Knowledge becomes liquid. People from all over the world can take classes from the best universities for free through the Coursera platform. The secret is that it's all online.
Nineteen Universities, including Duke University, John Hopkins University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, University of Pennsylvania, University of Toronto, and others, teach the 117 courses available today on coursera.org.
Through Coursera anyone can take classes on Business, Economics, Biology, Computer Science, Education, Medicine, etc. The "auditorium" for one course comprises hundreds of thousands of students. Overall, there are over a million registered users. That would never be possible in "the real world".
"We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students. Through this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few," say Coursera founders.
How it works?
Once the "students" register they can take the courses for free. They can watch video lectures, get real assignments and real deadlines, and get evaluated by a computer review system or a peer review system. Each course lasts 4 to 12 weeks. If the student completes it successfully, he or she receives a confirmation certificate.
Under Business and Management category, the current and upcoming courses are: Introduction to Finance, Gamification, An Introduction to Operations Management, Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, and Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship
More than education
Coursera's goals are greater than just providing more accessible education. With every click it collects huge amount of data that will allow it to study students' behaviors and learning patterns.
Founded by Stanford computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, Coursera is a social entrepreneurship company based in California. So far, Coursera was able to raise over $20 million to fund elite education for the masses.
