Jeff Magioncalda, CEO of Coursera, the global platform, specialised in making education accessible to everyone, stressed that the platform provides over 5000 courses seeking to empower individuals with soft skills and digital skills. The number of Arabic courses at Coursera amounts to 90, and the rest are available in other languages such as English and Spanish. It is noteworthy that Coursera is translating courses fast and now has roughly 2000 courses translated into Arabic.
This educational platform was established in 2012, in co-operation with two professors at Stanford University. Now, around 10 years later, the number of learners it has around the world exceeds 92 million. Unlike traditional courses, users are not obliged to attend the courses at certain unchangeable times. Notably, courses are pre-recorded in the form of guiding videos. What the courses require is solely internet access in addition to a PC or a mobile phone.
He added, “there are about 1.6 million Egyptians who have benefited from our platform to take new courses in the most modern technology fields such as artificial intelligence and data analysis.” He also explained that some courses are free to learn, yet tests and accredited certificates are chargeable, whereas other courses are totally paid-for.
He further pointed out that the platform is currently working with 175 of the top universities in the world. Each of these universities is a pioneer in its field. It is also working with international companies, which have prepared content for training courses with the purpose of developing the personal and digital skills of their employees and individual consumers. Examples of such companies are Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft.
The CEO of “Coursera” added that last month, the company signed a partnership agreement with the new Al-Alamein International University, headed by Dr Essam ElKordi. “It is our first University partner in Egypt, with Ain Shams University being second where an agreement was signed during the current month,”
With regard to the most important areas in which Egypt has a competitive advantage, he said, “there are specific areas in which the Egyptian learners possess a high level of competencies, such as mathematics. The Egyptians are superior in the Middle East in mathematics, but in the broader field of information technology there are only some areas where the Egyptian learners have a great advantage, such as data analysis. Notably, the courses on the platform require a minimum level of skills to qualify students to obtain advanced levels.
With respect to the interest of the Coursera platform in spreading the culture of “remote work”, the CEO or Coursera indicated that it has become very prevalent as an innovative way to obtain new job opportunities. “I believe that “remote work” will have a greater role in creating new job opportunities. It opens up new ways to work and helps an individual get any job anywhere from any organization without the condition of moving to the company’s headquarters.” he pointed out.
Finally, young people should think seriously about developing digital skills to get a good job, and should keep learning because machines will automate many processes in the future, so young people have to be armed with modern digital skills.
