UF joins Coursera in offering free, online courses

September 19, 2012

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Coursera today announced that the University of Florida is among 17 prominent universities to sign agreements with Coursera to bring its courses online for free to expand education opportunities on university campuses and worldwide.

With today’s announcement, Coursera now hosts 200 courses from 33 domestic and international universities and reaches more than 1.3 million students across the globe.

“The University of Florida has always been at the forefront of online education, so joining Coursera is a completely logical next step for us,” UF President Bernie Machen said. “As boundaries and limitations begin to disappear in the world of higher education, Coursera is clearly an up-and-coming player on the global stage and we look forward to partnering with them.”

Since its first course offerings six months ago, Coursera has accelerated toward its mission to educate millions worldwide, enrolling more than 1.3 million students around the world, building meaningful community engagement systems, and establishing advanced technologies to support learning online. The 17 universities joining Coursera’s platform today will expand the growing course roster, adding new and increasingly broad perspectives in the areas of music, medicine, humanities and more.

Other institutions joining Coursera include Columbia University, Brown University, Wesleyan University, the University of California-Irvine and The Ohio State University.

Students have access to valuable experiences beyond lectures and on-campus activities through Coursera’s extensive community engagement opportunities, which include in-person Meetups in more than 600 cities around the world, thousands of community forums on Coursera, and professor and student-organized networking. Coursera is also offering university professors opportunities to share their knowledge with larger audiences, explore new teaching methods in the classroom, and gain valuable feedback on student activity and educational outcomes.

“We set out to make education accessible to everyone around the world, and seeing our vision come to life has been an incredible experience,” said Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera. “With the addition of the exceptional, forward-thinking institutions coming on board today, we’re proud to offer an even more diverse experience to our students.”

“Over the coming months, we will continue to focus on bringing the best educational content and support systems to people around the world so that they can continue to enrich their lives through learning,” said Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera.

New courses will join current university offerings on Coursera over the coming months. For a full list of course offerings across disciplines and universities or to enroll in an upcoming course, visit Coursera.org.

About Coursera
Coursera is on a mission to change the world by educating millions of people by offering classes from top universities and professors online for free. Coursera’s comprehensive education platform combines mastery-based learning principles with video lectures, interactive content and a global community of peers, offering students from around the world a unique online learning experience. Coursera has partnered with top-tier universities to provide courses across a broad range of disciplines, including medicine, literature, history and computer science, among others. Coursera is backed by leading venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates. For more information, visit Coursera.org.