Coursera, Inc. (NYSE: COUR), one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, has today announced its partnership with Ain Shams University to drive the university’s digital transformation, foster multi-disciplinary learning, and support faculty professional development. Ain Shams University is the first public university in Egypt to fully integrate Coursera for Campus. The partnership offers the university’s faculty, staff, and students unlimited enrollments to the Coursera catalog, equipping them with the high-demand entrepreneurial, digital, and technology skills required to drive innovation and prepare for the future of work.

The agreement builds on over eighteen months of collaboration between Coursera and Ain Shams University. In March 2020, Ain Shams participated in the Coursera Campus Response Initiative, launched to help universities and colleges around the world take learning online in response to the pandemic. Through this initiative, Ain Shams university students accumulated over 128,000 learning hours and earned more than 8,600 course certificates on Coursera between March 2020 and October 2021.

“Our initial relationship with Ain Shams created new opportunities for their students to develop essential digital skills at unprecedented speed and scale” said Anthony Tattersall, Vice-President of EMEA, Coursera. “We’re honored to further expand our collaboration with one of Egypt’s leading universities, supporting their mission to equip graduates for the international labor market, and empowering faculty to deliver exceptional teaching amid rapid transformation.”

Ain Shams University will integrate job-relevant online courses from across the Coursera catalog into their curriculum, while also using those courses to upskill its faculty. Courses are taught by over 250 leading university and industry partners, including Imperial College London, École Polytechnique, IBM, and Microsoft. Learners will also benefit from a world-class online, mobile, and hands-on learning experience while earning job-relevant credentials for courses they complete. The Coursera catalog currently comprises over 5,200 courses, 2,100 Guided Projects, and over 70 Professional Certificates.

With Coursera for Campus, Ain Shams will:

●    Receive powerful analytics tools to enable faculty to track completion, and directly collect data on skills acquisition across the entire university.

●    Compare their learner data to that of other partners across the Coursera platform by region and industry segment to identify where skills gaps are emerging, and where Ain Shams students excel.

●    Curate content and learning pathways to ensure that students are introduced to courses optimized for their career requirements.

●    Receive access to 25,000 certificates each year on a first-come, first-serve basis, allowing learners to validate their acquired skills for employers worldwide.

The Coursera-Ain Shams partnership is the latest milestone in Coursera’s rapid growth across the Middle East and North Africa. Coursera currently supports the skills development of 1.6 million learners in Egypt, and more than 5.2 million learners across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This total includes over 400,000 new registered Coursera learners across the region between July and September 2021.