Popular online learning platform Coursera has announced free versions of Coursera for Campus and upgraded features to address the critical and long-term needs of higher education worldwide, according to a press release received on Thursday.
The new features will allow universities to deliver academic integrity for credit-bearing online learning, improve student employability, and author private courses.
The announcement builds on the momentum of the Campus Response Initiative, which was launched in March to give students and faculty free access to Coursera for Campus during pandemic-related closures.
Currently, more than 3,700 institutions use Coursera for Campus to deliver online learning to over 2.4 million students, the statement added.
“The pandemic has been a catalyst for universities to make online learning the core of their student experience,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO.
“We’ve grown from 30 universities using Coursera for Campus to over 3,700 in just seven months, and these upgrades will help them better deliver for-credit online learning and job-relevant skills for their students,” he said.
With three offerings, Coursera for Campus is committed to supporting students and institutions in every stage of online learning.
The Student plan gives every university student free access to unlimited Guided Projects for hands-on learning and one course annually*.
The Basic plan provides up to 20,000 free student licences to every university. Every licence includes access to unlimited Guided Projects and one course annually*.
The Institution plan provides unlimited Guided Projects and unlimited course enrolments for each student license. It also enables universities to author, grade, and manage for-credit online learning programs with enhanced academic integrity.
With the upgraded features, Coursera for Campus enables university faculty to administer secure, high-stakes exams and detect plagiarism in assignments on Coursera for Campus. The new features will also enable universities to improve student employability with job-relevant learning through marketable skills with Professional Certificates from industry educators like Google, IBM, Facebook, Intuit, Salesforce, and Amazon.
The new mobile and offline-learning feature will allow students to download courses, synchronise progress and quizzes, take notes with highlights, and calendar sync – all optimised for low data consumption.
With Coursera for Campus, universities in Bangladesh served more than 99,000 students who have enrolled in over 1.2 million courses. Higher education institutions have used Coursera for Campus to enable continuous learning, offer supplemental content to their degree programmes, and prepare students for jobs and internships. Among them are leading institutions like American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), North South University, Daffodil International University and Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology.