Evaluating Online Course Attributes and Their Impact on Professional Skill Development on Coursera

The proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has fundamentally altered the landscape of professional development, offering accessible and flexible learning opportunities. This study evaluates the impact of specific online course attributes on the enhancement of professional work skills within the Coursera platform. The primary objective is to determine how course quality, duration, and knowledge relevance contribute to skill acquisition. Employing a quantitative methodology, this research analyzed survey data from 204 Coursera users through Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results demonstrate that course quality, duration, and knowledge relevance each have a significant positive influence on the improvement of work skills. Notably, course duration also emerged as a strong predictor of perceived course quality. This study concludes that online learning platforms are effective ecosystems for professional upskilling when course design is meticulously managed. These findings provide empirical guidance for learners, corporate training programs, and educational institutions, underscoring the importance of investing in high quality, relevant, and appropriately paced online courses to foster tangible improvements in workforce competency and employability.