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I only found out about Coursera a few months ago and I eagerly signed up for every class that caught my interest (nearly all of them related to business and/or psychology). This site offers an excellent selection of online courses from quality professors at prestigious universities around the world – all for free! There’s no limit to how many students can take the course, since professors use automated grading and peer grading to help with the assessment and aren’t limited by their own (ok maybe more like their TAs’) time. Talk about opening up higher education to the masses and making it easily accessible!

In January, I started my very first class, diligently listening to lectures, taking quizzes, completing projects, doing peer grading, and otherwise taking the class like a good student. As it was wrapping up, two other classes started up and I discovered a third I was interested in. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with everything I had taken on and couldn’t keep up with the workload.

Luckily, that’s what’s great about Coursera (and other platforms for massive open online courses – MOOCs): you take the class at your own commitment level. Each of my professors in these classes has reiterated that it’s totally fine to just audit the class, throw yourself into all the assignments, or something in between. It’s your choice how involved you want to be and how much you want to take from each course. In the end, more effort means you get a certification that you completed the course and extra effort means you can get certification of completion with honors.

So, I’ve stepped back and evaluated what I can manage for each class and will focus my efforts accordingly. It’s such a wonderful way to enrich yourself just because you’re interested in certain topics. Ultimately, you’ll grow as an individual and it might help you with your professional skills as well. Plus, there’s plenty of opportunity to interact with thousands of students around the world to learn from them. Coursera is what you make of it and it opens up quality educational opportunities to thousands. There are so many things that make it great!