Ed-tech startup Coursera has announced that 29 more schools will offer courses on its online platform, bringing its total to 62 schools.

This latest round of expansion clearly demonstrates that the interest in open access education is a very global phenomenon,” said cofounder Daphne Coller (pictured, top left at a meetup) in an interview with VentureBeat. “We are excited about the opportunity to offer a much more international educational experience to Coursera students.”

The latest colleges and universities to sign up include Northwestern University, City University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, IE Business School in Spain, and New York’s Rochester University. Sixteen of the 29 are outside the U.S.

Santiago Iñiguez, dean of IE Business School, said the institution will offer courses on Coursera in a few short weeks. “The blended programs and multimedia materials of IE Business School provided an ideal synergy with Coursera’s portfolio of MOOCs [massive open online courses] and related online programs, which are irreversibly transforming the landscape of higher education,” he said in a statement.

Over the next few months, Coursera will offer about 90 new courses taught in a variety of languages, including French, Spanish, and Chinese.

The company has seen nearly 2.8 million students enroll in its video courses from 33 institutions. But public confidence in MOOCs has not been consistent. Last week, Coursera had to suspend one of its online courses due to technical glitches and complaints.

However, the Silicon Valley-based company announced that students can now apply credit to their college degree for five of its free courses. The company was the first to gain a recommendation from the American Council on Education (ACE), ahead of such competitors as Udacity.

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A big step forward for online education: Coursera has announced that students can now apply credit to their college degree for five of its free courses. 

Public confidence in massive open online courses (“MOOC’s”) was hit hard this week when Coursera suspended one its online courses due to technical glitches and complaints. A bit ironically, as GigaOm points out, the course in question was intended to teach students how to optimize online education. 

Coursera competitor Udacity recently announced a pilot program in conjunction with San Jose State University to offer online courses for college credit. But Coursera claims to be the first to gain a recommendation from American Council on Education (ACE). About 2000 colleges and universities in the U.S. currently accept this form of ACE approved credit.

The five courses approved today are four undergraduate credit courses:

• Pre-calculus from the University of California, Irvine.
• Introduction to Genetics and Evolution from Duke University.
• Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach from Duke University.
• Calculus: Single Variable from the University of Pennsylvania.
• Algebra from the University of California, Irvine (but only as a vocational credit).

Students that complete one of these classes can request a transcript with credit recommendations. Credit is granted at the discretion of the institution. 

“We are excited by this opportunity to experiment with new ways of using our MOOC [massive open online] courses to extend our educational reach and provide credit for students who would not otherwise have access to our faculty,” said Duke Provost Peter Lange in a statement.

The company revealed that it will continue to push for more of its courses to be transferrable as college credit. Daphne Koller, Coursera’s cofounder, said that by adding these credential options, they hope to “increase the rate of degree completion and reduce the burden of college debt.”

Coursera’s founders — former Stanford professors — expect to experience their fair share of ups and downs as the technology evolves. In a recent interview with VentureBeat, Coursera’s founder Andrew Ng said it has been a “slow road”, but the company’s success proves online education is “no passing fad.” Universities like Brown and Duke currently offer free courses on Coursera.

Coursera has raised over $22 million in funding to date from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates, among others.

Online learning platform Course Hero announced today it has added 18 new courses to its catalog, so users can pick up skills like web programming and product design for free.

The Redwood City-based company began as a study supplement and online tutoring service but recently began offering classes. Unlike Coursera, a platform for online college courses, subject matter experts can teach on Course Hero. The focus is on professional development skills that aren’t typically taught at college.

“Anyone in the world can offer a course on Course Hero,” said Andrew Grauer, the site’s founder and chief executive. Educational content is drawn from all over the web for courses taught in business, photoshop and design, Excel, calculus, algebra, and constitutional law.

These courses will always be free to users, but the founders are considering offering premium services like one-on-one tutoring. To access the library of study materials, users pay a $40 per month subscription, or a one-off annual fee of $100.

Andrew Grauer, Course Hero’s CEO

Once users complete the class, they aren’t given any formal accreditation. Grauer said you can’t prove your aptitude with a piece of paper. Instead, take a class and you’ll be able to pull out a laptop and start programming in HTML5 or work up a solid business plan in hours.

“Our thinking is that there will be alternative methods of certification in the future,” he said. But Grauer, a Cornell grad, would not advise that students drop out of college.

Course Hero is one of many startups that aims to disrupt the higher education market. But it’s a bit different for a number of reasons: The company has been profitable for over a year, content is crowdsourced, and it uses game mechanics to reward users. For instance, a team that excelled in one of the entrepreneurship-focusesed classes walked away with $5,000 and an opportunity to pitch investors at SV Angel as a reward.

The company makes money through its database of college class notes that would typically be discarded at the end of a semester. Grauer told me the site has accumulated a massive database of class notes, exams, and assignments by offering students free access to materials in exchange for uploading 40 documents each month. It’s straight up bargaining, and it seems to be working.

Grauer has also worked out a clever way to curate content. Unlike Boundless, a competing site, it doesn’t rely on bots or an algorithm. All material uploaded to the site is subject to an extensive peer review process. At least one member of the startup’s 25-person team will take a look once the content has been rubber stamped by a campus-based employee, usually an intern.

The site isn’t just focused on classes. Grauer told me the company recently acquired Cardinal Scholars, a Palo Alto-based tutoring service, to expand to K12 education. The sites will function separately, but Course Hero will benefit from an influx of Ivy League-educated tutors.

The site has raised $2.4 million in seed funding from a band of investors, including SV Angel, Maveron, and YouTube’s cofounder, Steve Chen.

Top Image via Shutter stock