The University of Namibia has joined forces with renowned online education platform Coursera to offer its students and staff free access to over 3 800 courses from the world’s top universities. 
This initiative forms part of Coursera’s response to Covid-19, whereby the company partners with universities to help them cope with educational challenges fuelled by the pandemic. 

To prevent the spread of the new coronavirus infection, the university halted face-to-face teaching and made a drastic switch to online learning in late March. Unam has about 30 000 students, however, only 6 000 made use of online learning. The transition to online learning was a mammoth task for both university staff and students. 

Unam spokesperson John Haufiku this week said the proposed partnership with Coursera comes at the best possible time because it makes more material available online and has the potential to supplement the university’s existing coursework.  
“Transitioning to the online mode of learning has been in the pipeline at Unam for some time before Covid-19, but this situation has forced us to escalate the implementation thereof. While we still face challenges with infrastructure to support online learning as a country, we cannot exclude technology from our present and future. Coursera’s presence makes various opportunities available which we are eager to explore,” Haufiku remarked. 

As the world’s leading online learning platform, Coursera was founded by Stanford professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, with a vision of providing life-transforming learning experiences to anyone and anywhere.  
Today, more than 49 million students from around the world use Coursera to learn skills in the future. Coursera offers more than 3 800 courses from 200 of the world’s top universities and industry educators, including Yale University and the University of London, as well as major companies such as Google and IBM. Coursera courses, which span popular university subjects like engineering, business, data science, health, and arts, are divided into weekly modules with video and reading lessons. Course performance is assessed via quizzes and peer assignments, and learners receive a certificate upon completion.
anakale@nepc.com.na