Through Coursera for Campus and Coursera’s Coronavirus Response Initiative, University of Szeged students will gain free access to 3,800+ courses from the world’s top university and industry educators.
In order to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus infection, the University of Szeged switched to online learning on 23th March 2020. This extraordinary online education affects all courses, meaning that 21,000 students of the university have begun to acquire their course material online in over 15,000 courses at the University of Szeged.
As the world’s leading online learning platform, Coursera was founded by Stanford professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng with a vision of providing life-transforming learning experiences to anyone, anywhere. Today, more than 49 million learners from around the world use Coursera to learn skills of the future. Coursera offers more than 3,800 courses from 200 of the world’s top university and industry educators, including Yale University and the University of London, as well as major companies such as Google and IBM.
Starting today, 7,500 University of Szeged students will have free access to Coursera through Coursera for Campus. Launched in 2019, Coursera for Campus is a new offering that enables any university to use content on Coursera to deliver job-relevant, multi-disciplinary online learning to learners. University of Szeged is also extending access to students through Coursera’s Coronavirus Response Initiative, which provides every impacted university in the world with a set of free licenses to Coursera’s course catalogue.
“COVID-19 has impacted higher ed institutions around the world, disrupting the lives of more than 1.4 billion students in 156 countries. At this critical moment, higher education institutions must work together to swiftly embrace digital courses and address the needs of their students online,” said Leah Belsky, Chief Enterprise Officer at Coursera. “We are humbled to partner with University of Szeged, which is setting an example during this difficult time by supporting students with online learning and enabling seamless continuation of their studies.”
Coursera courses, which span popular university subjects like engineering, business, data science, health, and arts, are divided into weekly modules with video and reading lessons. Course performance is assessed via quizzes and peer assignments, and learners receive a certificate upon completion.
Coursera courses can complement current University of Szeged curricula, or even substitute on-campus courses that cannot be taught online for the moment. Coursera also offers courses from University of Szeged partners in the European University Association, including courses from Lund University and Ludwig-Maximilian University.
The University of Szeged has been running its Business Administration and Management program in the form of online learning for 20 years, and it has been completed by more than 700 participants so far. The development of online learning is a strategic objective in the Institutional Development Plan of the University. The HRDOP 3.4.3 (Human Resource Development Operational Programme) project, the goal of which is to innovatively develop educational and service performance in preparation of the challenges of the labour market and international competition, is also connected to online education. Within the program, many online teaching materials have already been developed and have been integrated into university education.
‘Due to the public health emergency, the program is being implemented earlier than planned and, thanks to the coronavirus program of Coursera, to a greater extent so that the teachers of the university can embed these online materials in their courses. Owing to the collaboration, students of the SZTE can enrol to other universities’ Coursera courses’ said Professor Klara Gellen, Vice Rector for Education of the University of Szeged. ‘The goal, therefore, is to provide a broad support for the implementation of extraordinary online learning. The medium-term objective of the collaboration is to promote the integration of some of the Coursera courses into the university curricula as well” the Vice-Rector added.
To access Coursera, students can sign up through the University of Szeged website.
https://u-szeged.hu/coursera
The Coursera page of the University of Szeged can be accessed here:
https://www.coursera.org/programs/university-of-szeged-on-coursera-szqwd
