Finance
With the aid of generative artificial intelligence, US-based startup Coursera has translated 4000 courses into Hindi in order to support their further expansion in the rapidly expanding field of online education. This will provide outstanding courses like DeepLearning’s Generative AI for Everyone to the Hindi-speaking audience.Among these are IBM’s What is Data Science?, Yale University’s The Science of Well-Being, University of Michigan’s Programming for Everyone, and AI.
In 2012, Coursera established its headquarters in India and began providing online courses from some of the best colleges in the world.
According to Coursera, more than 40 courses from prominent institutions, like Trading Basics from Indian School of Business (ISB), Leadership Skills from IIM Ahmedabad, and Introduction to Programming from BITS Pilani, will also be translated into 18 languages, including French, Spanish, German, and Thai.
In terms of course enrollments, India has surpassed the United States. This, as per Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda, is a pandemic effect. “During the pandemic, we have registered tremendous growth in India — 18.6 million new learners registrations which is over a million higher than the US (17.1 million). This is because Indians are keen to upskill themselves for better job prospects more than any country. Before the pandemic, nobody had thought that work from home concept would be so relevant. Indians worked and upskilled themselves online during the lockdown phase,” he said.
Some of the states like Maharashtra (4.1 million), Karnataka (2.6 million) and Tamil Nadu (2.3 million) have seen a massive spike in enrollments.
“If these were a country and not states, they would be among the top 10 on Coursera list with a 52 per cent CAGR,” he added.
Not only do registrations from cities surprise us, but so do those from isolated regions. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands grew by 800 percent, Manipur by 710 percent, Bihar by 650 percent, Mizoram by 610 percent, and Kerala by 520 percent, according to the compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
Realising this, Coursera plans to tap their Hindi speaking belt in India. “This initiative is in accordance with India’s National Education Policy 2020 which anyways bringing in more flexibility in course curriculum and focussing on promoting Indian languages,” Maggioncalda said adding that in future, they might come up with more courses in other Indian languages.
However, why aren’t Indian educators roped in to curate industry-specific courses in Hindi?
“Until the pandemic, not many Indian varsities were generating their courses online. Three years back, we had association with only four Indian institutes, which has now expanded to 18. We will get more educators on board in the future,” Maggioncalda said. When asked if technology would cut jobs instead of generating them, he quickly answered that AI has already disrupted the market and the Hindi translated content will depend a lot on users’ feedback. “For now, we are banking on the AI tools for translating the content. In future, with the users feedback, we might hire translators to cross check the content,” he said.
The Leadership Skills course offered by IIM Ahmedabad is one of the most well-liked offerings by an Indian educator and was just added. Over two lakh applicants have already registered for the course, which covers subjects including power dynamics, stress management, and teachings from the Mahabharata, according to Raghav Gupta, Managing Director, Coursera, India and APAC. “This course is picked up not just by the business community but also by many individuals who realise they need these skills on an every day basis,” he said.
Two additional Indian programs have also been launched by the company: the Master of Science in Information Technology from IIIT Hyderabad and the Advanced Digital Transformation program from IIM Ahmedabad.
Source:IE
