){kind=logo}
){kind=icon}
){kind=logo}
){kind=icon}
Created in 2012 by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, professors at Stanford University, Coursera was created with the goal of providing free access to courses from the world’s best universities to anyone in the world with an internet connection. Today, seven years later, the platform has announced that it will offer its courses to those universities that are not associated with the platform but want to use the materials in their own programs.
Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, announced last Tuesday a new initiative called “Coursera for Campus,” which seeks to “collaborate with universities around the world to prepare the workforce of the future.”
Coursera has distinguished itself by collaborating only with prestigious universities and, to date, offers courses from 170 of the best universities in the world. With Coursera for Campus, the platform opens its library of more than 3,600 courses to those universities looking to take the “digital leap” and offer credit-eligible* content to their students and provide continuous education (lifelong learning) to their alumni, teachers, and staff. Although the official website does not provide detailed information on requirements and costs, according to a report from EdSurge, access to Coursera’s entire library of teaching material will cost about $400 per student.
In a similar agreement, Coursera launched the Coursera for Business initiative in August 2016, an extension of its platform for companies that wanted to develop their workforce at a scale. At a cost of $400 per year, per user (in its ‘Team’ modality), companies and small businesses can offer their employees unlimited access to Coursera’s catalog of more than 3,300 college courses.
With Coursera for Campus, the interested universities will be able to provide:
-
For students: credentials and “job-relevant” skills in areas like business, computer science, health, technology, data science, physics, and engineering, among others.
-
For teachers and academic staff: the opportunity to create and scale online programs for free. Teachers will also have access to plagiarism detection and learning analytics through the dashboards of the courses that feature “progress panels” and a “skills index” to understand the behavior, mastery of skills, and progress of the students.
-
For alumni and administrative staff: the opportunity to be current in emerging areas and trends and maintain their relevance in the labor market through lifelong learning.
Coursera for Campus was first launched as a pilot program on more than 20 college campuses around the world, including institutions like Duke University, the University of Illinois, and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India.
“In today’s rapidly changing landscape, it’s important to create lifelong learning experiences for our students and staff to stay competitive in the workforce,” said Kevin Pitts, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “Coursera for Campus has already proven to be a valuable resource for our on-campus populations, and we look forward to using the program to engage our students beyond degree programs.”
For more information, visit the official website of Coursera for Campus: https://www.coursera.org/campus
*The eligibility for course credits is determined by the institution granting the credits.
){kind=icon}
){kind=icon}
This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
)