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Almost 700 colleges have signed up for free courses on Coursera during the ongoing coronavirus lockdown. There are over 270 programmes available on Coursera.
Around 700 colleges have signed up for free access to courses on an American online learning platform - Coursera. More than 270 programmes have been activated on the platform, and courses on well-being and COVID-19 have been popular in India after March 1, 2020. Post Coronavirus outbreak in the nation, there has been a surge in the online courses so that students can fill the gap in their education. Also, the universities are looking at increasing their digital competency.
This lockdown time is like forced experimentation for colleges and universities to shift towards the online learning mode. But in the long term, there is likely to be a permanent shift towards adopting online education even after the crisis ends, said Raghav Gupta, the MD, India and APAC, Coursera which is offering free access to its ‘Coursera for Campus platform’ since March 12 to all colleges and universities at a global level. The platform was launched in October 2019 but there has been an increase in the number of people signing up for courses now due to the corona pandemic.
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On Coursera, teachers can choose the relevant courses for their students and guide them on how to start the course, and at the same time, can act as their mentors via video calls. They can also assess the engagement levels of the students and give them credit or grades. Each course is 12-15 hours which translates to one credit and those who have enrolled in the courses can add these credits to the existing ones they have while studying at the university.
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Coursera is presently offering free access to more than 3,000 courses and over 400 specialisations till July 31, 2020, after which there can be month-to-month extensions depending upon the existing risk assessments. Coursera had six institutes as partners in India at the time of launch and these include - Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Pearl Academy,University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Shiv Nadar University, KL University,Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS). These universities have paid for the Coursera for Campus platform but can still get free access under the COVID-19 initiative and offer more students a chance to learn and at the same time, also offer a range of subjects and courses until July 31, 2020. Some of the most popular courses on the platform in India as of March 1 is ‘Machine Learning’ by Stanford University and the ‘Science of Well-Being’ by Yale University. Some other popular courses in India are “Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects’ and ‘Science Matters: Let’s Talk about COVID-19.’
