Giving students an edge
An online learning platform aims to optimise learning for undergraduates as they prepare for the post-pandemic job market, writes Hanum Afandi
IN its effort to help students equip themselves with relevant skills for the job market in the post-pandemic era, an online platform has initiated a programme designed to help colleges and universities deliver job-relevant, multi-disciplinary learning courses.
Raghav Gupta, who is online platform Cousera’s managing director for Asia Pacific and India, said industries have changed because of the pandemic.
“The skills students need are no longer the same as before. These are important considerations in the key elements of the programme, Coursera for Campus,” he said.
“Through our platform, universities have access to more than 4,500 courses to integrate into their curricula or as supplemental learning to students,” he added.
Relevant skills
According to Gupta, the platform helps universities with job-relevant online education.
“We are backed by leading investors, including Kleiner Perkins, New Enterprise Associates, Learn Capital and SEEK Group.
“Various features, including mobile and offline-learning modules, allow students to download courses, synchronise progress and take notes with highlights,” he said.
The Coursera for Campus programme also enables integrated plagiarism detection through Turnitin. It also has an online examination check through ProctorU for universities to deliver academic integrity.
“Through our partnership with Malaysian universities, such as Brickfields Asia College, we continue to make online learning possible for students in various disciplines,” he said.
Under its Campus Response Initiative launched on March 12 last year, he said, more than 4,000 universities worldwide have enrolled in the platform.
“In our recent 2020 Global Skill Index report, we also note that Malaysia has some of the brightest students in the world who are enrolled in business, data science and technology courses,” said Gupta.
“As a global community of educators, we take this as a positive signal that Coursera is playing an important role to help Malaysia produce market-relevant talent for a globalised digital economy,” he added.
Making it easy
In online learning, data connectivity has always been a challenge for many students.
To address the problem, Gupta said students were able to access Coursera even with poor Internet connectivity as it has a low data consumption option.
“Students can select video resolutions and quality for the course videos, with lowresolution
videos requiring less data. We also have the audio-only version to help learners when they have lower data connectivity.
“As another solution, the platform offers offline content. Accessing it on your mobile devices is similar to accessing, say, Netflix.
“Students download the courses and view them offline, which reduces the need for high data connectivity, unlike a live class via Zoom or Google Meet,” said Gupta.
Coursera has two plans — the Basic and the Institution plans.
The Basic plan offers access to unlimited guided projects and one course annually.
“The Institution Plan is the full experience option where universities have access to many Guided Projects and manage for-credit online learning programmes,” he said.