Daggiana Gómez Roncal
The content of this news item has been machine translated and may contain some inaccuracies with respect to the original content published in Spanish.
Our training excellence and international prestige are the basis of an alliance between PUCP and Coursera. This virtual platform with more than 90 million users - which began as a startup formed by academics from Stanford University - offers courses from universities such as Stanford, Yale and Columbia, among many others. Now Coursera will also have courses from PUCP, the No. 1 in Peru and No. 12 in Latin America.
"Having PUCP courses on Coursera is a recognition of the quality of our content and our academic offerings as a leading university in Peru," considers the academic vice rector, Dr. Cristina Del Mastro. "We are opening a window of opportunities to offer our courses and programs nationally and internationally," she adds. Thus, this alliance consolidates a long-term work of the Academic Vice Rectorate that, already in October 2020, generated a first agreement that benefited more than 5,700 PUCP students.
"We are proud to welcome Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú as our first University Partner in Peru. This leading institution is recognized for its unparalleled academics, cutting-edge research and innovative teaching," says Shantelle Williams Valadié, Coursera's Director of University Partnerships in Latin America. "The 1.2 million Peruvian students on Coursera will be excited to learn from a university they know well and trust. In addition, our partnership will allow us to bring PUCP's highly regarded education to our students in Latin America and around the world," she says.
Flavio Ausejo, director of the Continuing Education Directorate (DEC), indicates that Coursera sought out our University to expand its content at spanish. "Specifically, this alliance will allow the PUCP to start working on the implementation of specialized programs and MOOC courses in areas such as management and business, or technology," he says.
He also emphasizes that this opportunity will provide a worldwide showcase for our offer in terms of continuing education. For its part, the PUCP is committed to providing an increasingly diversified offer.
Academic Vice Chancellor
"We are proud to welcome Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú as our first University Partner in Peru. This leading institution is recognized for its unparalleled academics, cutting-edge research and innovative teaching," says Shantelle Williams Valadié, Coursera's Director of University Partnerships in Latin America. "The 1.2 million Peruvian students on Coursera will be excited to learn from a university they know well and trust. In addition, our partnership will allow us to bring PUCP's highly regarded education to our students in Latin America and around the world," she says.
Flavio Ausejo, director of the Continuing Education Directorate (DEC), indicates that Coursera sought out our University to expand its content at spanish. "Specifically, this alliance will allow the PUCP to start working on the implementation of specialized programs and MOOC courses in areas such as management and business, or technology," he says.
He also emphasizes that this opportunity will provide a worldwide showcase for our offer in terms of continuing education. For its part, the PUCP is committed to providing an increasingly diversified offer.
Director of Continuing Education
The partnership between PUCP and Coursera allows the international course offerings - both in English and spanish- of this platform to be available to our university community. Enrolled students, professors and administrative staff will have free access to more than 3,500 courses from the 'Coursera for campus' catalog.
"We provide content to Coursera and, in return, they give us free access. This is a long-term relationship. Students, teachers and skilled workers will be able to take the courses they want for free. Since these are individual learning courses, each person can go at their own pace. There are recorded classes, reference material and a package of exercises. No other university in Peru has this alliance with Coursera," said Mr. Ausejo.
Dr. Del Mastro also highlights the various possibilities that this alliance offers to members of our community. "For example, an undergraduate or graduate student can decide whether to strengthen general competencies or access very specific specializations. The choice will depend on the student's own interests or a professional need to complement his or her education at PUCP," she says.
The PUCP-Coursera alliance will present MOOC courses on the platform. These will showcase our broad interdisciplinary profile to make the most of this agreement. At the moment, there are three self-study courses available that have 600 registrants: Fundamentals of the Canvas Business Model, 3D Printing and Augmented Reality.
In addition, 13 more MOOC courses and 2 specialization programs are under development and will be launched during the remainder of the year and the first half of 2023.
The content generated by PUCP will be offered by Coursera to other Peruvian and international universities.
Professor Ausejo assumed leadership of the DEC in September 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. In that context, one of the lines of work with his team was to entrench the best of distance learning. "When we return to face-to-face, virtuality is going to remain," he said then.
In that line, this alliance is also a challenge for PUCP: Coursera has set the virtualization bar even higher. The director of Continuing Education points out that there is an intense transfer of technology from Coursera to PUCP. Even the platform itself raised its technological standard in the context of the pandemic.
"We are having very strong learning about virtualization to the highest international standards. This already radiates to the University's own virtualization practice. For example, we have had to acquire new infrastructure to enable us to produce content for Coursera. We were doing well, but in order to compete in these areas we have to bring the best to the forefront," concludes Professor Ausejo.
The members of the PUCP community who will be able to access the benefits of Coursera-PUCP are:
If you are part of these groups, between Monday and Tuesday you will receive an invitation link to the Coursera for Campus catalog in your PUCP email inbox. You will have to register with that PUCP email (it makes no difference if you use @pucp.pe or @pucp.edu.pe) and then accept the invitation.