Since I’ve been really quite slack in contributing to this blog I thought I should try and re-boot.

I’ve studied a few courses now on Coursera and completed about half of them. So from my rich well of both success & failure, here are Hisso’s Tips for Actually Completing Courses Online (if you’re just mucking about, these tips won’t apply):

1. Study one course at a time, no matter how tempting it might be to add “just one more” because it sounds really interesting. As cheap as it is to sign up, the extra courses only serve to distract and overwhelm.
2. Use the estimated hours. If the course convener has said the course will need 8-10 hours per week they mean it. I’ve found those effort estimates pretty reliable. You might look at the video lectures and think it’s only 1-2 hours a week — but the lecturers have run this before and know that the exercises, peer-assessments and reading actually make up the bulk of the time commitment. So go with their estimate.
3. Study what’s interesting to you, not your employer. Because presumably you’re having to do this study in your own time, so you’re going to need to rely on intrinsic motivation to finish.
4. Keep up with the lectures and quizzes. Once you start to fall behind it can be almost impossible to catch-up, because the cumulative study time required will easily exceed your spare time available. Which leads me to…
5. Schedule in the Study Time. Ideally this is a regular time (I schedule 7-8 am weekdays) which not only helps keep you on track but also gives you a good idea of the maximum course load you can take on. If you know you only have 5 hours a week then you know not to bother trying to complete an 8-10 hour a week course (without scheduling in additional time).
6. Find a Friend. If you can find a friend or colleague who will do the course at the same time then your chances of completing are greatly improved.

So there you go. Guaranteed Coursera Course Completion or your money back (har har).

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