Stanford Professors Launch Online University Coursera - Liz Gannes - News - AllThingsD
There seems to be something in the water at Stanford University that’s making faculty members leave their more-than-perfectly-good jobs and go teach online.
Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng are on leave to launchCoursera, which will offer university classes for free online, in partnership with top schools.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera is backed with $16 million in funding led by John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins and Scott Sandell at NEA. It has no immediate plans to charge for courses or to make money in other ways.
Compared to Udacity, a similar start-up from former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrunthat’s creating its own classes, Coursera helps support its university partners in creating their own courses, which are listed under each school’s brand.
Some might doubt that universities would want to share their prized content for free online with a start-up, but Coursera has already signed up Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania as partners, with a set of classes launching April 23.