Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Coursera: Game changer in the MOOC phenomenon (now in Spanish too) - John Benson, VOXXI

A giant in MOOCs, Coursera, will now offer online learning courses in Spanish, Chinese, French and Italian. “Have computer, will learn,” is the simple rally cry behind massive open online course (MOOC) platform Coursera. Launched in April 2012, the globally renowned entity announced last week agreements with 29 universities from around the world to help bring their courses free via the Internet. “One of the most important parts about it is 16 of 29 universities are outside of the United States,” Coursera Business and Community Development Manager Julia Stiglitz told VOXXI. “We now have universities that are going to be teaching in five different languages on the platform.” That brings the total number of institutions on Coursera to 62 with new courses now available in Chinese, Spanish, French and Italian. The exciting news for the Latino community is the recent schools additions include the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Tecnológico de Monterrey. “It’s an opportunity for a lot more people to have access to a high quality education,” Stiglitz said. “That’s the opportunity, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, it doesn’t matter your economic situation, that you could have access to really high quality classes. That’s what we’re more excited about.” http://www.voxxi.com/coursera-game-changer-mooc-phenomenon/