How Coursera brings its students together with employers like Google

Free online courses in the near future will not replace the traditional ways of receiving education. Despite this, companies providing training opportunities are constantly increasing the number of courses to empower applicants in search of new career prospects. One of the online course providers, Coursera, is now helping its students demonstrate their work to some of the country's leading technology companies.

On Wednesday, Coursera announced that it is teaming up with companies such as Google, Instagram, and Shazam to develop special projects for students studying in the field of Coursera . The specialties Coursera introduced last year are self-contained, smaller courses for students. They include several courses in this subject, for example, datalogy.

Students complete a degree program with a graduation project to show what they have learned and receive a certificate of completion. Now, some of these graduation projects are being developed and evaluated by some of the most respected employers in the country.
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For example, in a recent pilot program, Google demanded that students of Mobile Cloud Computing specialty develop a cloud computing application from scratch. Now, some of these applications you can find the Google Play store.

Instagram, meanwhile, is working with the University of San Diego to create a graduation project in Interaction Design . Students will be given the task of performing a “new social experiment,” which will be evaluated by Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram and professor at Mike Krieger).

"My interactive design courses at college significantly influenced Instagram design, and my career as a whole," said Mike Krieger in a statement. “As our devices become ever more powerful, it’s very important that we create a generation of designers and developers who can help people all over the world use this power.”

Talent search

Companies such as Google and Instagram invest their time in similar programs, in many ways, so that companies such as Coursera, Udacity and edX train new applicants for their needs. Originally based as free alternatives to the standard four-year education program, all providers of massive open online courses MOOCs have turned their attention to professional training in recent years, and companies are starting to pay attention to it.

In partnership with Coursera, these companies seek out such talents that they would never otherwise have encountered. More than two thirds of Coursera students live outside the United States, and one third of them come from developing countries. And although these companies do not promise to hire Coursera graduates, only still, partnership can play an important role for them in expanding their career prospects.

"This shows that companies care about these programs and are interested in results," says Rick Levin, who served as rector of Yale University for 20 years, before becoming CEO of Coursera last year.

Technological imprint

Unlike portion courses, Coursera specialties are not free. They cost from $ 166 to $ 490 apiece, although some students are given financial assistance. Interaction with technology companies makes Coursera specialties more attractive, which in turn will bring companies more revenue. An imprint of a major high-tech partner will certainly help attract students, including those not from Silicon Valley.

It is important to note that diplomas of education received online are beginning to gain respect from employers, but they are still far from the norm. For many employers, full-time higher education is still an admission ticket, and Levin, for his part, is confident that the elite universities will give free online diplomas in the near future.

On the one hand, online courses are much less complete than full-time courses, but prospects in this area are almost inevitable, Levin stresses.