A new wave of education is taking over, providing entirely free online courses for entrepreneurs and tech startup enthusiasts around the world.
Coursera is an education company that partners with the top universities and organizations across the globe to offer free online courses. Why teach hundreds when you can teach millions?
“We envision a future where everyone has access to a world-class education that has so far been available to a select few. We aim to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in,” states the Coursera website.
Coursera teaches many class categories that would benefit entrepreneurs in Louisiana, including but not limited to: Business & Management, CS: Software Engineering, CS: Systems & Security, Economics & Finance, Energy & Earth Sciences, Engineering, and Information, Tech & Design.
Additionally, Startup Engineering, a class offered at Stanford, will cover technical material in the first half and entrepreneurial considerations in the second. They said it will be particularly useful for CS undergrads, grad students or alumni in other STEM disciplines, people looking to found or join a startup, and new startup hires.
Stanford’s website describes the class:
Spiritual sequel to Peter Thiel’s CS183 course on startups. Bridges the gap between academic computer science and production software engineering. Fast-paced introduction to key tools and techniques (command line, dotfiles, text editor, distributed version control, debugging, testing, documentation, reading code, deployments), featuring guest appearances by senior engineers from successful startups and large-scale academic projects. Over the course of the class, students will build a command line application, expose it as a web service, and then link other students’ applications and services together to build an HTML5 mobile app. General principles are illustrated through modern Javascript and the latest web technologies, including Node, Backbone, Coffeescript, Bootstrap, Git, and Github
Coursera currently has 9.5 million enrollments representing 195 countries.
Comment below if you have ever participated in a Coursera class and let SBN and readers know how it went!