By Shravan Goli, Chief Product Officer, Coursera
Today, we’re excited to announce new tools and features to support the learning, teaching, and program administration experiences on Coursera. From job-relevant skilling with Career Academy to maximizing content with new authoring features, we are pleased to roll out the following product innovations for our global learner, educator, and enterprise communities.
Boosting learner personalization and motivation
Each of the 100+ million learners on Coursera has a unique learning journey. To best serve each of their needs, we’re introducing tools and features that create an even more personalized, engaging learning experience.
- PERSONALIZED SCHEDULES – Learners can input their schedules into a course to automatically receive personalized course deadlines and goals to stay on track. Launching later this quarter.
- DATA-DRIVEN DEADLINES – Each item deadline within a course is calculated based on how long it took past completers to finish the item, helping create more realistic deadline suggestions for learners. In beta, launching later this quarter.
- SCHEDULE NUDGES – Learners get notified whether they are on track, ahead, or behind in their course with actionable next steps to keep them progressing efficiently. In beta, launching later this quarter.
- LECTURE SUMMARIES – ML-generated summaries of key lecture videos provide learners with an easy way to review prior course material, gain a quick understanding of a topic, and progress faster through a course. Launching later this quarter.
- ADOBE GUIDED PROJECTS – Learners can now work with real Adobe software in a virtual environment – no installation or license required – to gain hands-on skills, build a portfolio, and prepare for a UX/Design role. Additionally, each learner who completes an Adobe Guided Project will receive a complimentary month of access to Adobe Creative Cloud.
- FILE DOWNLOADS IN LABS – With just a few clicks, learners can easily download files from Labs to work locally in their preferred development environment or to preserve their work.
Enabling high-quality content authoring and teaching
University and industry partner program staff are often the backbone of content authoring. The following products were designed to help make the authoring process more flexible for program staff, while still adhering to pedagogical best practices.
- ACADEMIC INTEGRITY TOOLS – When creating courses in degree programs, educators can combat academic dishonesty and plagiarism with text similarity scoring within staff-graded assignments across all prompt types.
- ITEM VERSION HISTORY – To facilitate better collaboration among course staff, new tools will enable authors to view version history for all item types, examine previously published item versions, and write staff-facing comments about item version changes. In beta, launching later this year.
- ACT AS LEARNER FEATURE – Degree and MasterTrack program staff can more easily manage student needs in a course using the Act as Learner feature, which enables them to easily access the student course view and troubleshoot issues.
- RICH TEXT EDITOR ENHANCEMENTS – When editing text in a course, educators will now see a view that aligns with the learner view. The new rich text editor includes greater customization and accessibility options, straightforward media renderings, seamless layout adjustments, and a live preview for math equations. Authoring becomes faster and easier with fewer clicks and better responsiveness.
- EXTRA CREDIT FEATURES – Course staff can now author quizzes with extra credit questions, allow graders to award extra points on Staff Graded Assignment rubrics, and set item and course grade overrides to over 100%.
- COURSERA LABS ENHANCEMENTS – Educators can scalably create learning experiences to prepare learners for real-world technical work environments with Labs sandboxes, assessments, and autograder. Additionally, educators can improve exam rigor in Labs by setting time and attempt limits on programming exams, including a time remaining display and auto-submission when time runs out. Fully launching later this year.
Maximizing educators’ existing content
Knowing that educators are often strapped for time, we focused on streamlining the authoring experience with features that aim to make content creation and management more efficient.
- SELF-SERVE LMS IMPORT – With this new self-serve ingestion tool, educators can easily reuse and repurpose their existing content on Canvas in their courses on Coursera, significantly reducing the time to author.
- EDX INGESTION – Educators can also migrate their existing content on edX and Open edX to their courses on Coursera, all via the self-serve edX content ingestion tool. Through this tool, university partner Dartmouth seamlessly moved 30+ courses to Coursera with minimal work for its program staff.
- ITEM LINKING ENHANCEMENTS – The new UX will provide educators with a more comprehensive view of all locations where an item is linked, to power efficient authoring of stackable programs through content syncing. Educators will have even more control over where changes are applied – including to live and upcoming sessions – without affecting archived or ended sessions. In beta, launching later this year.
- UPLOAD-BASED AUTHORING IN BULK – Educators will be able to efficiently export and update course outlines in bulk, as well as re-import changes, while still adhering to high course quality standards. Launching later this month.
Powering streamlined, job-relevant learning for institutions
Today we announced Career Academy to help enterprises give individuals – even those with no college degree or prior work experience – the opportunity to learn the skills to enter a high-demand, entry-level digital job. We’re also excited to announce the following products and features to further help organizations target the right skills and reach their goals.
- SKILLSET INTEGRATIONS – Coursera SkillSets are now even easier for learners to access within their organization’s centralized learning platform of choice.
- CUSTOM SKILLSET CREATION – Customers will be able to customize skills within SkillSets based on the organization’s unique needs and context, choosing from a variety of skills and setting proficiency targets to establish measurable learning goals. Launching later this quarter.
- NEW LEVELSETS – 60+ new LevelSet assessments across Data Science, Technology, Marketing, and Finance can assess learner skills proficiency to establish a baseline and personalize content recommendations.
- LEADERSHIP ACADEMY – With the new Leadership Academy’s 42 SkillSets for all levels that teach 35+ in-demand human skills, organizations can help employees grow as leaders, drive productivity, adapt, and innovate in a rapidly changing world.
- CLIPS – Learners will be able to address their in-the-moment learning needs with direct access to thousands of short videos and lessons from top companies and universities. Available to customers later this quarter.
- SELF-SERVE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT – Coursera for Campus institutions can independently build and manage the learning programs and curations they need for each new term using flexible tools to add the right content and structure to match their needs for each program.
We are excited to share a preview of what’s live and in development at Coursera. Planned launch dates referenced here are subject to change and purchasing decisions should not be made on the basis of forthcoming features.
As the needs of learners, educators, and institutions evolve, so does our approach to the Coursera platform. We remain dedicated to product iteration to best serve the global learner community and enable anyone, anywhere to transform their life through learning.