Coursera Hits 1 Million Students, With Udacity Close Behind

Coursera has signed up 1 million students for free online courses and rival Udacity has registered more than 739,000 students. However, Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng says the number of active students is significantly lower since many classes have yet to start and many students register but fail to keep up with the coursework. Students participating in these massive open online courses typically watch short video lectures, complete automatically graded tests or assignments, and participate in online communities to work through concepts, but do not receive official university credit in most cases. Coursera works with some of the world's best-known universities, such as Princeton University and the University of Virginia, while Udacity works with individual professors rather than institutions. The companies initially focused on courses for computer science and related fields, but Coursera is expanding into other disciplines. Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun says his company will continue to focus on computer science and related fields. “We are not doing humanities,” he says. Coursera has users in 196 countries with the United States accounting for 38 percent of students, while Udacity has users in 203 countries with the United States accounting for 42 percent. (From: Chronicle of Higher Education. August 10, 2012)