Coursera Providing Free Access to Its Course Catalog to Universities Impacted by COVID-19

FYI: If you work in a uni­ver­si­ty impact­ed by COVID-19, Cours­era invites you to lever­age their course cat­a­logue. The com­pa­ny’s CEO writes:

The spread of the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) is the most seri­ous glob­al health secu­ri­ty threat in decades. In many coun­tries, restric­tions imposed by gov­ern­ment agen­cies have dis­rupt­ed dai­ly rou­tines for mil­lions, includ­ing stu­dents. Many uni­ver­si­ties in the impact­ed regions have sus­pend­ed face-to-face sem­i­nars, closed cam­pus­es, and are scram­bling to find a solu­tion to min­i­mize dis­rup­tion for their stu­dents.

We are for­tu­nate to have uni­ver­si­ty and indus­try part­ners, who have been at the fore­front of respond­ing to the chal­lenges human­i­ty has faced from time to time. Inspired by their sup­port and con­sis­tent with our mis­sion of serv­ing learn­ers every­where, we are launch­ing a glob­al effort to assist uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges seek­ing to offer online course­ware in response to the coro­n­avirus.

Start­ing today, we’ll pro­vide every impact­ed uni­ver­si­ty in the world with free access to our course cat­a­logue through Cours­era for Cam­pus. Uni­ver­si­ties can sign up to pro­vide their enrolled stu­dents with access to more than 3,800 cours­es and 400 Spe­cial­iza­tions from Coursera’s top uni­ver­si­ty and indus­try part­ners. These insti­tu­tions will have access until July 31, 2020, after which we plan to pro­vide month-to-month exten­sions depend­ing on pre­vail­ing risk assess­ments. Stu­dents who enroll on or before July 31 will con­tin­ue to have access until Sept. 30, 2020.

Over the past few weeks, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty has been using Cours­era for Cam­pus to serve impact­ed stu­dents at their Duke Kun­shan cam­pus in Chi­na. This effort has been swift­ly adopt­ed by stu­dents and wide­ly rec­og­nized by the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty. We believe that Cours­era for Cam­pus can be an effec­tive resource to help all high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions respond to the impact of coro­n­avirus.

As a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty of edu­ca­tors, we are hon­ored to be serv­ing fel­low insti­tu­tions and stu­dent com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing this cri­sis. Over the next few days, we will also hold webi­na­rs and share more resources, includ­ing expe­ri­ences from our part­ner com­mu­ni­ty, to help insti­tu­tions look­ing to tran­si­tion online dur­ing this cri­sis. Stay tuned.

Sign up for Cours­er­a’s Coro­n­avirus pro­gram here.