Jeff Maggioncalda, the CEO of Coursera, can’t hide his excitement about AI. He has ChatGPT on his phone and his iPad, and our 45-minute conversation is peppered with references to Coursera’s newest personal learning assistant, “Coach.” The interview culminates with an on-the-spot demonstration. “Coach is going to be both reactive and proactive for learners. It’s going to be a thinking and writing partner in multiple languages,” he says, typing questions into the chatbot on his iPad. In response, Coach throws up explanations, summarizes lessons, links videos and suggests further courses for the learner to check out.
Maggioncalda calls Coach a “hands-on, interactive” tool, one that lets learners set their own pace with the material. And it’s not the only high-tech strategy that Coursera employs to shepherd users through courses. The company also uses a customizable assignments generator that it acquired, for an undisclosed amount, from a Bulgarian startup in 2019.
Being one of the first, and largest, online learning platforms in the world, Coursera has gained some insights from its 124 million-strong user base about what it really takes to help people succeed in its digital classes. “We’ve noticed that the earlier we introduce these assignments into a course, the retention rates improve,” Maggioncalda says.
Still, completion rates among people who have paid for a Coursera course hover around 50 percent, according to figures shared by the company.
Coursera’s tinkering with engagement tools points to a stark hypothesis about what may be hurtling toward the American higher education system. The next decade could belong to the nontraditional, online learner — but only if the companies and universities that offer remote courses figure out how to ferry such students across the river of distraction and land them safely on the far shore equipped with skills and credentials.
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