Equipping students with skills of the future: Coursera CEO Maggioncalda

Leading online learning platform Coursera recently announced several new initiatives to improve access to high-quality education in Saudi Arabia and better serve the local needs of learners and institutions in the Kingdom.

During his visit to Saudi Arabia, Global CEO of Coursera Jeff Maggioncalda announced these initiatives, stepping up the learning platform’s substantial role in propelling the ongoing talent transformation drive in the Kingdom, while advocating equal access to world-class learning for all.

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The most notable among these efforts include launching a large catalog of learning content – 4,000 AI-translated courses now available in Arabic – and many AI-powered features to make online learning more personalized and interactive.

Now, top courses such as ‘The Science of Well-Being’ from Yale University, ‘AI for Everyone’ from DeepLearning.AI, ‘Programming for Everybody’ from the University of Michigan, and ‘What is Data Science?’ from IBM, which has until recently been available only in English, are going to be accessible to anyone who speaks Arabic.

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Coursera also significantly expanded its presence in the Kingdom to serve more than 70 enterprise customers as institutions across Saudi Arabia embrace online learning to equip their workforce and students with digital skills. With nearly 1 million learners and 1.7 million enrollments on the platform, Saudi Arabia is the second-largest market for Coursera in the MENA region. With a large and expanding learner base in Saudi Arabia that can now be served with local language content, Coursera is well-positioned to equip the Kingdom with skills of the future.

According to Maggioncalda, Coursera now serves esteemed institutions such as STC, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Prince Sultan University (PSU), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), National eLearing Center (NeLC), and many others.

In 2023, Coursera witnessed a surge in interest in Generative AI content globally, with 570,500 learners enrolling on the platform to benefit from the 35+ courses or projects on GenAI developed in collaboration with leading university and industry partners. This means that roughly every minute in 2023, someone enrolled in GenAI content on Coursera.

As of September 30, 2023, Coursera supports the skills development of over 8.4 million learners in the Middle East and Africa region, with an impressive 3 million plus enrollments in 2023. The global learning platform has also significantly expanded its presence in the region, partnering with 170+ businesses, 230+ campuses, and 40+ governments.

“We remain committed to making high-quality education easily accessible, contributing to the region’s progress and preparing learners for success in the ever-changing global landscape," said Kais Zribi, Coursera's General Manager for the Middle East and Africa.

Bridging the language barrier

“Saudi Arabia’s goal of diversifying the economy and becoming a technology leader depends on building a large and digitally proficient workforce,” said Maggioncalda. “Our mission is to create equal access to world-class learning, and this marks a big moment as we use the power of AI to bridge the language gap for millions across the country.”

The translated content will be initially accessible to customers of Coursera for Business, Campus, and Government. It will be rolled out to all learners in the coming months, he said.

Among the more-than-4,000 courses now available in Arabic are some of the most popular courses in Saudi Arabia, such as ‘Learning How to Learn from Deep Teaching Solutions,’ ‘Introduction to Data Analytics from IBM,’ and ‘Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills from University of Michigan.’

Now, learners can access course readings, lecture video subtitles, quizzes, assessments, peer review instructions, and discussion prompts — all in their local language.

The benefits of such learning is quite evident. According to Coursera’s ‘2023 Learner Outcomes Report,’ 82 percent of learners in the MENA region reported career benefits, while 96 percent reported personal benefits from Coursera.

“Embracing lifelong learning, E-Learning, and AI is paramount for catalyzing knowledge and skill enhancement in the Middle East region,” said Dr. Kiran Nair, Associate Professor and Head of Internationalization and Partnerships, Abu Dhabi University, to Al Arabiya English. “In an era of rapid technological evolution, continuous learning is not just a choice; it's a necessity. Lifelong learning fosters adaptability, ensuring professionals remain agile in the face of dynamic market demands.”

E-learning, according to Dr. Nair, “has become a cornerstone for accessible education, breaking geographical barriers and providing flexible learning schedules.”

“With its diverse workforce, the Middle East can harness E-Learning platforms to upskill and reskill talent, promoting economic growth and innovation,” he added.

AI integration

“The integration of Artificial Intelligence amplifies the effectiveness of learning experiences,” Dr. Nair said. “AI-driven platforms personalize education, catering to individual learning styles and pacing. This optimizes the learning journey and ensures that acquired skills align closely with industry requirements.”

Summing up, he said: “As the Middle East transitions towards a knowledge-based economy, lifelong learning, E-Learning, and AI synergy catalyzes professional and societal advancement. Professionals must champion these transformative tools to empower their knowledge and skills that will help them foster innovation and secure a prosperous future in this region.”

Saudi human capital development

“Saudi Arabia has the vision, I mean literally through Vision 2030, they have a clearly articulated view of where they want their country to be by 2030, and human capital development is a big part of that. So, they have been very clear and explicit that there is a vision for the way they want their workforce to be and, therefore, are investing tremendously in upskilling and reskilling,” said Maggioncalda. “As an economy, Saudi Arabia is doing really well in terms of actually backing that up with real programs and budgets.”

Maggioncalda noted that the Kingdom wanted to bring more women into the workforce. “So, there is a big emphasis on educating Saudi citizens, but also, in particular, making sure that women have good access to learning as well,” he added.

“Coursera is playing a big role in this, with a number of different pieces that we bring to the table: We work directly with individuals, then we also offer services to institutions and work with businesses, and we work with governments as well as universities in terms of the learners.”

Giving some quick snapshots of Coursera’s activities and increasing reach in the Kingdom, Maggioncalda revealed that the platform now served almost a million citizens in Saudi Arabia during the last year -- representing a 38 percent year-on-year growth.

Of these learners on Coursera, women represent 32 percent, and men 68 percent. Of the total learners in Saudi Arabia, 57 percent access it on mobile, while the global average for mobile access is 48 percent.

The big jump in learners happened during the pandemic, noted Maggioncalda, but it’s really continuing to grow in terms of registered learners and the number of enrollments, he said.

“And then, when you look at what learners in Saudi Arabia are learning, it’s really a broad range of skills and not just technical skills. A pretty wide range of courses are being taken, and the popular courses are the ones that are translated,” he said.

During his tour of the Gulf, Maggioncalda said one of the things that he was talking about was that a lot of people don’t realize that the technology behind ChatGPT has also dramatically advanced the capabilities of translation and Machine Translation into other languages. “We now have 4,000 courses that have been translated into seven languages, including Arabic. We’ll soon have 4,000 courses in 17 different languages. So, this AI technology is dramatically bridging the language barrier for many people and we are very excited about it.”

He further said: “On the one hand, you have online education, which is accessible anywhere, anytime by anyone. Now, with language translation, you have much more equal access, independent of the language that you speak. So that’s a lot of what we’ve been focused on recently: the role that AI is playing in terms of language translation.”

The learning network

Coursera works with 7,300 institutions globally. In the MENA region, the Coursera network includes 170 businesses, 230 campuses, and 40 governments.

In Saudi Arabia, Coursera works with 35 businesses, 20 universities, and 18 government entities.

Coursera for Business has about 4,000 learners and about 60,000 enrollments, and “you can see some of the brands that we work with in the Middle East region are the biggest in Saudi Arabia,” the CEO said.

“Prince Sultan University (PSU), one of the best universities in Saudi Arabia, is integrating courses on Coursera into their curriculum, so that students taking Coursera courses get credit towards their degrees, and that’s been really exciting,” he said.

Another major program that we’ve launched here is with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). Then there is the National Centre for E-learning, which continues to be a great partner of ours.

“We recently just launched a program that MCIT is calling ‘Fuel,’ which is a citizen upskilling initiative aligned with training 100,000 Saudi nationals in digital skills. Basically, it’s a whole set of learning programs that MIT has selected and put together.”

At a recent conference organized by Coursera in Dubai, the head of the National Qualifications Center (NQC) in the UAE, the main accreditation agency for all colleges and universities in the UAE, announced that the agency would be accepting all courses on Coursera that have the American Council for Education credit recommendations.

Maggioncalda said the two most innovative countries in the Middle East were certainly the UAE and Saudi Arabia. “The Middle East region is showing a lot of innovation. When it comes to higher education, there is more innovation in the Middle East than what we’re seeing in Europe.”

‘AI is here to stay’

Maggioncalda noted that the way professors teach and the way students learn are going to be totally different. “I mean, COVID-19 was one big shock, but General AI is going to be another big shock, and Generative AI is not going to go away. So, universities are realizing that there’s going to be new ways of teaching students with globalization and translation.”

According to Maggioncalda, we are also seeing universities coming to recognize the employability of their graduates, and the need to integrate industry micro-credentials into their curricula for credit. He addressed the question of how to ensure accuracy of translation into Arabic. What Coursera did in all the 4,000 courses that have been translated was introduce a language menu.

“When you say you want to see a course in Arabic, it changes not just the subtitles, but it actually changes the whole user interface, and you can see that the menu system has gone right to left. The text is gone from right to left. All the buttons are translated. All the controls are translated, and even the controls on the video player are translated,” Maggioncalda observed.

Ensuring quality of translated content

With regard to maintaining the quality of the AI translation, Coursera hires professional linguists who actually evaluate a number of courses. “And what you find is that different. Language pairs have different quality ratings. We also find that in different domains, the language quality is a little bit different, so you know in some domains it is better than others. We’ve seen a huge increase in quality generally,” said Maggioncalda.

“When someone turns on the language translation feature for the first time, there’s a message that comes up that says: ‘These translations are done with AI and we want your feedback on the quality of these.’ So, the quality checks are inbuilt, and the learner can provide the feedback.”

Maggioncalda said Coursera works with different AI models for different languages. “We actually look at all the service providers out there, and maybe in a certain language, Google is better, and in another language, DeepLearning.AI is better. We go with the model that has the best quality, and then we translate a bunch. We hire a linguist to check. Then, we allow for a feedback mechanism from the learners.”

With this feedback, Coursera can actually have human translators go and fix the parts of courses that learners have said aren’t good enough.

“We can now translate courses for about $20 per course. What’s going to happen is if a course quality is low, and if the models have improved since we originally translated it, it will actually be cheaper to retranslate the whole course using the current best model. What we’re expecting is that the rate of quality improvement is so fast that I don’t even know if we’re going to need humans in the loop other than the learners saying there’s an issue here, and once there’s an issue, we’ll just retranslate it. That’s going to be our basic strategy. If that doesn’t really get enough quality, then we’ll just have a human fix those quality issues, but they don’t have to retranslate the course from scratch.”

Maggioncalda also pointed to the phenomenon called a ‘global translation.’ “A lot of learners on Coursera are very mission-driven and they want to translate for other people in their communities. So, the global translation community often volunteers to fix quality issues, although we do have higher quality people as well that do the improvement.”

“We are in such an exciting phase of our learning that this kind of technology allows digital universities to flourish along with Coursera,” the CEO said, adding that Coach should also be available on the Coursera mobile app fairly soon.

Effectively using Generative AI for very personalized learning and very specific career development opportunities are at the core of the company’s business module.

Tie-up with UNDP for Arab learners

Coursera also recently tied up with UNDP and the Mohammed bin Rashid Foundation In New York to launch the FutureSkills4All initiative. The transformative program is aimed at providing scholarships for upskilling and reskilling citizens in the nine Arab States in the MENA region: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the UAE.

In its initial phase, the program will be available to recent graduates. “Many, many people who need access to good education don’t speak English,” said Maggioncalda, underlining the significance of Coursera’s initiative to translate all of its courses. “That’s why we had Arabic at the top of our list of the first seven languages for our content: Arabic, Spanish, Brazilian-Portuguese, French, German, Indonesian and Thai.”

Shape of things to come: Course Builder

Coursera was also working on its own interface feature, similar to ChatGPT, called the Course Builder for authors and educators to build custom courses using content on Coursera, comprising lectures and videos. It will automatically generate the learning objectives, course structure, content, and summary.

Course Builder will also be equipped to automatically generate the course from the Coursera database, using the subject prompt.

“If you don’t find them on Coursera, you can upload your own. Basically, you can search through Coursera as a professor, and you can also build your own course. You could also load your own material. Effectively, you are inviting guest lecturers from all these different excellent lecturers around the world into your room,” Maggioncalda said.

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