—Yonsei Previously Signed Agreement with MOOC Platform FutureLearn in June

On September 16, Yonsei signed an MOU with Coursera, the world’s largest Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, to offer online courses. This agreement follows the MOU signed by the university in June with FutureLearn, another major MOOC platform. Through these affiliations, Yonsei has placed itself at the forefront of online higher education in Korea.

MOOCs evolved from OpenCourseWare (OCW), which publishes high-quality educational materials, such as videos of course lectures, via the internet. But in addition to making videos and readings available online, MOOCs provide interactive user forums, such as discussion groups and peer reviews, which facilitate meaningful communication between students and instructors. MOOCs also offer graded tests and papers, such that students can receive a certificate upon successfully completing a course.

Coursera was launched in February 2012 by two computer science professors from Stanford University. Currently, Coursera includes the participation of 236 global universities, including Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and Caltech, and it offers around 900 courses in nearly 20 languages. Overall, Coursera reaches 10 million users in 190 countries. 

The agreement between Coursera and Yonsei was initiated by Coursera in October 2013 when representatives from the company contacted the university. Shortly thereafter, Yonsei formed a team to begin the process of creating innovative online educational content. In September of this year, the Open and Smart Education Committee was established.  Chaired by Vice President for Academic Affairs Jung In-gwon and Vice President for Library and Information Services Lee Joon-ghi, the committee has been tasked with founding the Open and Smart Education TF Center. The center, directed by Professor Huh Joon, is being created to effectively use information and communications technology (ICT) to offer high-quality and user-friendly MOOCs, ones that will use innovative teaching technologies such as “Flipped Learning.”  When the Open and Smart Education TF Center opens for service next year, the general public—especially high school students, parents, and Yonsei alumni—will be able to benefit from a number of new and exciting educational opportunities. Yonsei officials see the university’s commitment to offering high-standard MOOCs as demonstrating the values of service leadership integral to its “Third Founding.”

In a statement, Coursera President Daphne Cohler said: “It is wonderful that Coursera could partner with Yonsei University, which is one of the world’s top universities. In earlier stages of Coursera’s business, the focus was on American universities and partner universities’ users. Now Coursera is on a path to intimately partner with Asian universities. We hope to show to the world the capabilities of Asia and Korea in technology, culture and society through our partnership with Yonsei University.”