Coursera
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Coursera is an online education platform that partners with universities and organizations across the world to provide free courses on a variety of subjects. Founded by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller of Stanford University in 2012, Coursera seeks to bring quality online education on a diverse group of subjects to individuals throughout the world.[1]
Coursera operates by offering MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, to its users at no charge. The courses themselves are conducted like many online courses: videos and/or reading is assigned alongside projects and assessments. Oftentimes, feedback is given automatically and the student can review the subject matter that gave him trouble. Other times, projects are reviewed by peers who can offer suggestions or notice errors. The result is the dissemination of knowledge to interested individuals throughout the world. Because of its online structure, Coursera is able to track the results of each individual student. It can use those results to influence future courses, or as part of research that can be used to benefit education as a whole.[2]
As mentioned above, Coursera offers its courses free of charge. It makes money, however, by offering completion certificates for each course. While these certificates are not valid substitution for college credit, they offer proof that one has acquired knowledge of a certain subject. Another source of revenue for Coursera is its partnerships. Through an Amazon company, Coursera secures a small percentage of textbook sales based on the textbook recommendations made by Coursera instructors.[2][3][4]
Coursera is part of a rapidly developing group of companies that offer MOOCs. Coursera and its competitors all hope to revolutionize education, but many of these programs are still very young.[3]
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External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Coursera.org, "About Coursera," accessed September 10, 2014
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Fastcompany.com, "How Coursera free online education service will school us all," accessed September 10, 2014
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 MIT Technology Review, "The most important education technology in 200 years," accessed September 10, 2014
- ↑ Inside Higher Ed, "Coursera begins to make money: Free to profit," accessed September 10, 2014
