Coursera Makes Certificate Programs Free to College Students During Pandemic

Online learning provider Coursera has opened up its certificate programs to current undergraduate, graduate or recently graduated college and university students. Students with a verified school e-mail address can sign up for free access to more than 3,800 courses, 150 guided projects, 400 specializations and 11 professional certificates on the platform. They must enroll before July 31, and have until Sept. 30, 2020 to complete the programs.

If there are courses, specializations or professional certificates that students wish to complete after the Sept. 30 deadline, they can continue many of those programs in audit mode, which provides free access to course materials (but does not include a certificate upon completion). They will also continue to have free access to guided projects, a recently announced learning model offering short, interactive instruction focused on job skills. With guided projects, "students can learn a new skill in under two hours with step-by-step guidance from a subject-matter expert," according to the company. Topics include data analysis with Plotly and Python, app development in Android Studio with Java, and social media marketing with Canva, among others.

Students can also use Coursera's CourseMatch tool, introduced in April, to find courses on the platform that best match their university catalog.

For more information, visit the Coursera site.  

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • AI robot with cybersecurity symbol on its chest

    Microsoft Adds New Agentic AI Tools to Security Copilot

    Microsoft has announced a major expansion of its AI-powered cybersecurity platform, introducing a suite of autonomous agents to help organizations counter rising threats and manage the growing complexity of cloud and AI security.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Launches Claude for Education

    Anthropic has announced a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

  • central cloud platform connected to various AI icons—including a brain, robot, and network nodes

    Linux Foundation to Host Protocol for AI Agent Interoperability

    The Linux Foundation has announced it will host the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol project, an open standard originally developed by Google to support secure communication and interoperability among AI agents.

  • open laptop in a college classroom with holographic AI icons like a brain and data charts rising from the screen

    4 Ways Universities Are Using Google AI Tools for Learning and Administration

    In a recent blog post, Google shared an array of education customer stories, showcasing ways institutions are using AI tools like Gemini and NotebookLM to transform both learning and administrative tasks.