On March 12, Coursera—which partners with universities to offer courses online—announced free access to its Coursera for Campus platform, for all colleges and universities around the globe. Since then, it has witnessed a huge spike in uptake of the platform and several of its courses.
In March, Coursera added 363,000 learners in India. Between March 12 and March 31, more than 983 inquiries have come from colleges and universities in the country, and over 700 universities and colleges have signed up on the platform, with 270 programmes launched. Globally, in the same time period, Coursera got more than 17,000 inquiries from colleges and universities in 120 countries, and over 3,000 universities and colleges signed up, with 2,100 programmes launched.
Part of the reason, of course, is the lockdown due to the Covid-19 outbreak and the resultant ‘learning at home’. “India has over 37 million students enrolled in higher education. An interruption in the delivery of education could cause long-term disruption to economic growth,” says Raghav Gupta, managing director, India and APAC, Coursera. “Our intent was to help students and universities in the time of crisis.”
Popular trends on Coursera
“We have seen a significant jump in registrations in India. Compared to February, overall registration is up by 173% in March,” says Gupta. “Enrolments, too, have seen a very strong increase. Compared to February, the overall enrolment is up 145% in March.”
Public health content
Month-on-month (February-March), Coursera India has seen a whopping 875% increase in enrolments in public health content. For example, since going live on February 18, Imperial College London’s course ‘Science Matters: Let’s Talk About Covid-19’ has become the second most popular course launched on Coursera India in 2020 (it is already the most popular course globally on Coursera, among those launched in 2020).
In addition, globally, there have been more than 1 million enrolments in Yale University’s ‘The Science of Well-Being’ course, making it the third most popular course of all-time on Coursera. “In comparison, there were 270,000 enrolments in all of 2019,” adds Gupta. “In India, enrolment in this course increased by 1,975% in March compared to February.”
Globally, when comparing the past 30 days with the preceding 30 days, enrolments for epidemic/pandemic courses increased by 360%. These courses include ‘Epidemics: The Dynamics of Infectious Diseases’ from the Pennsylvania State University; ‘Epidemics, Pandemics, and Outbreaks’ from the University of Pittsburgh; ‘Epidemics’ from the University of Hong Kong; and ‘Outbreaks and Epidemics’ from Johns Hopkins University.