I initially made a free account to 'audit' a course and take it for free because I was interested in the material and about halfway through, because I was enjoying it, I signed up for the paid version because this course along with 4 others combined for a full certificate once they were all complete. And if I'm spending the time on this anyway I may as well do a little resume padding while I'm at it, but I'm not exactly expecting this cert to be the thing that sways an employer. I'm treating it more like a gag than anything.I went into this expecting a very baseline introduction to the material that I can use to springboard into more serious programs. I think I definitely got that and a little more. I could absolutely nitpick some individual videos quality, maybe some outdated information here and there, but overall I think I had a pretty good experience.It IS expensive, and I did game the system and finished the courses as fast as possible and saved all the material for later viewing so I only paid for 2 months when the full certificate should have taken 10. And I think if I paid for the full 10 months (around $400) I would be a little more upset, because I'm sure no one actually gives a damn about this certificate from coursera, but at the end of the day I was here for fun and to get an introduction to the material.So overall, I say around 3 to 4 out of 5.Are you getting what you pay for? I think that REALLY depends on the course, who's teaching it, how much effort did THEY put into that course and the material, what are your goals by taking that course and so on. And those are all things that you have to decide for yourself and do the research on.My specific cert was the google IT support specialist certificate. I originally signed up just for the networking class to take for free. This cert was good quality, which you would expect from google. But I'd give a heads up that it's content is several years old now and my only real complaint is it doesn't say that ANYWHERE, so you have no real way of knowing how old a given course is to gauge if it's up to date or not. If you're learning something like cooking that doesn't really matter, but anyone looking at fast moving fields I would be a little more cautious before you purchase it.
