Coursera Adds Mentors, Project-Based Courses to Online Offerings

SOUPED-UP MOOCs: Online courses often get knocked for lacking the interaction and guidance critical to successful learning. Coursera is beefing up its online offerings by introducing project-based and mentor-guided courses. Last week the company launched 12 project-based courses in areas spanning computer science and business (“Writing Professional Emails and Memos”) to art and music (“How to Make a Comic Book”).

In a separate move, Coursera began offering mentors for 10 of its courses, Class Central reports. For $248, students can receive 1:1 feedback, email and forum support, and live weekly “office hours" with mentors—professionals from industries relevant to each course. While companies including Udacity and General Assembly have offered mentor-guided courses for years, the space is mostly new for Coursera, whose other guided-course initiative (a peer-to-peer tutoring pilot in 2014) was short-lived.