MOOCs Try to Break the Language Barrier

By Issie Lapowsky. Next up for online education portals Coursera and edX: breaking into the non-English speaking world. To be truly global, they need to expand their reach.
Since their inception, companies like Coursera and edX, both purveyors of massively open online courses or MOOCS, have had grand plans to radically expand access to an elite education around the world. So you live in Lesotho? No problem. Join Coursera, and you can take Harvard courses for free online.
That is, if you speak English.
These days there's plenty of debate about MOOC mania: Are these companies really worth the millions of dollars venture capitalists are pouring into them? Are they really providing students a first class education? Another issue with the outsized ambitions of these companies: so far, they haven't found a way to be truly global and breach the language barrier at scale. Now, that's starting to change. Read more...