CU Boulder Masters on Coursera

[spohara]

I just started the Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) on Coursera with CU Boulder.  There have been a few people interested in the MSDS, forthcoming MSCS, and maybe some for the MSEE.  Here are my thoughts so far:

First, the onboarding.  For some reason I thought I was just going to be able to register pay and start.  It takes about a half day to start getting the automated e-mails to set up your CU stuff.  I registered on a Friday and by Monday there was still no e-mail to link my degree plan with Coursera.  I e-mailed the program and within an hour I had the e-mail.  It actually sent twice, so I think somehow my original e-mail got 'stuck'.  At any rate, I recommend registering before the session begins to work out the kinks as quickly as possible.  After the onboarding course was complete, it took a few hours for the "for credit" version of the course to pop up.  Just an FYI, when you enroll in the for credit courses, you get an entirely new section of Coursera, and you can switch contexts between your regular Coursera stuff and the degree section.  For my first course, the difference between the Coursera and the "for credit" course is an additional week with a final project, which is mostly a compilation of what you've already done and a very short essay.  Overall, I think this type of format is something someone could work through very quickly.  

I'm doing the project management pathway and anyone with a PMP will probably breeze through it. The difficulty of the course really isn't super high and I think all my 400+ level courses at K-State were tougher than the first credit of the first pathway series.  I'm doing so much with projects and acquisitions at work that I may just know the subject matter.  But it isn't a ton of reading academic articles like other grad courses I've taken, nor is there a ton of writing.  You're writing practical documents and it is a lot of charts or tables rather than pure writing.  No lit reviews or citing scholarly articles (which I needed a break from after the TESU capstone anyway!).  So far this is very manageable just listening to videos or AI narrating articles while on my commute and spending less than a half day on the weekend for the assignments.  I expect someone working at this full time who has accelerated through a bachelors already could get in 6 credits or more per 8 week session and finish in under a year (unless the subsequent courses get much harder!).  Overall I think this tracks with what I've heard about MBA courses, which is they're generally not that hard. 

I just thought I'd share my experience so far in case people are interested.  If anyone else has anything to share about their experiences with these programs feel free to add.