In terms of international education, this concept of online education seems to be a growing trend.Edxonline.org, Minervaproject.com and Udacity.com are all new massive online open courses (MOOC's) -education websites similar to Coursera offering students the ability to receive the best education from elite universities entirely online. In this digital age, students are seeking ways to receive an education that is convenient and fits well with their lifestyles, but is also credible. The most tantalizing promise of a company like Coursera is the role it might play in improving education for the world's have-nots: high school dropouts, the global poor, and those less able to self-teach (Kamenetz, 2012). When the Internet became widely available to the general populace in the mid 1990s, higher education immediately recognized the untapped potential of virtual space as an effective and dynamic addition to the traditional model of university instruction. The initial foray to creating a new teaching environment involved rather rudimentary frameworks and significant limitations with communicating in virtual space. In most instances students were instructed to Telnet (or whatever their Internet Protocol might be) into the network server in order to access a virtual MOO (Multi-User Domain -Object Oriented) classroom through any LAN (Local Access Network) connection on campus, to discuss course content with their classmates and professors. This provided synchronous communication of ideas, but this early use of virtual education was mediated by a single line text-based interface. The tools and skill-set needed to access this virtual space were basic enough for anyone who was willing to explore. AN EXAMINATION OF COURSERA AS AN INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT 4Coursera is a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities across the globe to offer free courses online for anyone to take. Its mission is to educate millions of individuals worldwide by offering courses on various topics from elite universities; professors have the to capacity to teach 30,000 or more students at once thanks to an instructional platform supported by robust computing power and complex infrastructure. This information environment can serve any student in the world, provided that they have an Internet connection. Aided by technology, students are able to watch lectures from home, rather than a lecture hall, and Coursera hopes to make this student experience more collaborative and interactive for those who would not otherwise have the opportunity to receive an elite education.Striving to make the platform distinct from other types of MOOC's, the Coursera team sought out sound pedagogy for effective learning methods, and then translated the concepts into processes that could be built into the design of the platform itself. These principles are foundational to the ways in which students engage with the assorted learning and networking tools that Coursera provides as part of their personal learning environment. The videos are appr...