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[Infographic] United States of Knowledge: Coursera’s 12 Learning Regions

By Kyle Shiells, Data Scientist at Coursera

Go here to see an interactive infographic of the United States of Knowledge

We’re always looking for patterns in what people are interested in learning - understanding trends in topic interests helps us better serve our learners, and it’s fun!

Previously, we’ve shared data on how topic interests vary by country; this time, we wanted to look more closely at course enrollments among the 5 million learners in our largest market, the United States. Just as job opportunities, age demographics, and political views vary across states, we found that the subjects people study vary geographically, as well.

Although we found business and computer science to be the two most popular topics in every state in absolute terms, other patterns emerged when we looked at trends in relative topic interest. Based on those trends, we identified 12 Coursera learning regions, from the Tech Trail on the West Coast to the Business Basin in the East.

Some highlights from our analysis include:

California and Washington are the top two states in every subtopic within computer science. Other states that show up high on the list for computer science include New Jersey, Virginia, and Oregon.

The District of Columbia leads the country in interest in a number of government-related topics, including governance and society, economics, and law. The neighboring states of Virginia and Maryland are close behind.

Relative to other states, Alaska shows the most interest in physical science and engineering; like many rural states, Alaska also shows high relative interest in environmental sciences and veterinary science.

Mississippi shows the highest relative interest in education. Many of the surrounding southern states show a similar trend, and are also highly relatively interested in common elementary and secondary school subjects like history and chemistry.

Compared to other states, a region in the middle of the country -- best represented by Tennessee -- shows a high level of interest in bioinformatics.

The far Northeast, particularly Maine and Vermont, has an exceptional interest in visual and liberal arts, including a number of subject areas across the arts and humanities.

To learn more about the learning regions, check out the video above - and spend some time with our interactive map to see the five most popular categories of online courses in your state and the specific topics of interest that make your state unique!

Learner Story: Providing mental health care in conflict-torn communities

May Zaw Naing, an NGO worked in Yangon, knew that she needed to improve her understanding of mental health and psychology to better serve children in communities affected by conflict. Coursera helped her build relevant clinical skills, which she is now teaching to her colleagues as they work support children through trauma. Here’s her story:

For the past several years, I’ve worked with various NGOs in southeast Asia, visiting villages that are being destroyed by armed and ethnic conflicts. Children in these communities are dealing with unimaginable suffering. Many have been orphaned, emotionally and physically abused, marginalized, and even sold into slavery. They’ve lost their self-esteem, and they cry out loud when they hear the sound of fighter jets flying overhead.

Understandably, these children are often frightened when I and my team approach them to perform medical examinations. At first, with our limited knowledge of mental health care, we just did our best - told stories and sang songs, trying to make the children feel secure and safe.

When I found Coursera, I was able to take part in online courses on clinical psychology, child psychology, and mental health care. I shared materials from the courses I took with my colleagues, and we developed a psychological support approach based on respect for the culture and tradition of children in these ethnic communities. We began using the techniques we learned - like role playing and group discussions - to promote our patients’ integrity and self-respect. And we began to see great results. The children became more confident, and more passionate about engaging in civic activities.

The experience of taking courses on Coursera also changed me. I found myself regaining my own confidence, and gaining new insights as I interacted with learners in my courses from different cultures and backgrounds. I became more self-aware, adept at evaluating my own actions and seizing creative ideas that I hadn’t previously seen. I started participating in new community activities related to mental health - including tutoring undergraduate students and volunteering as a psychological support educator for patients with chronic stress, depression, and anxiety.

My goal with all patients is to boost their well being on biologically, psychologically, socially and spiritually - not only to just treat their immediate physical complaints. Thanks to Coursera, I’m better equipped to help children and other people in communities affected by conflict.

We want to hear your Coursera story this week!

Has taking a course on Coursera impacted your life in any way, big or small? Whether learning helped you transform your career, connect with your community, or just see the world a little differently - we want to hear your story!

Capture a few reflections on your Coursera experience in a short video and post your video to our Facebook or Twitter page between today and January 14. We’ll share our favorite videos with the Coursera community on our blog and social channels and at events throughout 2017.

To get started, check out the complete campaign details below. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Details

Start by recording a short (1-2 minute) video of yourself responding to each of the following questions:

Which course did you take, from which partner university or institution?

How did the course instructor impact your learning experience?

How has taking a course on Coursera benefited your career and impacted your life as a whole?

Complete this sentence: “Coursera is…”

Your video should be:

.mp4 or .mov format, Mac compatible, with good picture quality (1080p resolution preferred)

No more than 2 minutes in length

Feature just you - no group videos, please!

Be appropriate for a wide audience and respectful of Coursera’s diverse community. Inappropriate videos will be removed and disqualified.

To submit your video:

Upload your video to Coursera’s Facebook or Twitter page (not your personal page!)

Sign our online waiver form giving Coursera permission to share your video publicly with our learner and partner communities

Submissions will be accepted until January 14, 2017, 5:00PM US Pacific Time. Only one submission per person, please! We’ll feature our favorite videos in future Coursera marketing materials, including a compilation video to be presented during the 2017 Coursera Partners Conference.

The Most Popular Courses of 2016

2016 has been an incredible year of growth here at Coursera. Learners on our platform can now join any of over 1,800 courses and Specializations, and build skills that will help them achieve any goal, from securing a promotion, to starting a new business, to simply bringing a new perspective to the family dinner table.

As we close out the year, we took a look back at 2016’s most popular courses and Specializations. Our top-10 lists reflect increasing interest in the specific professional and personal skills – from coding to communications – that we know are key to landing some of today’s hottest jobs.

Take a few minutes today to set yourself up for a great 2017 - join one of the courses or Specializations below, and get a head start on your personal and career goals for the new year.

Most Popular* Specializations of 2016

1. Data Science - Johns Hopkins University 2. Python for Everybody - Duke University 3. Excel to MySQL: Analytic Techniques for Business - Duke University 4. Business Foundations - University of Pennsylvania 5. Academic English: Writing - University of California, Irvine 6. Career Success - University of California, Irvine 7. Business Analytics - University of Pennsylvania 8. Improve Your English Communication Skills - Georgia Institute of Technology 9. Big Data - University of California, San Diego 10. Digital Marketing - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

*Based on total enrollments in 2016

100 million reasons to celebrate our global community of learners

By Esteban Kozak, Director of Product Management

Something special happened on Coursera last week. On Friday, December 9, a learner in Canada logged in through our mobile app and enrolled in Advanced Neurobiology I from Peking University - the 100 millionth course enrollment on our platform.

100,000,000 is an incredible number. Each of those enrollments represents a step toward a goal - an aspiring entrepreneur beginning to turn their ideas into reality, an unemployed professional taking the initiative to build new skills and re-enter the workforce, a student setting their sights on an advanced degree, or a lifelong learner diving into a new passion for art, science, or technology.

We’re honored and humbled by the fact that so many of you have come to Coursera to start new journeys over the past four years. And we’re excited to continue supporting you - with new courses, platform updates, and more - in 2017 and beyond.

Thank you to each of our learners, from all of us at Coursera, for sharing your talents and ambitions with our community!

Learner story: Saving a struggling business

The Wharton School’s Introduction to Operations Management course helped Australian learner Tri Suseno save his struggling business - and he’s since completed more than 20 other courses on Coursera. Here’s his story:

I am a businessman, and I own a few businesses. When a business I’d acquired encountered significant bottleneck issues, I was desperate to understand the source of the problem and the steps I needed to take to correct it. I’d read several popular, highly-recommended books, but they didn’t provide the insight our management team needed.

Around that time, I discovered Coursera, and I decided to enroll in a course on Operations Management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. That course opened my eyes to the underlying problems in my business, and provided a framework to identify and address bottlenecks quickly. I worked through the course twice, and asked a few people on my management team to join me. We were ultimately able to apply the skills we learned to solve our business problem - in short, the concepts taught by that course helped save my business.

Since then, I’ve continued to take various courses on Coursera. I am quite adept at Matlab and Python programming thanks to the Machine Learning and Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python courses, and I have improved my negotiation skills significantly thanks to several wonderful courses on negotiation. All of these courses have been invaluable to my professional success and personal development, and have played an important role in helping me fill in missing pieces in my problem-solving frameworks.

Learner Story: A young designer succeeds with Coursera

Astghik Zeynalyan, a student in Armenia, wanted to get a head start on a career in graphic design so she could contribute to her family’s income. With help from Coursera, she built the skills she needed to rebrand her father’s dental clinic and begin working as a freelancer.

As a young woman living in Armenia, it wasn’t easy for me to find work. I wanted to do something, though, to help my parents, who were caring for three children - my two older siblings, both in medical school, and me.

I was interested in creative arts and design, and I found a way to start learning some design skills at a local creative arts academy. I knew that if I wanted to build a career, I needed to learn graphic design and be able to work online as a freelancer. Coursera and the Graphic Design Specialization from California Institute of the Arts made that possible for me. I am very thankful for that Specialization - my professors were all such good people, and skilled professionals.

After I completed the Specialization, my parents moved to another country, and my father needed to re-brand his dental clinic. I was able to use the skills I’d learned on Coursera to help him with the design work, which made me feel so good and proud.

Now, I’m doing some freelancing online and also working on a personal design portfolio. I love that graphic design is connected with everything - where you go, what you see. I’m planning to take the Photography Basics Specialization from Michigan State University on Coursera next, and I’m hoping to pursue a university degree in design.

Learner story: Building a tea company with Coursera

When Richard Rosenfeld founded Two Leaves and a Bud Tea Company in Basalt, Colorado, neither he nor his partners brought much relevant business experience to their new roles. Professional education options were sparse in their small town, but when Richard heard about Coursera, he saw an opportunity to equip himself and his team with the skills they needed to run a successful company.

Soon, all of Richard’s employees were enrolled in relevant courses from The Wharton School’s Business Foundations Specialization. “I’ve watched my employees grow into their jobs,” he says. “That’s gratifying personally, it’s fun to be a part of - and, it’s great for the business.”

Coursera Insights: A survey of young professionals in the UK helps us identify the challenges they face in reaching their life goals

By Rick Levin, CEO of Coursera

At Coursera, we envision a world in which anyone, anywhere can transform their life through access to high-quality education. We’re making great progress toward realizing that vision - we’ve built an innovative technology platform to provide a rich online learning experience, and we’ve worked with top universities to make more than 1,600 top-quality courses and Specializations available to anyone with an Internet connection.

But we also know that simply making content available isn’t enough. To provide our learners with the best possible support, we need to understand the factors that may be holding them back. That’s why we recently commissioned research into the challenges that today’s young professionals face, with a particular focus on adults aged 22-35 in the United Kingdom.

The results of this research are both troubling and promising. It is clear that this generation feels uncertain about the future, and about their ability to achieve key life and career milestones. 38 percent of the young adults we surveyed said that they felt unprepared to start a family, for example, and half felt that they weren’t prepared to purchase a new car.

However, we also see huge potential for efficient, affordable, skills-based learning to help today’s young professionals build confidence and reach their goals. Many survey respondents listed lack of relevant job skills training as a major factor preventing them from achieving financial security. And an overwhelming majority said that they would consider taking a course to broaden their skills if they felt it would advance their career, although they worried that formal training would be too costly and time-consuming.

In short, although today’s young professionals are worried about the future, they are also motivated and eager to take action to improve their prospects. This research suggests that, for the businesses, education providers, and other institutions who want to equip young professionals to achieve their goals, simply giving them easier access to career-relevant skills training would be a very effective first step.

To view the results and read the full report which includes case studies of members of Generation Never in the UK, please click here.

Introducing Subscriptions for Specializations

By Tom Willerer, Chief Product Officer of Coursera

At Coursera, we believe education is a lifelong pursuit, and we want to empower you to achieve your goals throughout your life and career. We’re continually working to improve our courses and platform to give you access to relevant content, and to help you learn more efficiently and effectively.

Today, we’re excited to announce Specialization subscriptions - a new payment model that allows you to purchase access to all content in a Specialization on a month-by-month or annual basis, so that you’re paying only for the amount of time you need to learn the material and earn your Certificate.

You can now subscribe to some Specializations on Coursera for a monthly fee rather than paying up front for an entire course or Specialization, and this payment model will be rolled out to many of our most popular Specializations over the coming months. Subscriptions are typically priced from $39 to $89 per month for access to one Specialization, with no long-term commitment required. Subscribing to a Specialization gives you access to all content in every course in the Specialization for as long as your subscription is active. Based on the completion times that we typically see for our most popular Specializations, the subscription model has the potential to reduce costs for many learners.

Our subscription model is designed to help you:

Pay for the time you actually spend learning. With all courses in subscription-based Specializations running at least monthly, you can complete a Specialization in as little as a month (if, for example, you’re already familiar with some of the material), or over several months (if the topic is completely new to you). Either way, rather than paying up front for the entire Specialization, you’ll pay a price based on the time you actually spend engaging with the Specialization content.

Consistently achieve your learning goals. In tests of the subscription model, we saw that learners who paid for a monthly subscription were about 2.5x more likely to complete a Specialization as compared to learners who paid the full price of each course or the entire Specialization up front. We believe that, by rewarding faster completion, the subscription model will give you a powerful incentive to achieve your goals.

Adjust your learning schedule to fit your lifestyle. Our subscription model allows you to start and stop your Specialization progress at any time - there are no startup or cancellation fees, and your work will be saved so you can always pick up where you left off.

Subscriptions will be available worldwide in select Specializations starting this week. We’ll be gradually increasing the number of subscription-based Specializations throughout the remainder of 2016.

To learn more about subscriptions, please review the detailed FAQs below. If you have additional questions, we encourage you to visit our Learner Help Center.

FAQs about Subscriptions

What if I’m currently enrolled in a Specialization? Will I be affected by this change?

No - if you pre-paid for an entire Specialization prior to the launch of subscriptions, or if you’ve been paying per course, you will not be affected by this change. If you’ve been paying per course, you will continue paying per course for the remainder of the Specialization. You’ll only see the subscription option if you’re enrolling in a Specialization for the first time.

What is your cancellation and refund policy?

A subscription can be cancelled at any time, without penalty. If you cancel your subscription, you will lose access to the Specialization at the end of your billing period. Coursera will automatically discontinue your subscription at the end of the monthly billing period during which you earn a Specialization Certificate, unless you have subscribed through the Apple App Store, in which case you must manually cancel your subscription. You can request a refund of your first payment for a subscription to any Specialization up to 14 days after payment. You are not eligible for a refund after earning a Course Certificate, even if you complete a course within the 14-day period.

What do I have access to after my subscription ends?

If you’ve completed a course on a subscription, you will retain archive access (access to videos, readings, and practice assessments, but not graded assessments) until the end of your last billing period. You can re-enroll in the course’s audit option if you would like to continue to reference the video lectures and other course materials. You will always have access to Certificates that you’ve earned, even after your subscription ends.

Can I still get Financial Aid?

Yes, Coursera remains committed to providing access for our learners who are unable to afford course and Specialization fees.To apply for Financial Aid, open the course description page for the course and find the link to apply for Financial Aid under the blue Enroll button.

Can I subscribe to multiple Specializations at once?

Yes, you can subscribe to as many Specializations as you want at the same time. You will be charged separately for each Specialization.

Can I subscribe to just one course?

When you subscribe to a course, you will be automatically enrolled into the entire Specialization. If you are just interested in a single course, you should cancel your subscription after completing this course in order to stop the recurring monthly charge.

To Our U.S. Learners: Learn, Register, and Vote in November!

The U.S. Presidential election is just a few weeks away! We’ve put together a handy list of voter resources for our U.S. learners, including a list of courses you can take on Coursera to get up to speed on key issues.

Read on for a message from Coursera CEO Rick Levin about what’s at stake in this election, and the critical role education plays in any democracy. From all of us at Coursera - happy learning, and happy voting!

Dear Coursera learners,

I wanted to take a minute to talk about the upcoming U.S. Presidential election.

The stakes in this election are strikingly high. The two leading candidates have sharply divergent views of how government can promote economic growth, address income inequality, and protect the environment. They differ markedly in their views of international trade and immigration, and they would approach questions of national security very differently.

Here at Coursera, we believe that all citizens of the world should learn and care about what is at stake in this election. And we would encourage those of you who are citizens of the United States to register, and volunteer to help others register and go to the polls.

To help you get started, we’ve put together a few resources for you, including links to where you can register to vote and volunteer with the different campaigns. And we’ve highlighted several courses related to key election issues, including:

The Making of the U.S. President: A Short History in Five Elections, University of Edinburgh

Introduction to Key Constitutional Concepts and Supreme Court Cases, University of Pennsylvania

Global Diplomacy – Diplomacy in the Modern World, University of London

Public Policy Challenges of the 21st Century, University of Virginia

American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice, University of Pennsylvania

Country Level Economics: Policies, Institutions, and Macroeconomic Performance, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”

Let Coursera help you protect democracy. Thank you.

Rick Levin Coursera CEO

Learner Story: Founding a Technology Startup

Roy Raanani drew on concepts, skills, and connections from Stanford University’s Machine Learning course on Coursera to found his startup, Chorus.ai. Here’s his story:

After my wife took a job opportunity in Switzerland, I quit my job as a business consultant and moved to a remote Swiss village with her and our newborn. The move and my new role as part-time stay-at-home dad and part-time entrepreneur gave me the opportunity to pursue two topics that had always fascinated me - machine learning, and spoken language.

Although I’d been an engineering student in college, I’d never worked as an engineer. Coursera made it easy to sign up for Andrew Ng’s classic Machine Learning course, offered by Stanford University. I watched lectures and worked on assignments from our couch while the baby slept, and I became very active in the course forums - posting questions and ideas, meeting people from around the world.

I ended up recruiting a close friend, Russell Levy, to take the course with me, and together with an expert in the field, developed an idea for a machine learning-based product that would analyze spoken conversations and predict their success in terms of outcomes like trust and persuasion. Our initial idea evolved into Chorus.ai - Conversation Intelligence for Sales Team, and we’ve since raised venture funding. We’re offering truly innovative, transformative technology to the world.

Building Chorus has been the most authentic, rewarding, and challenging thing I’ve done professionally - and the first step on this journey was taking the Machine Learning course. The course helped me understand what was possible, and having that understanding helped me establish my credibility as someone who could turn this vision into a reality.

Learner story: From drummer to developer with Coursera

Sam learned web development on Coursera and transformed his career. Here's his story:

Sam thought he’d found his dream job when he signed a contract to travel the world as a drummer. After a few years of living out of a suitcase, though, he realized he needed a more stable career.

He knew musicians who were looking for help creating websites. He wondered - could he build technology skills that would be valuable to the entertainment industry? To explore his options, he enrolled in Stanford University’s Startup Engineering course on Coursera.

At first, Sam wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to finish the assignments - he’d struggled in a traditional classroom, and had never felt challenged in a way that motivated him to learn. With the freedom to pursue his own interests, however, he quickly developed a passion for coding. “I’d never connected with learning in school” he says. “But on Coursera, I couldn’t stop.”

After adding his new skills to his resume, Sam applied for a job at the BBC, where his industry-specific knowledge impressed interviewers. He accepted an offer to work with the company as a developer, and he’s since moved on to a startup, where he builds major web applications and earns more than double his drummer’s salary.

Now 85 New Specializations and Courses on Coursera

Since our new content announcement last month, we’ve added over 35 new courses and Specializations in business, data science, computer science, and more!

Explore the latest to launch - listed below - and join your favorite to start your future today:

Business

Supply Chain Management, Rutgers

Construction Management, Columbia University

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Innovating within Corporations, University of Maryland

Culture-Driven Team Building, University of Pennsylvania

Media Platforms, Columbia University

Innovate on Demand, Columbia University

Ethical Social Media, University of Sydney

Sales Strategies: Mastering the Selling Process, University of Chicago

The Three Pillar Model for Business Decisions: Strategy, Law & Ethics, University of Michigan

Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies & Skills, University of Michigan

Liderazgo para el Siglo XXI, Universidad de los Andes

Finanzas corporativas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Habilidades Gerenciales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Marketing Digital, Universidad Austral

Estrategia de marketing, IE Business School

Data Science

Probabilistic Graphical Models, Stanford University

Mastering Software Development in R, Johns Hopkins University

Big Data, Genes, and Medicine, The State University of New York

Computer Science

Engineering Management Certificate, Part 1: Leadership, Rice University

Business Technology Management, Indian School of Business

Julia Scientific Programming, University of Cape Town

Learn to Program: The Fundamentals, University of Toronto

Algorithms, Stanford University

Python Programming: A Concise Introduction, Wesleyan University

Introduction to Natural Language Processing, University of Michigan

Neural Networks for Machine Learning, University of Toronto

Updated: Programming Languages, Part C, University of Washington

Learn Chinese: HSK Test Preparation, Peking University

English for Research Publication Purposes, MIPT

Learn Mandarin Chinese, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Learning English: Advanced Grammar & Punctuation, University of California, Irvine

Learning English: Intermediate Grammar, University of California, Irvine

Design: Creation of Artifacts and Society, University of Pennsylvania

The Social Context of Mental Health and Illness, University of Toronto

Updated: Introduction to Logic, Stanford University

Updated: Child Nutrition and Cooking, Stanford University

Coursera’s superheroes: Meet the Mentor team

By Kapeesh Saraf, Director of Product Management & Claire Smith, Community Manager

Coursera was founded to help anyone, anywhere transform their life through access to the world’s best education. We’ve always known that education is more than just content - that the most effective learning experiences include discussion and debate, and that sometimes you need real-time support from an expert to get unstuck.

Since even the most enthusiastic instructors can’t engage, debate, and un-stick thousands of learners around the world every day, we’ve looked to the wider Coursera community to provide that support. The Coursera Mentor program is the backbone of that effort, and we’re thrilled to announce that that program is growing! By the end of 2016, we’re aiming to ensure that the majority of learners have a Mentor in their course. Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect to see from these amazing community leaders in the next few months!

Who are Coursera Mentors? Coursera Mentors are learners who volunteer to provide academic support in courses they’ve already completed on Coursera. To be eligible to be a Mentor, a learner must have passed the course with a good grade and an exemplary forum participation record. Mentors also complete a 2-week training course that covers best practices for explaining concepts, giving feedback, encouraging discussion, and using forum moderation tools to maintain a safe, fun, and productive atmosphere in the course forums.

We now have more than 700 active Mentors in over 300 courses, and we’re adding more almost every day! To meet a few of these exceptional individuals, visit our Community Blog.

What kind of support do Mentors provide? Mentors spend most of their time answering questions and sharing resources in the course forums. To give you a sense of their impact - in just the month of July, Mentors responded to more than 17,500 forum posts and started over 600 forum threads across Coursera. Our most active Mentors have posted in the forums hundreds of times; in courses with Mentors, almost 60 percent of forum posts receive a response within 24 hours.

As the Mentor program grows, we’ve added tools to help Mentors work more efficiently and effectively. For example, all Mentors now receive a daily digest of forum activity in their course, which highlights popular threads that haven’t yet received a Mentor response. We’ve also added more links to the forums throughout course pages, to help learners navigate more easily to the great advice that Mentors are providing.

What motivates Mentors to help out? Mentors have told us that they have a variety of reasons for volunteering their time, including keeping skills and knowledge fresh, adding experience to their resumes, and helping other learners master a topic they’re passionate about. We’re continually working to make their experience more rewarding - Mentors can now receive LinkedIn badges for participating in the program, and we’ve added Mentor names and profile photos to the forum home page as a reminder to learners to look to them for reliable answers and thank them for their support.

What’s next for the Mentor program? First and foremost, growth! We’re adding Mentors to more courses on an ongoing basis, and we’re working to ensure that the majority of learners on Coursera have access to Mentor support by the end of this year. As the program grows, we’re also empowering Mentors to take on new roles and responsibilities - such as creating FAQ pages, overseeing peer reviews, and actively fostering community by posting discussion prompts on a regular schedule.

Interested in becoming a Mentor? You can learn more about how Mentors are selected on our Community Blog.

Now available: In-browser coding on Coursera

By Christine Wong, Product Manager

When you take a course on Coursera, we want you to have the opportunity to work on challenging, hands-on projects -- so that when you finish, you know you’re ready to apply your skills in the real world. But we also know that working up to those big projects takes plenty of smaller-scale practice, especially when you’re learning something brand new.

Today, we’re excited to introduce a feature designed to make it easier for you to practice new skills in computer science and data science courses: in-browser coding. We’ve built our in-browser coding system to support a wide variety of programming languages - reflecting the breadth of computer science content available on Coursera - and to give instructors much more flexibility to integrate active learning and practice alongside in-depth projects.

In-browser coding is simple to use, and allows you to test your knowledge and get feedback in seconds. You’ll see an editor window embedded in a reading or in-video quiz. You’ll type your code in response to a prompt, hit Run, and see your output immediately. There’s nothing to download or set up on your computer, and no other windows or tools to open -- everything happens on Coursera. Watch the video below to see how it works:

Courses that use in-browser coding may also include more complex programming assignments, designed to be completed after you’ve worked through the in-browser exercises. This combination allows you to progress smoothly from learning a new a skill, to applying it in a simple exercise, to putting it together with other skills and concepts to demonstrate your in-depth mastery.

In-browser coding will be live in several courses this month:

Open now: Introduction to Data Analytics for Business from the University of Colorado, Boulder

Coming October 24th: Introduction to Data Science in Python, from the University of Michigan (also includes Jupyter Notebooks integration)

Coming in October: Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark, from EPFL

More instructors will be integrating in-browser exercises in new and existing courses over the next few months.

Computer science and data science are some of the most popular topics on Coursera, and we’re constantly working to develop new features that improve the way programming is taught online. We hope in-browser coding makes your learning experience more efficient, effective, and fun - and if you’ve considered taking a programming course, but haven’t enrolled yet, we hope you’ll explore the courses above and give in-browser coding a try!

You can find more information about in-browser coding and programming assignments in our Learner Help Center.

New progress tracking features on Coursera

By Jake Samuelson, Product Manager

We know that Coursera learners are fitting coursework into full, busy lives. We’ve been touched by your stories of building new skills while juggling work, family, and other commitments, and we’re constantly looking for ways to help you achieve your goals.

This week, as part of that effort, we launched a new set of progress tracking and planning features for your course dashboard and home pages. In developing these features, we drew inspiration from everything from fitness trackers to financial planning apps, as well as from tools used in community colleges and other programs that cater to busy, working adults. We found that the most successful products allowed users to track and visualize their progress, and made it easy to identify the next step toward a specific goal.

Track your progress On your course dashboard, where you can find all of your courses, you’ll now see a simple progress bar for every course in which you’re actively working toward a Course Certificate. A second progress bar appears on your course home pages, along with a detailed week-by-week summary of the content and assignments that you need to complete each week.

Find your next step We’ve highlighted the video lecture, reading, or assignment that we recommend you complete next on both your course dashboard and course home page. You can jump straight to that item by clicking the “Start” button.

The “next step” feature will most often send you straight to wherever you last left off in the course. Occasionally, however, you’ll be directed back to re-attempt an assignment that you didn’t pass on the first try, or forward to start practicing new skills on the next assignment to come. Of course, you can still navigate to any item in the course outline from the course home page.

Since we began testing these new features a few months ago, we’ve seen promising results. Our early data suggests that learners who have access to these features are over 10 percent more likely to complete a course successfully overall. Learners who are on track to complete tend to do so more quickly, and when a learner does fall behind, he or she is about 11 percent more likely to catch up and to ultimately finish the course successfully.

We can’t wait to see how you use these features, and what you achieve! If you have questions or suggestions about progress tracking, next steps, or anything else on Coursera, please visit our Help Center to learn more or contact our team.

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