". If you choose to cheat, who cares? You are only hurting yourself.

Coursera emails you a certificate of completion when you finish a course. From comments in their discussion forums, it seems like some students are using these certificates to get partial credit towards courses at their own university, or to show to employers as a proof of their development, etc. So unfortunately there is an incentive for some people to cheat on the courses.

Maybe to promote the "learning over credit" model, Coursera shouldn't attempt to stop any kind of plagiarism. This would make the certificate essentially worthless, which would promote learning only for the sake of learning.

That purpose doesn't obviate social proof.