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(2:19 D. Koller) Hi everyone! It's a real privilege for me to be able to speak with you

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and thank you all for the amazing contributions that you're all making

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toward making education accessible to a much, much larger number of people.

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I'd also like to start off by thanking not only you, the individual volunteers,

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but also the organizations that have been working with us here at Coursera

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to help you and to help us with this amazing project.

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And these include GUOKR in China, the Lemann Foundation in Brazil,

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ABBYY Language services in Russia, the Slim Foundation in Mexico

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and many other organizations that we hope will come on board soon and (unclear ...ully)

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or that are already with us in order to help this translation project.

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Coursera has always been an international platform.

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As it happens, both my co-founder Andrew Ng and myself are not originally from the United States.

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I grew up in Israel and Andrew grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore.

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And so, we've always realized the importance of having an effort that spans the globe

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and appeals -- and that's accessible to everyone.

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In fact, even from the earliest days of the MOOC effort,

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we had only 40% of the audience from the United States, 60% from outside the United States.

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And that fraction of people outside the United States has only been growing over time,

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where (check) now only a third of our audience comes from the United States.

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And so, we're really excited to have -- to be able to expand that reach to an even larger number of people.

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Half or more of our users are currently from countries where the primary language is not English.

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Now, this is pretty incredible when you think about this.

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Our courses are hard.

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They're hard even if you're listening to them in your native language.

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And if you're listening to them in a language where you have to simultaneously

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think about understanding what's being said as well as to understand the material,

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I mean, that's really an incredible challenge,

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and it's quite amazing that these many people have been able to deal with that,

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but at the same time, we realize that there's many many more for whom this is a barrier,

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that is, that their inability to simultaneously understand English and the content

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prevents them from having the benefit of access to our courses.

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And so, because of that, we knew that we needed to make Coursera more accessible

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and a better place for learners all over the world, regardless of what their native language is.

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And so, we've been doing a number of things to help move that along,

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we've been partnering with institutions that teach in native languages other than English,

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and currently, we have, I think, ten different -- nine different languages offered on the platform

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and we hope to increase both the number of languages

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as well as the number of courses in each of those languages,

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to make a much broader range of content available to people.

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We've internationalized the user interface of the platform into six languages,

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so as to make people whose native language is that language

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feel at home when they came onto the site.

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And now, in what I think is likely to be our biggest-impact project yet

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in terms of increasing access regardless of language barriers,

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we have the Global Translation Community project,

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lead by my amazing colleagues Sébastien and Eli, here

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and it's a -- all the credit goes to them, by the way.

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So, we've been just awe-struck by the passion and commitment

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that we've seen among all of you in joining this effort.

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And I know we've heard from many of you that for you, this is an opportunity to give something back

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but it's sort of, you know, I think there is an amazing opportunity here of free, high-quality education

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and this is a way for you to share that education with people that,

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you now, might not otherwise have access tools -- in many cases your fellow country-people

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and it's really amazing that you decided to give of your time, your energy and your passions

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to make that possible.

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And I know that many people in your countries and in other countries that speak the same language

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will be very grateful for your effort and I know we are as well: so thank you all.

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(7:12 E. Bildner) Thank you, thank you so much for that introduction (inaudible) Daphne.

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Again, just as I mentioned, my name is Eli and I work on the International Grow team

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and we'll field some of the great questions that we're seeing coming in.

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Just a couple of logistical notes:

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I see there are a few questions about the nature of the community logistics

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and Sébastien and I will get to those, I guess after (inaudible) Daphne.

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So we'll let Daphne talk about more general stuff about Coursera and international growth

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in a second. I see there are a couple more comments about the hangout being a little bit hard to hear,

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if you're watching through YouTube, it might be better to click through to the link to the live hangout

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and close the YouTube tab, so you can only hear it once. I hope that will take care of that.

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So, with that started, with that all said, I wanted to - let's see,

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I saw a question here about the effect, you know,

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what impact Coursera will have on the globalization of higher education.

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So, I guess, you characteristically (check) talked about that,

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you know, what does this mean for having universities in many different countries

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(inaudible) worldwide higher education (inaudible)

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(8:23 D. Koller) So I think, in some sense, this is a tremendous opportunity

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for higher education and for the world

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because it allows people to see education as it's offered in parts of the world

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that many will just never have the opportunity to visit

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and so, you can view this as a way of allowing people

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to share perspectives and opinions across national boundaries

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and many of our courses, in fact, are very much contextualized.

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So for example, if you're teaching a course on sociology

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or on sustainability or on business, or many other topics,

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the perspectives that you'd get from someone in China

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is very different from what you would get from someone in Nigeria or in the United States.

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So this ability to really get these diverse points of view and share those with other learners

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is really, I think, one of the things that both the learners on our platform get

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but also the instructors who are teaching benefit a lot from this.

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So I think that's one aspect of globalization.

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The other aspect, I think, is just the capacity issue that is present in many parts of the world.

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Those of us who live in countries that are -- where the educational infrastructure is better developed

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often take for granted the ability that we have to just sign up for a college

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and obviously, we have to pass the admission criteria,

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but if we do, then there is a place for us and we have the opportunity to learn;

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but in many parts of the world, that's just not true.

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And there are people that would dearly love to have the opportunity for an educational experience

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and that opportunity is just not there for them,

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because of a lack of capacity in the educational system,

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because they don't have enough money,

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because of social circumstances and -- or economic circumstances --

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and this really, I think, allows the opportunity for people in those countries

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to have access to something that just otherwise would not exist.

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And hopefully, over time, the educational infrastructure will catch up,

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maybe, perhaps, to some extent by having this content there

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that helps further development and create more qualified instructors within the country.

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And so we hope to actually use this as a spur to develop the develop--

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-- to spur the development of educational infrastructure around the world.

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(10:52 E. Bildner) Daphne, I guess we're seeing a couple of other questions come in.

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How do you see Coursera interacting with other online initiatives in --

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that are specifically focused on individual countries, you know,

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Coursera is this international platform, but there are lots of local resources that come streaming up (check) to you

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and how do you see that interaction working?

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(11:12 D. Koller) So I think there is a diverse -- with this move towards online education

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that really started out with the efforts that Andrew and I did at Stanford in September 2001,

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there is now realization that there is a big opportunity there,

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and there is a number of initiatives that are coming up to leverage that and move that forward.

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You know, I think that some of these are efforts that are very,

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in some sense, complementary to what we're doing.

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So, for example, there are portals in certain countries, like Nadees (check) portal for example,

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that is one of our Chinese partners, that really point to great content from Coursera,

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from Khan Academy, from other resources

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and serve as a place where people in that country can find out about great educational content.

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And there a few that are a little bit more similar to what we're doing, so you could view this,

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they're trying to do the same thing, but perhaps focused on the needs of a particular country

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and I think that's totally fine, because there is a limited capacity to what we can host on Coursera

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in terms of number of university partners,

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and so if you have a site that says "I'm going to allow the many universities within a given country

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that can't be on Coursera to still offer content in language, in -- you know, that's really,

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that's about local -- that really focus on aspects that are tied to the local culture,"

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I think that's absolutely fine (check).

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(12:47 E. Bildner) Thanks. We get a great question coming in from Akram Dahab,

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I guess in Chad. Thank you, Akram.

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"What would you do to help people from poor countries with limited connection speed,

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like Chad where I live?"

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(12:59 D. Koller) Well, first of all, thank you so much for joining us from Tchad.

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That's very far away and it's wonderful that people from all over the world are part of this effort.

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So thank you for participating.

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We completely realize that there are serious infrastructure issues

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in allowing people from parts of the world where broadband internet, for example,

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is not readily available, to access our kind of content.

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And so, there is a two-part answer to this.

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The first is that the digital divide is a prevalent problem

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that we at Coursera are not going to be the solution for,

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because there are only so many problems that an organization can tackle.

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But fortunately, there is a number of organizations, governments and NGOs,

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that are working to try and overcome those infrastructure issues in a much broader basis

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and we're delighted to see that happening.

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There has been tremendous progress in India, for example, recently,

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and I hope other countries will follow suit.

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At the same time, we're doing what we can on our side, until that happens, to try and increase access.

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And that includes programs like the Global Translation Community,

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which hope (check) to overcome language barriers,

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the significant effort that we've made on building mobile apps

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that allow those people who access the internet primarily by their mobile device

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to have a much better experience, and that's specifically, I think,

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common in developing countries.

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And then there is a number of efforts that we've made in the Learning Hub project,

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which are these physical spaces that have high broadband internet connectivity

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in places like US embassies, or the digital libraries of the Slim Foundation in Mexico and Latin America,

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as well as a number of other partners that we have around the world

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that provide local hubs where people who don't necessarily have access to the internet

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can come and study quietly, often with the guidance of the (inaudible)

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and we see amazing learning outcomes in those places,

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with much higher completion rates than we see in just the general population,

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and people having incredible experiences with that.

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And so that's another thing that we've done.

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(15:20 E. Bildner) Thanks, Daphne. A couple of other questions:

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Interesting one here from Mrityunjay, if I'm mispronouncing your name, Yunjay in a --

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I'm not sure where you come from, thanks for asking the question:

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"Will Coursera be focusing on elistic education, as in knowledge for the sake of knowledge,

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or will be filling the gaps in reward system"

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so, I guess, more of a kind of vocational education.

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How do you think about that (inaudible) about Coursera's place is?

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(D. Koller) So, we're committed to education in multiple forms.

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We believe that it's wonderful that, if someone wants to study poetry or philosophy,

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we think that has an important place, even though that might not, for most people,

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be along their career projectory (check).

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At the same time, we also realize that, for many people, one of their goals in education

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is to increase their ability to provide for themselves and their families,

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and have access to a more, you know, stimulating job than they currently do.

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And so we really try to do both things:

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we have a very broad range of disciplines represented on our platform,

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including music and the arts and philosophy, and archeology

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a whole bunch of topics like that, but also we simply --

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there's a whole lot of topics that are much more applied,

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and if you call them "vocational" in the sense that they cater only to academic disciplines,

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but there are things like Android development, (inaudible) science,

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programming, finance, accounting,

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things that are really very much in line with the possibility of getting a better job.

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Our recently launched specializations also are very much in that vein,

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because there's not only a curriculum that allows -- that spans multiple courses

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and allows one to achieve mastery in a given discipline

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that can really give much stronger chances of a better job,

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but is also accompanied with a capstone project, like a final project

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that allows learners to demonstrate their ability to apply their skills in the context of the real world.

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Problem (check) in that gets -- that's something that can then

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be used as a part of their portfolio when applying for a job.

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And so, we believe that we'd like to give those learners who want this

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the opportunity to use the educational platform in order to make a better life for themselves.

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(E. Bildner) Thanks Daphne. Interesting question here from Andres.

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Andres asks "Udacity recently decided to discontinue their free certification programs,

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so they changed their model somewhat. What's Coursera's view on, I guess, that."

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But I guess, more generally, how do we think about for the importance of free education

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and I guess, incorporating that into our own business and long term strategy?"

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(D. Koller) Right. So, we are very committed to the notion of free education,

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and having the content remain free and available to everyone.

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(18:22) We have two kinds of outcomes, if you will, that we offer learners currently on the platform

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and we view them quite differently.

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There is our verified certificate and our statement of accomplishment.

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We view the statement of accomplishment not as a credential or a certificate.

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We view that as more of a memento that the learner can say:

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"OK, I feel good because I took something away with me from the course."

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It's not a credential because it doesn't have any kind of validation associated with it.

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It's not identity-verified, so Eli here can take the class in my place and get a certificate

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that says "Daphne Koller" and it's not, you know,

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there is no guarantee that I was the one who did the work, and in fact it's Eli who did the work.

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So -- and furthermore, creating one of these statements of accomplishment is really easy,

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you can take the PDF and you can (inaudible),

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you know, I can put my name instead of Eli's name --

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(E. Bildner 19:22) Don't try this at home.
(D. Koller) OK, don't try this athome (laughter)

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But the point is that there is no academic integrity associated with the statement of accomplishment:

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it's a memento.

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The verified certificate that we offer as part of our Signature Track is a credential.

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It's identity-verified, it's unforgeable because it has a verification code.

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It's true that that one does have a modest cost, you know, $40-50 is about typical,

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but at the same time, we have from the very beginning, day 1,

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have had a financial aid program, so that learners from backgrounds

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that don't allow them to afford that $40 or $50, can still basically fill out a very simple 1-page application

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and we waive that $40 or $50 fee for that credential.

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And so, you can basically say: "Look, it's free to those learners who need it to be free"

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and the other ones who can afford the $40 or $50, which for a large number of our learners,

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is, you know, not a very signi-- not a very onerous burden,

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they help pay for the free education that we are providing to everyone.

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(E. Bildner) Thanks, Daphne. All right, let's see.

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Interesting question here from Rishkash. Apoplogies again, if I'm mispronouncing it --

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(D. Koller) Rishikesh
(E. Bildner) Rishikesh.

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"Do you think that translating courses will get people to learn the subject?

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Because I think the course will probably require English somewhere down the line."

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So I guess, the question, more broadly, is, you know, right now, translations are focused on subtitles,

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I guess the user interface is translated too, but how are we thinking about

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helping people experience a full course in either in translation,

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or in a language that's more comp-- that's a little easier for them to get along?

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(D. Koller) No, I think that's an excellent question, thank you, Rishikesh.

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So, right now, as Eli said, the translations are solely for the subtitles to the course.

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And we realize that there is many parts of the experience,

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like the assessments, for example, where you still need English in order to do the course completely.

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So, let's see: where do we sit on that?

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Right now, we think that there is still -- in certain courses, you can use Google Translate,

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for example for some of the assessments, because if the questions are short and mostly,

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are just like writing, you know, answering the multiple choice questions or writing a program,

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you don't really need that much English if accompanied by Google Translate,

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really, to do that.

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But that's only a sub-set of courses.

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In order to provide a fully translated course experience,

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we would need to do some really fairly heavy lifting on the product's side, on the platform.

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It's definitely something that we plan to do.

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We haven't had a chance to do that yet:

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we're a small company, there's many things that we'd like to do,

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and we just haven't got around to this one

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but we hope to get around to it soon,

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and so be able to provide people with a much more internationalized course experience,

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where you will also potentially have, you know, forums that are in different languages and, you know,

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hopefully we will be able to do peer-grading in different languages,

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so that people who speak Chinese will grade people who wrote their essays in Chinese and --

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versus other languages.

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and so, there is a lot of things that we still have to do and we hope to be able to get to that soon.

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(22:55 E. Bildner) Thank you. Interesting question here from David. David asks:

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"Will we ever see language courses on Coursera?"

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I mean, you know, I love learning languages, (inaudible) people out there,

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whether it's perfecting their English or different languages.

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Have you got something we'll see in the future?

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(D. Koller) You know, I hope the answer to that is yes.

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We are in some ways, you know, dependent on our university partners

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in which courses they elect to put on the platform.

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Right now, we've not yet had someone jump up and say:

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"I'd like to teach a language course."

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We do have one course which is an English as a Second Language course,

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intended for teachers of English as a second language,

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but we don't have any real language courses and you can give this as a call to all our university partners:

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If you're interested in offering a language course, please let me know and we'd love to have one.

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(E. Bildner) Great and I look forward to that.
(D. Koller) Yes, and me too.

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(E. Bildner) Let's see. Here is a question from Mahmoud (check). Mahmoud asks:

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"Does Coursera plan to set up any infrastructure

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a distant (check) infrastructure in different countries to (inaudible) in person testing?"

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I guess, you know, the idea being that that would be, you know,

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if that would improve the authentication experience towards earning a verified certificate.

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How do you think about that?

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(D. Koller) I think that this is a very interesting notion,

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and right now, we haven't seen a huge demand for it yet,

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partly because I think the incidences, at this point, of cheating on our platform,

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they are definitely there, but they're not hugely common

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and so, it's not something that people really clamored for.

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But I think as the stakes grow, you know, for example,

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as more and more employers start recognizing these credentials,

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or as universities start accepting them for credit and in some cases, perhaps,

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we'll need to have a higher level of academic integrity,

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at which point we might explore this possibility.

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(E. Bildner) Great, thank you. Let's see here. So Christian (check) asks:

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"How do we plan to give, can foster the strength of credentials."

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So you own a verified certificate, you want to use it to improve your job--

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to improve your carreer prospects, for getting any jobs, how are we working to improve that?

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(D. Koller) Yeah. So we actually have an effort here at Coursera on what we call "credential value,"

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which is really intended to address exactly that question, Christian, so thank you for that,

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of demonstrating more broadly the value of our credentials to a number of constituencies:

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to our learners, to employers, to educational institutions.

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So we've done a number of things:

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First is, for example, we've had a partnership with LinkedIn

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that allows us -- that allows our learners via the click of a button

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to post their credential on LinkedIn, so that employers can see that

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and know that this person has achieved a lot of mastery in a very rigorous academic topic.

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We're working with employers to recognize the value of our courses

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and somehow, many employers have expressed their interest in using this for internal training

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as well as have told us that they are excited about employee --

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perspective of employees who come in with that type of credential.

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One of our university partners, Duke University, recently did a survey among employers

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in their geographical basin in North Carolina and discovered that, I think,

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over 50% of employers are -- would be -- would consider the completion of one of the MOOCs

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as a strong factor in hiring decision.

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And so we're trying to encourage that as well.

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And then, really, just making sure that our courses are strong and rigorous

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and of high academic quality is, I think, eventually -- and it's already starting to happen --

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the value of those will become clear just because of market forces.

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The project-based courses, which allow students, for example in those specializations,

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to create an artifact, to demonstrate mastery in terms of applying skills to a real world problem,

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I think, will really help reinforce the fact that our learners emerge from a really valuable use of skills.

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(E. Bildner) Thanks, Daphne. I see a couple of questions or comments on the (inaudible) tool, about --

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specifically about, very specific GTC-related stuff.

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So just remind once again, we'll take a couple more questions for Daphne

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and then Sébastien and I will field the bunch of questions

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that are specifically about the Translator Community and we'll let Daphne get on her day,

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to try improve Coursera and do other things that all you folks are asking about.

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So I guess, a couple more questions for Daphne. Interesting question here from Catalin,

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who asks, you know, if there are any plans to allow

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non universities and non institutions to create courses on Coursera, I guess, more broadly,

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how are we thinking about building up a diversity of courses on the platform?

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(D. Koller) So, right now, we're focused on working with our university partners

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and some non-university partners that are offering mostly contents

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in teacher professional development (check).

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That is not because we believe that there is no good education to be had elsewhere.

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So we know that there is great teachers to be had at institutions that are not among our partners as well,

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it's just, you know, people out there in the world will not affiliate with any educational institution. (check)

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So, we think -- I think it's great, Catalin, that you're producing your own course

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and making it available to people.

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We are -- we came into this with a model of having a very highly curated platform

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rather than a more YouTube-like model that has anyone being able to upload content.

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So, in order for us to maintain that level of curation, we would have to go and, you know,

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examine the courses of people like you and evaluate them for quality and academic rigor,

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and so on and so forth, and I'm sure we'd find some really amazing gems if we did that,

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but we just don't have the capacity to do that level of screening,

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nor do we have the ability to train a much larger number of instructors in the use of our platform

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and in what we consider to be the best practices for high-quality content, and so on,

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and so, I'm sure we're missing some really amazing things right now,

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but as we're trying to, you know, build thing out,

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it's better for us to maintain this somewhat narrow level of focus and hopefully in the future,

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be able to broaden out to a larger number of providers.

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(E. Bildner) Great, thanks. Maybe we can take one more question for Daphne.

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It seems like a lot of people are interested in knowing

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whether Coursera's certified courses are recognized by companies.

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I know you talked about that a little already, but, you know,

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have we seen any examples of companies saying, you know:

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"If you take this course, you'll have an advantage in some way, either internally or --

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what have we seen there with companies and Coursera?

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(D. Koller) So, you know, the company is only 2-years old,

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which is kind of hard to believe, given the amount of interest that we've seen and the --

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and the amazing community that we've been able to build up, including yourselves,

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but it's a relatively young company, with maybe only about a year's worth of actual "graduates,"

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if you will, from courses, a year and half at the most,

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and so, it takes a while for the market to catch up with the value of a particular form of education,

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to recognize that yes, this is like -- this education provides real value

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and the learners who emerge from this are, you know, really qualified to do what they claim they can do.

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Nevertheless, even with that short time frame,

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we've already seen significant recognition of these credentials by employers.

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I've mentioned the Duke University study a moment ago,

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that had surveyed several hundred employers in North Carolina,

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and importantly, this was not surveyed on, for example,

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here in the San Francisco Bay area of, you know, tech-savvy employers,

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all of whom are sort of familiar with internet technologies and so on,

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this was in a different part of the country, with a very diverse range of employers,

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from very different sectors, and nevertheless, we see a very large fraction of them

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-- I don't remember the exact number, I think 50 to 60% who said that

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they will recognize the validity of these credentials in terms of preferring to --

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treating these candidates in some preferen --

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in some way preferentially recognizing they're bringing something that you need to the table.

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And so, people are starting to see a very significant uptake on the value of these credentials,

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and I think, in a year, this question probably would be asked (inaudible).

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(E. Bildner) OK. Well, Daphne, I just want to thank you again,

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I don't know if you have any heartening words for the GTC friends we have with us today.

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( D. Koller) Sure, so, you know, I've already said this at the very beginning,

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but I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all again.

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You have already 9 courses that have been translate

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as well as the many others that I'm sure you'll contribute

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towards making a hugely important dent in the issues of accessibility

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to the vast majority of this world population that -- for whom English is not their native language.

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So we're very, very grateful for your efforts, and also grateful for the efforts of Eli and Sébastien

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and our translation partners for helping you make that possible.

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So thank you very much.