E-learning platform Coursera has today announced the launch of CourseMatch – a machine learning solution that scans on-campus course catalogues and matches each programme with the most relevant offering from Coursera’s 3,800-strong digital portfolio.
CourseMatch can absorb prospectuses in more than 100 languages, mapping them to the most applicable courses delivered in English, or in any of the 50+ languages (translated and subtitled) available via Coursera, empowering institutions in the US and worldwide to deliver impactful programmes quickly and efficiently.
The move comes after the launch of the Coronavirus Response Initiative – which granted free access to Coursera for Campus for any impacted college or university – from which the company received more than 15,000 enquiries from universities and/or colleges across the EMEA and 176 from the UK.
In a recent blog post, Emily Glassberg Sands, VP of data science; and Marianne Sorba, data scientist at Coursera, wrote:
Since we launched the Coronavirus Response Initiative on March 12, more than 3,000 colleges and universities around the world have activated Coursera for Campus programmes to minimise student disruption. We’re humbled by the overwhelming global response and are working hard to be even more useful to universities who need to move online quickly.
As universities go live using out offering, they urgently need an easy solution to help identify courses on Coursera that most closely match each course in their on-campus catalogue. This is a hard problem to solve, especially across thousands of universities and millions of on-campus courses. Two weeks back, the data science team at Coursera started to work on developing a solution that enables faculty to go online quickly, without much human curation.
The solution has already paired more than 2.6m on-campus programmes across 1,800 schools to courses on Coursera.
Colleges and universities can access the solution directly at CourseMatch and search for their institution’s catalogue. If your portfolio is not yet among the 1,800 available, email a CSV of your offerings to and your catalogue will be mapped and included on CourseMatch within two business days.
In related news: UK gov announces COVID-19 contact tracing app as fatalities surpass 10,000
