Universidad ORT Uruguay the Universidad ORT Uruguay of Edinburgh—the latter ranked among the top 50 universities worldwide—have signed an academic collaboration agreement to jointly offer a free MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) through the Coursera platform, in both Spanish and English.
The "A Programar!" and "Code Yourself" workshops were offered as Coursera's first dual-language MOOC—that is, the first course in two languages, with two production teams, one from ORT and the other from Edinburgh.
Professor Víctor Paulós, academic secretary of the School of Engineering at Universidad ORT Uruguay, noted that it is truly remarkable that “an ORT initiative to offer a course in two languages has caught the attention of the University of Edinburgh, and that four years later, more than 240,000 people from 199 countries have registered.”
In addition, Paulós noted that the Arabic translation of the course is a first: “The fact that it has caught the attention of the Abu Dhabi government, which plans to add Arabic subtitles to the English version (Code Yourself), is a first,” he said.
Regarding the upcoming Portuguese-language version, titled “Programe-se,” Paulós noted that “it will be a unique milestone in Coursera’s history to have a trilingual MOOC (once the Portuguese version is released), with three production teams (the University of Edinburgh, the University of São Paulo, and ORT).”
"Let's Code!" by the Numbers
- The course has been very well received by participants, 95% of whom said it met or exceeded their expectations, and 98% of whom would recommend it. It lasts five weeks and consists of video lessons, exercises, and forum discussions.
- Most participants are from South America (40%), North America (35%), Europe (23%), Asia (1.6%), Africa (0.3%), and Oceania (0.1%).
- Top 10 participating countries: Mexico 20%, Spain 20%, Colombia 12%, United States 7%, Uruguay 6%, Argentina and Peru 5%, Venezuela and Ecuador 3%, and Chile 2%.