South Africans are not only heeding the call to become more proficient in digital skills, they are doing so by learning on mobile.
This is according Anthony Tattersall, vice-president of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Coursera, remarking on the “interesting” way in which local users are tapping into course material on the global online learning platform.
Tattersall spoke to ITWeb ahead of today’s release of Coursera’s Global Skills Report 2021, which draws on performance data since the pandemic’s onset from more than 77 million learners on the platform, to benchmark skills proficiency across business, technology and data science for over 100 countries.
The insights in this year’s report are based on Coursera’s platform data and research from the first quarter of 2020 to quarter one of 2021.
In SA, Coursera counts close to half-a-million users registered for a range of courses, including machine learning from Stanford University, the science of well-being, and learning how to learn, which according to Tattersall, is among the platform’s most popular courses globally.
He says 55% of SA’s user-base is learning these courses on mobile, which is “very high” compared to the rest of Africa. “It’s interesting to see how much learning is taking place on mobile because the challenges in Africa are often the cost of bandwidth, the availability of a strong WiFi connection, etc. We are obviously seeing a lot of mobile usage taking place, which is great.”
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