Improve your skills with Coursera

Imagine the opportunity to learn a new skill within four to six weeks at the low price of less than R1,500 taught by top instructors from the world’s best universities and educational institutions.

I kid you not.  That’s what is on offer at Coursera , an innovative online course portal.

Courses covers a wide range of areas which include arts and humanities, business, computer science, data science, life sciences, maths and logic, personal development, physical science and engineering, social sciences and language learning.

Specialisations like project management or leading teams under the business category are also available. These are offered through a monthly subscription model where subscription costs vary, “depending on the topic area.”

Every course on Coursera includes recorded video lectures, auto-graded and peer-reviewed assignments, and community discussion forums.

And when you complete a course, you’ll receive a sharable electronic course certificate.

This innovative portal, which was started in 2012 by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, offers over 2,000 courses from educational institutions across the globe like the University of Cape Town, Yale, John Hopkins University and Stanford.

Its success can be seen in the numbers. As of February 2017, Coursera had 24 million registered users signed up for its programs which earned Coursera more than R13 million in revenue

It has also broadened its reach to business and offers these courses to business customers like L’Oréal and Boston Consulting Group.