>>11342745Coursera is no more useful than self-learning by any other means and at best shows that you really like the topic you're trying to do some research work in. However if you were to insist about how important it was that you were following a coursera course, it would be a red flag.
Good grades are nice but beyond the usual acceptance threshold, your knowledge, passion, experience, ability to think, and personality (e.g. how well you mesh with the prof, and possibly the students depending on lab) matters most of all (except if you have straight A's, because some profs still get tricked by thinking grades = smart. My own PI for my PhD got tricked that way and is regretting it a lot right now).
Any self-teaching/coursera is good in showing passion and will bootstrap you for knowledge, but it's usual for new grads to learn "on the job" in the first few months anyway.
Good luck.
