In 2014, Coursera began developing a new technology platform to improve the learning experience in our courses. Most importantly, the new platform allows us to run more courses more frequently, expanding the options available to learners and providing greater flexibility to learners in completing courses.
Maintaining two platforms requires significant resources, and in order to focus all of our efforts on further improving the new platform experience, we decided last year to move all active courses to the new platform. Over the past several months, we have worked closely with our partners to transition their courses to the new platform. Last week, we emailed learners who have taken courses on our old platform to notify them that access to the old platform will end on June 30, 2016.
We want to clarify that, even as access to the old platform ends, nearly all courses that have been offered on that platform will remain available in an updated format on the new platform. Hundreds of courses offered on the old platform have already transitioned to the new platform, and more content will be made available on the new platform in the coming months.
There are a few dozen courses on the old platform that will not migrate to the new platform, and thus will not be available after June 30th. These include courses that are out of date (e.g., medicine and technology courses that do not reflect recent research and development breakthroughs), courses that have been updated and relaunched under another title on the new platform, and a few courses that our university partners have chosen to discontinue for other reasons.
Our goal is to make as much content as possible available to our learners, and transitioning to a platform that allows courses to run frequently is extremely important to achieving that goal. The transition to the new platform has allowed us to make over 1,200 courses available on Coursera, and to offer up to four sessions of each course per month; for comparison, at this time last year we had fewer than 300 courses open for enrollment, with some courses offered as infrequently as once a year.
If you aren’t sure which platform a course is currently offered on, please refer to this help article. If you have additional questions about how the platform transition might impact your learning experience, please visit our Learner Help Center.
On behalf of everyone at Coursera, we want to thank you for your enthusiastic participation in the courses we’ve offered on both platforms over these last four exciting years. We look forward to bringing you even more great content and features on the new platform in 2016 and beyond!
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