So I’ve recently finally completed my first coursera course. It wasn’t really a hard subject, but it made me realize that it isn’t something that I should’ve taken likely.

I guess it really depends on whether you can truly make a commitment to a course as to whether or not you will be successful with it or not.

The courses that I’ve failed to complete or even start were nice-to-haves in my view. They weren’t exactly relevant to my goals of expanding upon my education, but they would’ve made a cool looking addition to my resume. Also, I didn’t pay for the signature track for any of these courses so  it was easier for me to be reluctant in paying attention to them. I had no real purpose to learn yet another Scheme language. I don’t really  need to take a course on Public Speaking, I already have enough opportunities to improve on that in my real life. I am also over getting achievement points and don’t really care about Gamification of applications. I’m not sure if a combination of those two reasons or one of those reasons were stronger as to why I never completed those courses.

Considering that I already had a background in using Java, I have several Android devices, and I’ve previously demonstrated at work how to write automated tests for the android web browser, if felt like a natural progression to start understanding native android applications. So when I saw this course come out, I put my money where my mouth was and doubled down on completing this course.

I have to say that overall it wasn’t that hard of a course. Only the last assignment to get a certificate with distinction took a lot of time. Even then, the course was just reinforcing one of the practices I’ll be doing for the rest of my life: learning to read and understand Javadocs. As long as I allotted myself the proper amount of time to read and digest them each week, I knew I set myself to pass the course.

After completing the course, I noticed a loud minority of people that failed to read the instructions on the proper steps to pass the course. Because of their failures to read everything, a number of people failed to get a Certificate with Distinction and would have to repeat the course again to receive full credit.  This revolved around a listed requirement for the final project that you had to review assignments for three of your peers and to also give yourself your own review. Failure to do either would result in an automatic failure for the final project. This wouldn’t cause you to fail the course, but you wouldn’t get the status required to get the specialization. Considering the off and on relationship I’ve had with Coursera up till then, I disagreed with the begging that my peers engaged with. The failure to properly read the instructions showed that they weren’t really engaged with the course, like I was with my first few false starts with Coursera.

I’ve learned a lot as I’ve started this recent commitment to Coursera. Monday, I’ll start my second course to continue on towards getting a Specialization in Mobile Cloud Computing with Android. Hopefully, I continue to engage with it and that I won’t fall into ruts that I have done in the past. Wish me luck and give it a try. Who knows you can find something there that can you can truly engage with?