University of Manchester joins Coursera

The agreement will see Manchester offer four courses free online: water supply and sanitation policy in developing countries; global health and humanitarianism; an introduction to population health; and our Earth: its climate, history and processes. Dates have yet to be confirmed.

The North-West institution was one of 13 universities to join Coursera today, taking the platform’s total number of partners to 97. Other new members include the Netherlands’ Eindhoven Institute of Technology, Russia’s Saint Petersburg State University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

“We are proud to welcome to the Coursera partnership this group of outstanding institutions from 11 different countries, demonstrating the ever-growing global impact of this movement,” said Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera.

“Through these partnerships, we are particularly delighted to expand also the breadth of languages in which courses are delivered, thereby offering yet more students the opportunity to benefit from a high-quality education.”

The UK’s first Mooc platform FutureLearn began teaching last week.

The University of Manchester is not currently one of its partner institutions. However, Richard Reece, associate vice-president for teaching, learning and students at Manchester said it “wasn’t simply a toss up between FutureLearn and Coursera, nor have we ruled out having Moocs on more than one platform in the future”.

“We wanted the courses to reach the widest possible audience,” he added.

chris.parr@tsleducation.com