I just finished the course ‘International Cyber Conflicts’ at Coursera. The course was developed and led by professors Sanjay Goel and Kevin Williams from the State University of New York at Albany. This was a five week course that consisted of recorded presentations with inline questions; discussion forums; and end of week quizzes.
The presentations and readings for this course were good. After several readings referred to Cybersecurity and Cyberwar by Singer and Friedman; I elected to buy the book. I had been able to obtain the book through my local library on an inter library loan. After the second reading I really enjoyed the book and purchased it via Amazon.
I would say the only downside to this course like others that I have viewed is that the discussion forums were not really that good. The discussion forums themselves merged comments from previous offerings of the course (from about a year ago). I can appreciate why the instructors did this ; in an attempt to seed the discussion forums and get more people contributing. I didn’t think that worked. and then as with many Coursera offerings some people just don’t understand or seek to contribute to the discussions. Tighter moderation might help there.
I enjoyed the course and would recommend it to anyone interested in cyber security. The cost for the course was free unless you request a completion certificate.
