The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was the first land-grant institution to partner with Coursera, utilizing the platform to make its educational opportunities more broadly available to the general public as online asynchronous non-credit courses. Illinois now provides over 200 non-credit courses and specialization certificate programs on the Coursera platform that have reached over four million learners worldwide.
Illinois was the first university to partner with Coursera on the offering of a degree, the iMBA, and now offers over 15 graduate degrees and credit-bearing certificates. These online professional degrees and certificates are conferred by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are fully approved through shared governance, and are taught by University of Illinois faculty. Illinois partners with Coursera on these programs to reach more students in need of a more flexible and affordable educational opportunity, including the use of its provably effective at-scale learning platform.
Coursera reaches learners with Illinois educational offerings through two markets.
- Coursera B2C reaches the general public of consumer customers. Individual courses can be taken by paying a single registration fee, whereas “Coursera Plus” offers a Netflix-like annual subscription that allows a learner to take any courses and specializations across the platform.
- Coursera “B2B” reaches corporate partners, for use by their employees for continuing education and targeted skill development.