How does Coursera benefit professors who offer courses through it?

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Alex Suchman

If you believe that money and material possessions are the only things worth pursuing, then there is no benefit.

If you believe there is something incredible, inspiring, and fulfilling about sharing your expertise with 100,000 people around the world, then there might be some benefits.

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Peggy Li

I actually just wrote a paper touching upon this subject for one of my classes this past semester. Several professors are beginning to use Coursera resources, especially the video lectures, to create "flipped classrooms" where students watch the lectures before showing up to class and class time is instead devoted to discussion, group work, etc. In this way, Coursera benefits professors by providing them with supplementary resources to alter the way in way they shape and structure their courses so that more time is devoted to interaction rather than lecturing.

Here's a Forbes article I used in my paper that addresses the question:
How Online Courses Can Form a Basis for On-Campus Teaching - Forbes

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Julius Su

I asked this to a professor teaching on Coursera. He said there were two reasons:

(1) Cost-benefit analysis. If he applies for 15 million in grants, he might get on average 300K to 600K. That's a 2-4% success rate and fairly demoralizing. In contrast, with the time he spends on Coursera, he can reach 100k students, and that is a certainty. The school also gets back 15% of any revenue Coursera is able to generate, which might be substantial in the future.

(2) Impact. Every year, there is on average one student he feels he inspires deeply enough to become a high level scientist. That is in a class of 20, which means a 5% "success rate." Now even if only 6,000 students finish his online course, that still means 300 students a year who might become professors because of him. That is deeply meaningful.

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Rod Graham

I would offer a course through Coursera (or any open online platform for that matter) for two reasons.

One is admirable: the love of teaching. I like to teach, and I think the course I am teaching can help people understand their world just a little bit better.

The second is somewhat selfish: exposure. Let's say I teach a course on Coursera that gets 100 to 200,000 students. This is 200,000 people who know my face and name and (hopefully) see me as an expert on some of the issues I am teaching. So then, if I write a book about this issue, some of those students may buy the book.

And really, once you have designed the course, it takes very little effort to actually implement it, and many professors who teach these courses have a cadre of teaching assistants helping them anyway. So, its not that much of a sacrifice for what you are getting back.

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