Coursera launches in Brazil, becomes first online education provider to partner with its public universities

Coursera today announced it is officially launching in Brazil. The company is teaming up with the University of Sao Paulo (USP) and State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), its first university partners in Latin America to offer Portuguese courses.

That’s not the only first. Coursera is the first open online education provider to partner with Brazil’s top universities. Furthermore, the move today also means it is offering its first native Portuguese courses for learners not just in Brazil, but across the globe.

The two universities will develop courses targeted at Brazilian learners in high-demand topics from entrepreneurship to finance, slated for early next year. Coursera has also struck a deal with R7, one of Brazil’s largest web portals, to increase awareness of these new educational opportunities by featuring its courses.

In addition, the Lemann Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting social change in Brazil through education, will create teacher professional development courses targeting K-12 teachers. Along with volunteers from Coursera’s Global Translator Community, the Lemann Foundation has also led the translation of 18 existing courses, tripling the number of Coursera classes available with Portuguese subtitles.

“Since Coursera launched two years ago, we’ve been amazed and heartened by the huge number of learners in Brazil we’ve already seen gain value from taking our courses,” Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller said in a statement. Even before all of today’s news, Brazilians represent Coursera’s fifth largest user base (after the US, India, China, and the UK). There are over 215 million Portuguese speakers in Brazil, so we wouldn’t be surprised if the current number of 300,000 Coursera users in the country quickly explodes.

See also – Coursera partners with Carlos Slim Foundation to translate courses into Spanish, boost education in Latin America and Coursera partners with 13 new institutions to pass 100 total, eclipses 5 million students and 500 courses too