About the Coursera Creative Writing Courses
A few months ago, I wrote a short story. It was based on a pretty heartbreaking personal story, and of course I fictionalized the reality of it, but it still hit really close to home. It was very hard to write, and incredibly hard to read. I left it alone for a long time without editing it, because I just didn’t have the heart to go back and read it again.
After several weeks, I went back and read and edited it. As expected, it was a sad ordeal. But my story was still missing something. A week or so later, I read/edited it once more, and still felt a disconnect with the story. I don’t know if the story is poorly written, if there’s something missing, or if I’m dissecting it too much.
This confusing experience prompted me to join an online writing course. I really wanted some professional guidance ASAP. So I did some research, and to my surprise, online creative writing courses are very expensive. Considering that creative writers typically get paid peanuts, it seems to me to be a bit out of whack that the courses are so high-priced. Anyway, after doing some digging, I found Coursera.
Coursera is an online education site with its headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Launched in 2012, they offer both free and paid courses covering numerous subjects in several different languages. The course I chose is called the Creative Writing five-course specialization. The specialization, created by Wesleyan University (which appears to be a real, live uni in Middletown, CT) includes four courses and a capstone project; completing the five courses will give you a certificate.
The website says, “Earn a Certificate to share your success with the world” which implies there’s little value in the certificate other than “bragging rights”, and maybe a little street cred if there are any creative writing gangs in your neighborhood.
Anyway, there are four courses (The Craft of Plot, The Craft of Character, The Craft of Setting and Description and The Craft of Style) that precede the final course, called Capstone: Your Story, which is a culmination (I assume) of everything you learned in the previous courses. The courses are $79 each, and you can either pay it all up front and save a few bucks, or pay for one at a time; for now, I’m paying for just one to see how it goes. You can sign up for any of the four courses in any order you wish, but I went with The Craft of Plot.
Before I made my purchase, I tried to find reviews on Coursera online, and I literally found nothing on the creative writing courses offered, and really little else that wasn’t published by Coursera itself. I don’t know if Coursera has a secret team of specialists scouring the internet for reviews and burying them deep in the recesses of Google’s search pages, but I couldn’t find anything and it was pretty frustrating. Since its only $79, I decided to go for it.
The class I’m taking goes from February 8 — March 14. As of this writing, I’m almost one week in; I already have some experience and feedback that I think is worth sharing, plus I need something to blog about. So, I’ll be blogging about the experience and sharing as much info as possible.
Annoying Thing #1
Since you’re now several paragraphs in, here’s the most annoying thing I’ve found so far: peer review. You watch some videos, you do the assignment, and your classmates comment on your work. I have no idea how helpful this is going to be. I guess I’ll be finding out shortly. On Friday I turned in my first assignment, and it’s presently waiting to be “graded” (i.e., reviewed by my peers.) I’m also required to review three of my classmates as part of my assignment, which I did. The review consists of reading their assignment (which was a 250-word short story) and answering four questions, three of the questions requiring my typed answer, the fourth a yes/no question on if they successfully completed the assignment.
Honestly, I’m a little annoyed. I think I’m pretty smart, somewhat well read, I’ve done my share of self-guided study on creative writing, and I don’t at all feel qualified to give anyone feedback on their work. I’m not a teacher. I just tried to make my feedback as positive as possible. I don’t really want to be the one to tell someone anything negative about their writing, so I left no negative commentary and only offered one or two constructive critiques that I tried to word as positively as possible. I assume that my feedback is being used by actual teachers to help them speed through their grading, since there are 4,912 classmates in 84 countries. Yikes.
Annoying Thing #2
The second bit of annoyance I discovered is that they require a webcam to verify your identity before you can turn in any coursework. There’s no way to get around this, even though Coursera’s FAQ’s say you can turn it off, you in fact cannot. According to a fellow student who posted in the Community Support forum (see photo, above), Coursera’s customer service states that for paid courses, you must have verification on. Supposedly, you can cancel and get a refund and then take the course for free (meaning no verification needed, no webcam needed). Unless you’re willing to go through all of that, the reality is that if you don’t have a webcam, your webcam doesn’t work, or for whatever reason you don’t want to take a picture with your webcam to verify your identity, don’t sign up for paid Coursera courses.
I’ll share some more specific information on what its like to take the creative writing courses in another post, so if you’re looking for some annoyingly detailed information on Coursera’s Creative Writing Specialization, be sure to check back here.
Read more about my experience in Coursera’s The Craft of Plot. You can also check out my full review on the Coursera Creative Writing Specialization.
