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Coursera Flirts With Diplomas: Online 'Specialization' Is $250

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Andrew Ng (Photo credit: Dawn Endico)

Complete your studies at a traditional university, and you earn a cap-and-gown ceremony with a smiling dean handing you a diploma. Wrap up online instruction, and nothing so thrilling awaits. But Coursera is about to narrow the gap. The Mountain View, Calif., company will start awarding  Specializations for students who have mastered a series of closely connected online courses -- and are willing to pay $250 to $500 for validation of their work.

Coursera's latest initiative is further blurring what used to be a very sharp distinction between full-fledged universities and the anything-goes ethos of massively open online courses (or MOOCs.)

Coursera started operations about two years ago, offering a handful of courses taught by brand-name professors from Stanford and a few other renowned universities. In those days, MOOCs offered by Coursera and other rivals stood out mostly because of their giant enrollment (100,000 or more signups for the most popular classes.) MOOCs were free, with high dropout rates, enrollees from all over the world, and little in the way of formal recognition for students who completed all their coursework and passed the final exam.

Lately, though, Coursera has been pushing to offer a more formalized, paid version of its MOOC experience. The site now invites students to take Signature-track classes, in which final exams are digitally proctored and students pay $100 or so for a completion certificate. Currently more than 200 of Coursera's total 584 classes are offered in Signature format. Topics range from calculus to Roman architecture.

Coursera has set up the Specialization label to cover a series of interlocking courses that are meant to provide students with full mastery of a subject. Coursera is starting with 10 such tracks, including  three courses on how to program in Python (taught by Rice University instructors), or three courses on how to make effective arguments (taught by Duke professors.)

"I fully expect that this is something employers will look for," says Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng, who is also a computer science professor at Stanford. Ng says universities are likely to welcome the initiative as well, because it will help them arrange courses in sequence.

The 10 specific Coursera offerings in the new Specializations track are shown in this chart: