Covenant University, one of Africa’s leading higher education institutions ranked No.4 on the continent by the Times Higher Education (THE), has partnered with Coursera, the leading online learning platform, to address the need for job-relevant skills on the continent.
Covenant is the first African higher education provider to partner with Coursera to offer full-scale blended learning to all 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The partnership will help diversify Covenant’s on campus curriculum with top online learning courses from Coursera, with plans to continue growing the partnership in the year ahead. More than 63 million learners globally use Coursera to gain job-relevant skills.
“Covenant has a long history pioneering and disrupting the higher education system in Africa and with this new partnership it is now leading in accelerating the long-overdue digital transformation in African Higher Education. We understand that Coursera for Campus empowers any university to offer high-quality, job-relevant online learning to students, alumni, faculty, and staff. We are thrilled to both activate this partnership with Coursera and stand as the first institution fully integrating high quality onsite and online learning in Africa with them”, said Prof. AAA Atayero, the Vice-Chancellor, Covenant University.
Through the partnership, every Covenant student will have access to the Coursera catalog of 3,800 online courses, as long as the individual remains a student, alumni, or faculty of the institution. Coursera courses span popular university subjects like engineering, business, data science, health, and arts and are divided into weekly modules with video and reading lessons. Course performance is assessed via quizzes and peer assignments, and learners receive a certificate upon completion.
Intensive work has gone into tying 30% of the credit units that each student requires per semester, to Coursera courses from other world-class universities. This has been done using CourseMatch, Coursera’s tool to match Coursera courses to on-campus courses at colleges and universities across the globe.
The partnership is a strategic priority for us. It provides learners at Covenant access to the peak of education. It will allow alumni, staff and faculty to maintain a viable edge in the constantly changing world of work, said Dr. Ada Peter, Director International Office, and Linkages.
From early 2017, Covenant has embraced several innovative learning collaborations with organizations, including MITx, the African Development Bank’s Coding for Employment and Sciences Po International Virtual Exchange Program for students. But while COVID-19 caught most universities off guard, the same challenge has provided opportunities for universities like Covenant to pace into the world of blended and continuous lifelong learning.
“With an estimated 1,650 higher ed institutions in Africa, access to education for the relevant age group remains the lowest in the world, at 5%. We are therefore thrilled to be partnering with Covenant university to help them provide full scale blended learning, as they pave the way for change. Amongst all the disruptions that COVID-19 has posed us, there are opportunities. Rethinking what the future of education should look like and adopting an approach that helps us improve it is one of them. Covenant University has seized this opportunity. We look forward to seeing them grow as our partnership develops” said Anthony Tattersall, Head of EMEA at Coursera.
The Covenant University – Coursera partnership will change the course content development narrative and offerings on the continent. We are optimistic that the new approach will keep learners at the University relevant in their chosen fields of endeavor, said Prof. Akan Williams, The Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Covenant University.
Covenant University is rated the Nigerian University with most employable graduates and cumulatively West Africa’s leading University.
