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 the amazing contributions that you're all making

toward 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 on board soon and (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 spans 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,

where (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 help 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 passions

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 general stuff about Coursera and international growth

in a second. 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, so 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

but 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 this content there

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

And so we hope to actually use this as a spur to develop the 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 this international platform, but there are lots of local resources that come streaming up (check) 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.

And there a few that are 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 a 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 number 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,"

I think that's absolutely fine (check).

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

I guess in Chad. Thank you, Akram.

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

like Chad 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 has 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 E. Bildner) Thanks, Daphne. A couple of other questions:

Interesting one here from Mrityunjay, if I'm mispronouncing your name, Yunjay in a --

I'm not sure where you come from, thanks for asking the question:

"Will Coursera be focusing on elistic education, as in knowledge for the sake of knowledge,

or will be filling the gaps in reward system"

so, I guess, more of a kind of vocational education.

How do you think about that (inaudible) about Coursera's place is?

(D. Koller) So, we're committed to education in multiple forms.

We believe that it's wonderful that, if someone wants to study poetry or philosophy,

we think that has an important place, even though that might not, for most people,

be along their career projectory (check).

At the same time, we also realize that, for many people, one of their goals in education

is to increase their ability to provide for themselves and their families,

and have access to a more, you know, stimulating job than they currently do.

And so we really try to do both things:

we have a very broad range of disciplines represented on our platform,

including music and the arts and philosophy, and archeology

a whole bunch of topics like that, but also we simply --

there's a whole lot of topics that are much more applied,

and if you call them "vocational" in the sense that they cater only to academic disciplines,

but there are things like Android development, (inaudible) science,

programming, finance, accounting,

things that are really very much in line with the possibility of getting a better job.

Our recently launched specializations also are very much in that vein,

because there's not only a curriculum that allows -- that spans multiple courses

and allows one to achieve mastery in a given discipline

that can really give much stronger chances of a better job,

but is also accompanied with a capstone project, like a final project

that allows learners to demonstrate their ability to apply their skills in the context of the real world.

Problem (check) in that gets -- that's something that can then

be used as a part of their portfolio when applying for a job.

And so, we believe that we'd like to give those learners who want this

the opportunity to use the educational platform in order to make a better life for themselves.

(E. Bildner) Thanks Daphne. Interesting question here from Andres.

Andres asks "Udacity recently decided to discontinue their free certification programs,

so they changed their model somewhat. What's Coursera's view on, I guess, that."

But I guess, more generally, how do we think about for the importance of free education

and I guess, incorporating that into our own business and long term strategy?"

(D. Koller) Right. So, we are very committed to the notion of free education,

and having the content remain free and available to everyone.

(18:22) We have two kinds of outcomes, if you will, that we offer learners currently on the platform

and we view them quite differently.

There is our verified certificate and our statement of accomplishment.

We view the statement of accomplishment not as a credential or a certificate.

We view that as more of a memento that the learner can say:

"OK, I feel good because I took something away with me from the course."

It's not a credential because it doesn't have any kind of validation associated with it.

It's not identity-verified, so Eli here can take the class in my place and get a certificate

that says "Daphne Koller" and it's not, you know,

there is no guarantee that I was the one who did the work, and in fact it's Eli who did the work.

So -- and furthermore, creating one of these statements of accomplishment is really easy,

you can take the PDF and you can (inaudible),

you know, I can put my name instead of Eli's name --

(E. Bildner 19:22) Don't try this at home.
(D. Koller) OK, don't try this athome (laughter)

But the point is that there is no academic integrity associated with the statement of accomplishment:

it's a memento.

The verified certificate that we offer as part of our Signature Track is a credential.

It's identity-verified, it's unforgeable because it has a verification code.

It's true that that one does have a modest cost, you know, $40-50 is about typical,

but at the same time, we have from the very beginning, day 1,

have had a financial aid program, so that learners from backgrounds

that don't allow them to afford that $40 or $50, can still basically fill out a very simple 1-page application

and we waive that $40 or $50 fee for that credential.

And so, you can basically say: "Look, it's free to those learners who need it to be free"

and the other ones who can afford the $40 or $50, which for a large number of our learners,

is, you know, not a very signi-- not a very onerous burden,

they help pay for the free education that we are providing to everyone.

(E. Bildner) Thanks, Daphne. All right, let's see.

Interesting question here from Rishkash. Apoplogies again, if I'm mispronouncing it --

(D. Koller) Rishikesh
(E. Bildner) Rishikesh.

"Do you think that translating courses will get people to learn the subject?

Because I think the course will probably require English somewhere down the line."

So I guess, the question, more broadly, is, you know, right now, translations are focused on subtitles,

I guess the user interface is translated too, but how are we thinking about

helping people experience a full course in either in translation,

or in a language that's more comp-- that's a little easier for them to get along?

(D. Koller) No, I think that's an excellent question, thank you, Rishikesh.

So, right now, as Eli said, the translations are solely for the subtitles to the course.

And we realize that there is many parts of the experience,

like the assessments, for example, where you still need English in order to do the course completely.

So, let's see: where do we sit on that?

Right now, we think that there is still -- in certain courses, you can use Google Translate,

for example for some of the assessments, because if the questions are short and mostly,

are just like writing, you know, answering the multiple choice questions or writing a program,

you don't really need that much English if accompanied by Google Translate,

really, to do that.

But that's only a sub-set of courses.

In order to provide a fully translated course experience,

we would need to do some really fairly heavy lifting on the product's side, on the platform.

It's definitely something that we plan to do.

We haven't had a chance to do that yet:

we're a small company, there's many things that we'd like to do,

and we just haven't got around to this one

but we hope to get around to it soon,

and so be able to provide people with a much more internationalized course experience,

where you will also potentially have, you know, forums that are in different languages and, you know,

hopefully we will be able to do peer-grading in different languages,

so that people who speak Chinese will grade people who wrote their essays in Chinese and --

versus other languages.

and so, there is a lot of things that we still have to do and we hope to be able to get to that soon.

(22:55 E. Bildner) Thank you. Interesting question here from David. David asks:

"Will we ever see language courses on Coursera?"

I mean, you know, I love learning languages, (inaudible) people out there,

whether it's perfecting their English or different languages.

Have you got something we'll see in the future?

(D. Koller) You know, I hope the answer to that is yes.

We are in some ways, you know, dependent on our university partners

in which courses they elect to put on the platform.

Right now, we've not yet had someone jump up and say:

"I'd like to teach a language course."

We do have one course which is an English as a Second Language course,

intended for teachers of English as a second language,

but we don't have any real language courses and you can give this as a call to all our university partners:

If you're interested in offering a language course, please let me know and we'd love to have one.

(E. Bildner) Great and I look forward to that.
(D. Koller) Yes, and me too.

(E. Bildner) Let's see. Here is a question from Mahmoud (check). Mahmoud asks:

"Does Coursera plan to set up any infrastructure

a distant (check) infrastructure in different countries to (inaudible) in person testing?"

I guess, you know, the idea being that that would be, you know,

if that would improve the authentication experience towards earning a verified certificate.

How do you think about that?

(D. Koller) I think that this is a very interesting notion,

and right now, we haven't seen a huge demand for it yet,

partly because I think the incidences, at this point, of cheating on our platform,

they are definitely there, but they're not hugely common

and so, it's not something that people really clamored for.

But I think as the stakes grow, you know, for example,

as more and more employers start recognizing these credentials,

or as universities start accepting them for credit and in some cases, perhaps,

we'll need to have a higher level of academic integrity,

at which point we might explore this possibility.

(E. Bildner) Great, thank you. Let's see here. So Christian (check) asks:

"How do we plan to give, can foster the strength of credentials."

So you own a verified certificate, you want to use it to improve your job--

to improve your carreer prospects, for getting any jobs, how are we working to improve that?

(D. Koller) Yeah. So we actually have an effort here at Coursera on what we call "credential value,"

which is really intended to address exactly that question, Christian, so thank you for that,

of demonstrating more broadly the value of our credentials to a number of constituencies:

to our learners, to employers, to educational institutions.

So we've done a number of things:

First is, for example, we've had a partnership with LinkedIn

that allows us -- that allows our learners via the click of a button

to post their credential on LinkedIn, so that employers can see that

and know that this person has achieved a lot of mastery in a very rigorous academic topic.

We're working with employers to recognize the value of our courses

and somehow, many employers have expressed their interest in using this for internal training

as well as have told us that they are excited about employee --

perspective of employees who come in with that type of credential.

One of our university partners, Duke University, recently did a survey among employers

in their geographical basin in North Carolina and discovered that, I think,

over 50% of employers are -- would be -- would consider the completion of one of the MOOCs

as a strong factor in hiring decision.

And so we're trying to encourage that as well.

And then, really, just making sure that our courses are strong and rigorous

and of high academic quality is, I think, eventually -- and it's already starting to happen --

the value of those will become clear just because of market forces.

The project-based courses, which allow students, for example in those specializations,

to create an artifact, to demonstrate mastery in terms of applying skills to a real world problem,

I think, will really help reinforce the fact that our learners emerge from a really valuable use of skills.

(E. Bildner) Thanks, Daphne. I see a couple of questions or comments on the (inaudible) tool, about --

specifically about, very specific GTC-related stuff.

So just remind once again, we'll take a couple more questions for Daphne

and then Sébastien and I will field the bunch of questions

that are specifically about the Translator Community and we'll let Daphne get on her day,

to try improve Coursera and do other things that all you folks are asking about.

So I guess, a couple more questions for Daphne. Interesting question here from Catalin,

who asks, you know, if there are any plans to allow

non universities and non institutions to create courses on Coursera, I guess, more broadly,

how are we thinking about building up a diversity of courses on the platform?

(D. Koller) So, right now, we're focused on working with our university partners

and some non-university partners that are offering mostly contents

in teacher professional development (check).

That is not because we believe that there is no good education to be had elsewhere.

So we know that there is great teachers to be had at institutions that are not among our partners as well,

it's just, you know, people out there in the world will not affiliate with any educational institution. (check)

So, we think -- I think it's great, Catalin, that you're producing your own course

and making it available to people.

We are -- we came into this with a model of having a very highly curated platform

rather than a more YouTube-like model that has anyone being able to upload content.

So, in order for us to maintain that level of curation, we would have to go and, you know,

examine the courses of people like you and evaluate them for quality and academic rigor,

and so on and so forth, and I'm sure we'd find some really amazing gems if we did that,

but we just don't have the capacity to do that level of screening,

nor do we have the ability to train a much larger number of instructors in the use of our platform

and in what we consider to be the best practices for high-quality content, and so on,

and so, I'm sure we're missing some really amazing things right now,

but as we're trying to, you know, build thing out,

it's better for us to maintain this somewhat narrow level of focus and hopefully in the future,

be able to broaden out to a larger number of providers.

(E. Bildner) Great, thanks. Maybe we can take one more question for Daphne.

It seems like a lot of people are interested in knowing

whether Coursera's certified courses are recognized by companies.

I know you talked about that a little already, but, you know,

have we seen any examples of companies saying, you know:

"If you take this course, you'll have an advantage in some way, either internally or --

what have we seen there with companies and Coursera?

(D. Koller) So, you know, the company is only 2-years old,

which is kind of hard to believe, given the amount of interest that we've seen and the --

and the amazing community that we've been able to build up, including yourselves,

but it's a relatively young company, with maybe only about a year's worth of actual "graduates,"

if you will, from courses, a year and half at the most,

and so, it takes a while for the market to catch up with the value of a particular form of education,

to recognize that yes, this is like -- this education provides real value

and the learners who emerge from this are, you know, really qualified to do what they claim they can do.

Nevertheless, even with that short time frame,

we've already seen significant recognition of these credentials by employers.

I've mentioned the Duke University study a moment ago,

that had surveyed several hundred employers in North Carolina,

and importantly, this was not surveyed on, for example,

here in the San Francisco Bay area of, you know, tech-savvy employers,

all of whom are sort of familiar with internet technologies and so on,

this was in a different part of the country, with a very diverse range of employers,

from very different sectors, and nevertheless, we see a very large fraction of them

-- I don't remember the exact number, I think 50 to 60% who said that

they will recognize the validity of these credentials in terms of preferring to --

treating these candidates in some preferen --

in some way preferentially recognizing they're bringing something that you need to the table.

And so, people are starting to see a very significant uptake on the value of these credentials,

and I think, in a year, this question probably would be asked (inaudible).

(E. Bildner) OK. Well, Daphne, I just want to thank you again,

I don't know if you have any heartening words for the GTC friends we have with us today.

( D. Koller) Sure, so, you know, I've already said this at the very beginning,

but I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all again.

You have already 9 courses that have been translate

as well as the many others that I'm sure you'll contribute

towards making a hugely important dent in the issues of accessibility

to the vast majority of this world population that -- for whom English is not their native language.

So we're very, very grateful for your efforts, and also grateful for the efforts of Eli and Sébastien

and our translation partners for helping you make that possible.

So thank you very much.