Global Translator Community Hangout with Daphne Koller

Original YouTube description:
"Daphne will share a bit about her story and the story of Coursera, and take questions from the crowd."
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These "Metadata: Twitter" subtitles cover only the part with Daphne Koller that is left out in the "English" subtitles.

(2:19 D. Koller) Hi everyone! It's a real privilege for me to be able to speak with you

and thank you all for these amazing contributions that you're all making

towards making education accessible to a much, much larger number of people.

I'd also like to start off by thanking not only you, the individual volunteers,

but also the organizations that have been working with us here at Coursera

to help you and to help us with this amazing project.

And these include GUOKR in China, the Lemann Foundation in Brazil,

ABBYY Language services in Russia, the Slim Foundation in Mexico

and many other organizations that we hope will come onboard too (unclear ...ully)

or that are already with us in order to help this translation project.

Coursera has always been an international platform.

As it happens, both my co-founder Andrew Ng and myself are not originally from the United States.

I grew up in Israel and Andrew grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore.

And so, we've always realized the importance of having an effort that spands the globe

and appeals -- and that's accessible to everyone.

In fact, even from the earliest days of the MOOC effort,

we had only 40% of the audience from the United States, 60% from outside the United States.

And that fraction of people outside the United States has only been growing over time:

well (check) now only a third of our audience comes from the United States.

And so, we're really excited to have -- to be able to expand that reach to an even larger number of people.

Half or more of our users are currently from countries where the primary language is not English.

Now, this is pretty incredible when you think about this.

Our courses are hard.

They're hard even if you're listening to them in your native language.

And if you're listening to them in a language where you have to simultaneously

think about understanding what's being said as well as to understand the material,

I mean, that's really an incredible challenge,

and it's quite amazing that these many people have been able to deal with that,

but at the same time, we realize that there's many many more for whom this is a barrier,

that is, that their inability to simultaneously understand English and the content

prevents them from having the benefit of access to our courses.

And so, because of that, we knew that we needed to make Coursera more accessible

and a better place for learners all over the world, regardless of what their native language is.

And so, we've been doing a number of things to move that along,

we've been partnering with institutions that teach in native languages other than English,

and currently, we have, I think, ten different -- nine different languages offered on the platform

and we hope to increase both the number of languages

as well as the number of courses in each of those languages,

to make a much broader range of content available to people.

We've internationalized the user interface of the platform into six languages,

so as to make people whose native language is that language

feel at home when they came onto the site.

And now, in what I think is likely to be our biggest-impact project yet

in terms of increasing access regardless of language barriers,

we have the Global Translation Community project,

lead by my amazing colleagues Sébastien and Eli, here

and it's a -- all the credit goes to them, by the way.

So, we've been just awe-struck by the passion and commitment

that we've seen among all of you in joining this effort.

And I know we've heard from many of you that for you, this is an opportunity to give something back

but it's sort of, you know, I think there is an amazing opportunity here of free, high-quality education

and this is a way for you to share that education with people that,

you now, might not otherwise have access tools -- in many cases your fellow country-people

and it's really amazing that you decided to give of your time, your energy and your passion

to make that possible.

And I know that many people in your countries and in other countries that speak the same language

will be very grateful for your effort and I know we are as well: so thank you all.

(7:12 E. Bildner) Thank you, thank you so much for that introduction (inaudible) Daphne.

Again, just as I mentioned, my name is Eli and I work on the International Grow team

and we'll field some of the great questions that we're seeing coming in.

Just a couple of logistical notes:

I see there are a few questions about the nature of the community logistics

and Sébastien and I will get to those, I guess after (inaudible) Daphne.

So we'll let Daphne talk about more (inaudible) about Coursera and international growth.

In a second (check) I see there are a couple more comments about the hangout being a little bit hard to hear,

if you're watching through YouTube, it might be better to click through to the link to the live hangout

and close the YouTube tab.

You can only hear it once. I hope that will take care of that.

So, with that started, with that all said, I wanted to - let's see,

I saw a question here about the effect, you know,

what impact Coursera will have on the globalization of higher education.

So, I guess, you characteristically (check) talked about that,

you know, what does this mean for having universities in many different countries

(inaudible) worldwide higher education (inaudible)

(8:23 D. Koller) So I think, in some sense, this is a tremendous opportunity

for higher education and for the world

because it allows people to see education as it's offered in parts of the world

that many will just never have the opportunity to visit

and so, you can view this as a way of allowing people

to share perspectives and opinions across national boundaries

and many of our courses, in fact, are very much contextualized.

So for example, if you're teaching a course on sociology

or on sustainability or on business, or many other topics,

the perspectives that you'd get from someone in China

is very different from what you would get from someone in Nigeria or in the United States.

So this ability to really get these diverse points of view and share those with other learners

is really, I think, one of the things that both the learners on our platform get (inaudible)

also the instructors who are teaching benefit a lot from this.

So I think that's one aspect of globalization.

The other aspect, I think, is just the capacity issue that is present in many parts of the world.

Those of us who live in countries that are -- where the educational infrastructure is better developed

often take for granted the ability that we have to just sign up for a college

and obviously, we have to pass the admission criteria,

but if we do, then there is a place for us and we have the opportunity to learn;

but in many parts of the world, that's just not true.

And there are people that would dearly love to have the opportunity for an educational experience

and that opportunity is just not there for them,

because of a lack of capacity in the educational system,

because they don't have enough money,

because of social circumstances and -- or economic circumstances --

and this really, I think, allows the opportunity for people in those countries

to have access to something that just otherwise would not exist.

And hopefully, over time, the educational infrastructure will catch up,

maybe, perhaps, to some extent by having that content there

that helps further development and create more qualified instructors within the country.

And so we hope to use this as a spur to develop

-- to spur the development of educational infrastructure around the world.

(10:52 E. Bildner) Daphne, I guess we're seeing a couple of other questions come in.

How do you see Coursera interacting with other online initiatives in --

that are specifically focused on individual countries, you know,

Coursera is an international platform, but there are lots of local resources (inaudible) to you

and how do you see that interaction working?

(11:12 D. Koller) So I think there is a diverse -- with this move towards online education

that really started out with the efforts that Andrew and I did at Stanford in September 2001,

there is now realization that there is a big opportunity there,

and there is a number of initiatives that are coming up to leverage that and move that forward.

You know, I think that some of these are efforts that are very,

in some sense, complementary to what we're doing.

So, for example, there are portals in certain countries, like Nadees (check) portal for example,

that is one of our Chinese partners, that really point to great content from Coursera,

from Khan Academy, from other resources

and serve as a place where people in that country can find out about great educational content.

(inaudible) a little bit more similar to what we're doing, so you could view this,

they're trying to do the same thing, but perhaps focused on the needs of that particular country

and I think that's totally fine, because there is a limited capacity to what we can host on Coursera

in terms of university partners,

and so if you have a site that says "I'm going to allow the many universities within a given country

that can't be on Coursera to still offer content in language, in -- you know, that's really,

that's about local -- that really focus on aspects that are tied to the local culture (check)"

I think that's absolutely fine.

(12:47 E. Bildner) Thanks. We get a great question coming in from Akhrum Dahab (check),

I guess n Tchad. Thank you, Akhram.

"What would you do to help people from poor countries with limited connection speed,

like Tchad where I live?"

(12:59 D. Koller) Well, first of all, thank you so much for joining us from Tchad.

That's very far away and it's wonderful that people from all over the world are part of this effort.

So thank you for participating.

We completely realize that there are serious infrastructure issues

in allowing people from parts of the world where broadband internet, for example,

is not readily available, to access our kind of content.

And so, there is a two-part answer to this.

The first is that the digital divide is a prevalent problem

that we at Coursera are not going to be the solution for,

because there are only so many problems that an organization can tackle.

But fortunately, there is a number of organizations, governments and NGOs,

that are working to try and overcome those infrastructure issues in a much broader basis

and we're delighted to see that happening.

There's been tremendous progress in India, for example, recently,

and I hope other countries will follow suit.

At the same time, we're doing what we can on our side, until that happens, to try and increase access.

And that includes programs like the Global Translation Community,

which hope (check) to overcome language barriers,

the significant effort that we've made on building mobile apps

that allow those people who access the internet primarily by their mobile device

to have a much better experience, and that's specifically, I think,

common in developing countries.

And then there is a number of efforts that we've made in the Learning Hub project,

which are these physical spaces that have high broadband internet connectivity

in places like US embassies, or the digital libraries of the Slim foundation in Mexico and Latin America,

as well as a number of other partners that we have around the world

that provide local hubs where people who don't necessarily have access to the internet

can come and study quietly, often with the guidance of the (inaudible)

and we see amazing learning outcomes in those places,

with much higher completion rates than we see in just the general population,

and people having incredible experiences with that.

And so that's another thing that we've done. (15:20)