Certificate from Stanford Venture Lab

In a previous post I discussed about online education. Among the final reflections that I shared, one was about the certificates:

Certificates: all three courses are not official Stanford courses, though the instructors send a “Statement of Accomplishment” after satisfactory performance and completion of the course. I guess that with time more institutions will go towards this model. I even think that official certificates will be delivered for these kind of online education.

I have started to receive the certificates from those courses that I completed. The first one in arriving was from “A Crash Course on Creativity“. Note that in fact it is called “Certificate of Accomplishment”, not being an official certificate from Stanford:

Statement of Accomplishment of “A Crash Course on Creativity”, Stanford University Venture Lab.

You may note the remark at the bottom of the certificate:

PLEASE NOTE: SOME ONLINE COURSES MAY DRAW ON MATERIAL FROM COURSES TAUGHT ON CAMPUS BUT THEY ARE NOT EQUIVALENT TO ON-CAMPUS COURSES. THIS STATEMENT DOES NOT AFFIRM THAT THIS STUDENT WAS ENROLLED AS A STUDENT AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN ANY WAY. IT DOES NOT CONFER A STANFORD UNIVERSITY GRADE, COURSE CREDIT OR DEGREE, AND IT DOES NOT VERIFY THE IDENTITY OF THE STUDENT.

Some more questions to debate:

• Would that stop you from taking a course?
• If you had not completed some other studies before: would you go for these courses? Would you build your student records based on this kind of certificates?
• If you were an employer: would you recruit somebody which key skill was acquired through such kind of course? (“it does not verify the identity of the student”)
• …