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By Sevil Omer, msnbc.com
Two professors from California want to teach the world for free.
Now, five of the nation’s top universities have backed the pair’s project, dubbed Coursera, and will next year offer dozens of online courses to students worldwide and at no cost.
Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, creators behind the online learning platform, announced on Wednesday their partnership with Stanford, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan.
"Our mission is to teach the world and make higher education available for everyone," Ng said in a statement. In the same announcement, Koller added: "By partnering with the world's leading universities, we're making college-level classes more accessible to anyone who wants to learn."
The founders say professors will teach under their university's name and will adapt popular courses for the Web, embedding assignments and exams into video lectures through its website, coursera.org. The online program will allow questions from students on online forums, according to Coursera's statement.
The pair founded Coursera in 2011 after they hosted free online computer science classes at Stanford, gaining 350,000 enrollments from 172 countries, according to the company's press release.
When Sal Khan began posting free math lectures on YouTube, he became the darling of education reform advocates. But now that his Khan Academy is expanding into real classrooms, teachers are arguing over the value of the approach.
In their latest venture, instead of college credit, students will receive "certificates of completion" or transcripts for a fee. Multiple-choice and short-answer tests will be scored by computer. According to Reuters, Coursera may also seek to turn a profit by linking employers with students who have shown aptitude in a particular field.
It was unknown what qualifications would apply for prospective students.
Participating universities have embraced the partnership, saying technology would only enhance a university’s experience and create a hybrid approach to learning.
"Our faculty members are eager to share their knowledge globally and our students are equally excited about experimenting with this new approach to learning," University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman said in a statement.
Sal Khan, a math whiz with an encouragingly at-ease lecture style, explains how his online education classes will be able to branch out into subjects beyond his expertise.
At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, at least seven professors will participate in the program, offering courses on finance, electronic voting, computer vision, and fantasy and science fiction, according a statement.
Also on Wednesday, Ng and Koller announced that they received $16 million in backing from two venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates, both based in Menlo Park, Calif. Each invested $8 million.
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