edX Reviews

The courses:
I have done a course with Harvard and one with Smithsonian.
Both times the content was thin and unstructured.
I have seen more professional content by some YouTubers than I have on these courses.
The study time estimates are a complete joke: one course had 7 hrs to 35 hrs study (in itself not very helpful). Would you believe it had 60 hours of film to watch, 20 recommended books and 15 assignments to submit? Did I mention you had to have a blog or create a website for it and do social media posting at every step? More like 100 hours of work minimum.
The platform:
- The tech is at best tedious and at worse not working at all.
- Moving from one page to another takes time and it is the only way to get an overview of the course (to gage your study time).
- Some parts of the course are missing from the syllabus and will only appear as you progress (too bad if you are approaching the deadline)
- For some courses, the units will not mark as complete (even if you have done all the work and submitted 5 times). If you get in touch with the helpdesk, they respond "it will not affect you, the teacher doesn't look at that"... then you check their FAQ and see that that it is totally the opposite: because your units aren't showing as complete you are not going to get graded at all.
Then you check Trustpilot and see that other's work never got graded and people never got their certificate, despite contacting the helpdesk AND the relevant university.
After a second ticket raised with the helpdesk and 10 emails, i'm still trying to get the entirety of my work graded.
Essentially these courses are a Windows of marketing for the universities and institutions on the platform. They'll even use you to do loads of social media posting for them as mandatory to submit your coursework.
If all you want is a certificate from a prestigious institution (and you are lucky with the technology and are unconcerned about learning or being treated as a human by the helpdesk), then this platform may be for you.
If you are serious about learning and would like some respect, it is not.

Really enjoyable experience with this. I found I enjoy the Harvard classes the most - Wasn't very committed until I figured that out. Really appreciate the free content and the use of videos. Felt like I was in the classroom.

This is probably one of the best things the internet has brought to my life. I'm a self admitted nerd who is a bit too obsessed with learning.
The ease in which I can find a course about almost every topic and become proficient in it in a matter of weeks - invaluable.
Loyal user of edx.

I really appreciated the work that you are offering. I mainly focused on free courses, and I gained a lot of knowledge through them! I usually mention your site when someone is asking me for a good and sustainable platform for learning new things!

I’ve taken one course on edx and am currently on my second, both provided my TU Delft. The content is very good quality and the quizzes at the end of each section actually encourage you to work things out for yourself and actively learn. I’ve seen other reviews complain about having deadlines however I think this is a good thing because it motivates you to keep learning, which is something I need. Furthermore, I haven’t paid for a verified certificate on either course yet I still feel as though I’m getting the full experience and have access to a lot of information which is going to help me in the future.

edX has a policy in which you have to complete and pass all course assignments by the course-end date. After the course-end date, the course becomes "archived," in which you can no longer continue working on assignments for a verified certificate. This policy makes it a complete waste of money for extremely busy professionals and college students. Other online learning platforms are better than edX as it allows people to work at their own pace for a certificate, even after missed course deadlines. In addition, other learning platforms allow learners to reset missed deadlines to receive a certification. However, edX's policy of completing all assignments by the course date for a certificate is a money-making scheme. I wish edX allowed learners to continue working on course assignments for certification, even after the course-end date.
In addition, the user-experience on edX is poorly designed as it is difficult to navigate through the pages. 0/10 would recommend.

Terrible customer service and definitely not designed for the busy professional! Professor sent us an email saying we have 8 weeks to complete the course, but the website says we have only 5. I reached out to customer service and they are completely useless. No reason - they just keep repeating that I have 5 weeks, even after I share the email from the professor with them!!! Edx is clearly not designed for the busy professional. Switching to Coursera for my next course, who actually have flexibile deadlines!! Also, their customer service at least seems decent.

I enjoyed more than 5 courses on Edx. They were all quite informative and the length always right (not too long!). I only suffered some problems with communication: I never received answers to my email question?

I have taken 2 courses from EDX. Both were well structured and covered what was outlined perfectly. Though it’s not easy to get a good mark, but these course provides a good understanding of any subject.

So so bad. I get that the individual academic provider would contribute to the experience (in this case I studied the University of Maryland Micromasters which was absolute rubbish - no engagement with staff, no proof-reading of exam content, ambiguous questions, highly questionable academic integrity), but edx is not much better. There was consistent bugs with the platform, throughout all courses and the exams (someone in the forum mentioned that they'd paid to take the course 3 times after failing the exam multiple times, and they were still unable to get feedback). When I asked for a copy of my exam so I could at least see where I need to improve, they said they couldn't provide it for "reasons of academic integrity" and were not willing to provide any further feedback.
Furthermore, all of this was close to the 6 month point where I could still request a refund. I decided to wait until I could find out their response to my questions before cancelling in case they genuinely seemed to care about the student experience (they didn't), and due to the fact that I had to follow-up no-reply's several times, the refund period lapsed by 1 week. Any company with a integrity would look past this but not edx - they denied the refund.

Classic bait-and-switch they get you to enroll the program at a discounted rate and then charge you for every certificate certificate that you will receive at $50 a piece that is not stated in the original agreement that you have to pay for every certificate it's a total rip-off

Completed the resilience911 course and still waiting for the material that the lecturers have promised... no concerted effort from them to provide even after months of follow up emails.