Now, you can take an educational course on the go with Coursera mobile app

On Android and iOS, Coursera app works seamlessly for online courses offered by varsities globally

Education-focused technology company Coursera, known for specialised online courses and learning tools from top global universities and educational institutions, is making education more mobile and accessible to people. The company is also running online courses through an app on smartphones operating on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems.

Considering that flexibility is a major reason for learners across the world enrolling for online courses, Coursera’s availability over its web portal as well as a mobile app could have twin benefits. Not only will it help the company increase its reach, it will also make it much more convenient for learners, especially those looking to go for a course alongside their professional pursuits, to enrol.

At present, Coursera has more than 25 million registered learners across the globe – 1.8 million in India alone. Of its learner base in India, 24 per cent access Coursera services through mobile. Also, the country is the second-biggest market for Coursera, next only to the US.

Business Standard took a deep look at Coursera’s Android mobile app and analysed its features to gauge the app experience. Here are some of the observations:

Getting started

The Coursera app is available at Google Play Store under the name ‘Coursera: Online courses’. Once the app is downloaded and installed, the app asks for a registration, which you could do through a Gmail account, Facebook account or any other e-mail address. Once registered, the app logs in automatically.

App features

The Coursera app is easy to use and navigate. The features can be toggled either by swiping or by touching the option directly. There are four main options available – My Courses, Recommended, Featured and Discover.

My Courses window shows the current courses you have enrolled for. It also offers a ‘browse catalogue’ button that shows all the available courses filtered under various branches, such as Arts & Humanities, Business, Computer Science, etc.

The Recommended window shows recommendations for courses based on the primary goals you have set. The Featured window shows trending courses and the discover window shows all the available courses filtered under various branches – just as it shows after clicking on ‘browse catalogue’ option on the My Courses window.

Online Courses

The Coursera app provides multiple courses on the same topic offered by different universities. Therefore, the duration and course material differs and it is up to the learner’s preference to decide the course and university before enrolling.

The app states important details like video hours in the course, practice quizzes, required quizzes, peer-review assignments, etc. The outline of the course is also provided to brief what will be covered by the course.

Once you finds the course of choice – by selecting Course title, duration, study material, price, and university – you can enrol directly from the app.

How to enrol for a course?

You can enrol for a free learning material or a paid course through the Coursera app. The free learning material requires you to submit the assignments based on the learning experiences. 

For paid courses, you can either pay for the complete course or for separate topics within the course. There is an option to prepay the course fee using debit or credit cards, or even Paytm. Also, the learner can select modules within the course and pay for selected modules using debit or credit cards, or Paytm wallet.

Conclusion

The Coursera app is one of its kind – at least so far – and offers great educational resources to the new-age learner. The app is swift and can be used to take courses on the go. The company claims that 96% of all the courses can be taken using mobile devices.