Anthony Tattersall, vice-president for EMEA at Coursera said, the UAE has shown that upskilling is not only a business priority but imperative for the entire world.
“The outbreak of COVID-19 has proved that digital transformation is a must for every business and customer needs are changing radically. Companies who fail to evolve will experience risks,” he said.
The UAE has initiated national and government-funded digital transformation projects to step up its digital transformation efforts, and these are driving positive results as the nation jumped from third to second place in this year’s Coursera Global Skills Index for technology skills in the Middle East and Africa (MEA), and fourth regionally for data science skills.
Coursera has collaborated with the Abu Dhabi School of Government, the government body responsible for monitoring and preparing the learning and advancement of all Abu Dhabi government employees, to upgrade more than 60,000 government officials to cutting-edge skills such as data science, artificial intelligence and digital transformation.
This public-private initiative’s unparalleled reach and size show that upskilling is taken very seriously across the entire emirate.
Abdulla Almuhairi, vice-president of Shared Services at the Higher Colleges of Technology said, “Remote learning is just the start of a long-term digital transformation of higher education”.
Coursera released free versions and updated the functionality of Coursera for Campus to meet the vital and long-term needs of worldwide higher education. New features allow universities to provide credit-bearing online learning with academic credibility, boost student employability, and establish private courses.
Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO, Coursera said, “The pandemic has been a catalyst for universities to make online learning the core of their student experience. We’ve grown from 30 universities using Coursera for Campus to over 3,700 in just seven months, and these upgrades will help them better deliver for-credit online learning and job-relevant skills for their students.”
Coursera
US-based Coursera is an open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University’s computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller that offers massive online open courses, specializations, degrees, professional and master track courses.
