7 Questions With a Daring Innovator That includes Adarsh Lathika

Lately, dedicated, modern educators have explored incorporating on-line studying into their present curricula.

Adarsh Lathika is certainly one of these changemakers. His ardour for engineering and administration has guided his work as a part of the Manipal International Schooling Companies (MaGE) core crew for over a decade. On this function, he has partnered with college leaders to implement varied strategic applications—together with Coursera for Campus. 

With Adarsh’s management, the colleges beneath the Manipal Schooling Framework (Manipal) noticed course enrollments on Coursera enhance over threefold from 71,000 to greater than 250,000 in simply two years. To get extra college students enthusiastic about Coursera, Adarsh and his crew launched the Coursera for Campus Ambassador Program that engaged college students as brokers of change.

On this first installment of Coursera’s Daring Innovators weblog publish sequence, we talked to Adarsh about launching this system and his crew’s plans for the long run.

Q1. Welcome, Adarsh – Our readers would like to study extra about your journey with Coursera and the way you inspired pupil adoption of on-line studying.

From the beginning, we knew that getting extra college students enthusiastic about on-line studying would require recent approaches. To create a tradition of transdisciplinary studying, we partnered with Coursera to supply a broad-based studying expertise.

After we began with Coursera for Campus, we would have liked college students to really feel enthusiastic about this system. With inside champions, we might personally encourage college students to discover the complete advantages of Coursera’s content material. Assembling our inside champions meant aligning college students, college members, and the college’s management. Deep, cross-functional collaboration was the muse of our Coursera for Campus Ambassador Program. 

Trying to find our dynamic campus ambassadors, we carried out written checks and cellphone interviews to seek out candidates with robust communication expertise. In the end, we recruited 99 campus ambassadors with the expertise and drive to create consciousness about the advantages Coursera brings to learners. 

Peer-to-peer engagement is significant, however we additionally wished college champions to help college students’ onboarding into this system, so we reached out to Deans and division heads to advertise Coursera. With college students, college, and departmental management totally enthusiastic about Coursera, we noticed robust outcomes proper from its first 12 months. Manipal’s Coursera for Campus program is amongst Coursera’s high three applications globally by way of enrollments and studying hours.

Q2. With a program that concerned a number of stakeholders, how did you navigate the advanced cycle of change administration?

We’re proud to be the primary college to undertake Coursera for Campus again in 2018. However we all know that any huge change, nonetheless constructive, comes with challenges. Simply as any profitable journey begins one step at a time, we designed the Manipal – Coursera Campus Ambassador Program in phases. Our first step in change administration concerned boosting Coursera utilization charges amongst college students. 

Section 1: Creating Consciousness

In our first 12 months, we centered on enrollment. Every ambassador knew our core aim: Each pupil ought to have the ability to enroll in this system simply and full at the very least one course. We empowered our ambassadors with clear descriptions of their duties and well-articulated KPIs, as they labored with communities of round 150 to 200 learners. Ambassadors had been tasked with sharing the benefits of Coursera of their lessons, freshmen introduction periods, webinars, and pupil golf equipment. We gauged ‘ambassadors’ success by measuring KPIs in opposition to varied milestones within the on-line dashboard, and made updates as we found new efficient approaches. 

To construct momentum as enrollments began growing, we started the #LearnASkill marketing campaign. Although we launched the marketing campaign throughout summer time break, it sparked huge engagement. We maintained a #LearnASkill leaderboard and provided prizes and certificates to encourage wholesome competitors amongst collaborating college students – some college students accomplished as much as 100 programs.

Section 2: Making Coursera a Studying Behavior

Energized by the success of Section 1, we moved the Coursera for Campus Ambassador Program into Section 2. Right here, we labored to maintain our learners’ enthusiasm for this system. 

We understood that college students would wish to find out about the advantages of continuous with extra programs after finishing the preliminary necessities. Encouraging college students to achieve the following stage with their studying prompted us to begin the #ShowYourSkill competitors. #ShowYourSkill went one step past course completions, compelling learners to point out off their newly acquired expertise.  

As we analyzed college students’ studying patterns, we labored with Coursera to curate particular course suggestions. Via our campus ambassadors and pupil golf equipment, we shared these course curations to make studying a behavior.

To assist college students perceive how these programs would fast-track their careers, we related them with alumni who had been Coursera learners. After listening to the non-public experiences of the alumni, college students deepened their investments in studying by Coursera. 

We additionally invited college to find the chances by Coursera through on-line periods and emails. As extra college adopted Coursera, we noticed a major spike in pupil engagement. With pupil curiosity on the rise, we streamlined the campus ambassador program to 30 crew members. 

Q3. What processes did you set into place to make sure the long-term success of Coursera for Campus at Manipal?

To maintain ourselves organized, we created a dashboard to trace our actions as we developed this system:  

• Electronic mail IDs of contributors
• License standing
• Variety of programs accomplished
• Share of programs accomplished
• Quantity of people that accomplished the course, and a number of other different particulars

Initially, we noticed round 20-25% of scholars full programs. Quickly, that charge reached 60%. Because the crew chief, I shared this knowledge month-to-month with the campus ambassadors. Over two years, we additionally onboarded college champions in disciplines starting from IT to Pharmacy,  driving additional adoption amongst college students.   

This fall. Are you able to share any anecdotes or tales that convey the impression of the Campus Ambassador Program?

Our college students and college have heartwarming tales about their success with Coursera. One story from a learner, Urvashi Pathak, significantly stands out:

Coursera was an excellent assist in the course of the pandemic in 2020. I took the chance to enroll in a number of programs to upskill and enhance my information base. I’m at present working for an IoT and Automation firm. The programs I took from Coursera had been associated to my job and supplied me with a really detailed understanding of the IoT area, which additional enabled me to use this data in my office. 

Ramaprasad Poojary, a school member at SOEIT MAHE Dubai, additionally has excessive reward for Coursera: 

In my view, Coursera is without doubt one of the finest initiatives by Manipal International. As a school member of SOEIT MAHE Dubai, it helped me replace my technical expertise in machine studying. It additionally helped me information college students throughout their mission work and different programs. I’ve subscribed for 3 consecutive years and lately accomplished a specialization in ML utilizing TensorFlow on Google Cloud. All 5 programs beneath this specialization had been nicely designed.

These highly effective testimonies emphasize how Coursera empowers our college students and college.

Q5. The Campus Ambassador program was undoubtedly an incredible success. What have been a few of your private learnings from this system, and the way do you envision the expansion of this system from right here?

Via the Coursera for Campus Ambassador Program, we found a lot in regards to the minds of our younger learners. Utilizing casual platforms, akin to WhatsApp teams, we gained solutions to important questions: How are our college students studying? Why are they studying? What do they should enhance their studying? 

With our new information, we might higher reply platform- and course-related queries, which elevated exponentially towards the tip of a semester. A few of our insights contributed to new Coursera product options, akin to including course ID in grade studies, together with certificates URLs in utilization studies, and eradicating share choices for peer assignments.

The Coursera for Campus Ambassador Program is now an built-in a part of Manipal’s motion plan, which is very outcome-driven. 

Q6. Do you’ve got any suggestions for fellow educators attempting to advertise the adoption of Coursera at their universities?

As educators, we’re normally asking our college students questions to assist them study and develop. After we carried out Coursera for Campus at Manipal, we posed some basic inquiries to ourselves. These questions are extremely related to all establishments: 

• What are you attempting to attain with Coursera?
• What would be the advantages to your learners? What issues are you attempting to handle?
• Which metrics will you observe, and the way usually will you overview them?
• How can stakeholders akin to college students, alumni, and college function driving forces on this program? How will you customise your strategy to satisfy every stakeholder’s distinctive wants? 

Reflecting on these questions can assist educators create profitable roadmaps for creating learner applications by Coursera for Campus. 

Q7. Based mostly in your expertise, how do on-line programs and platforms like Coursera assist put together college students for his or her skilled life? 

Know-how has been altering how we stay for the final 25 years, and the tempo of change has accelerated with the arrival of good applied sciences. Within the job market, new graduates will compete not solely in opposition to their classmates but in addition with graduates from the remainder of the world. The abilities and competencies they want will proceed to alter all through their careers. In such a fluid state, the basics stay essential.  Together with smooth expertise, an understanding of learn how to study constantly, and the power to work with these from different cultures.

Guaranteeing our learners have the talents and competencies to compete within the world workforce is our duty as educators. With Coursera, we’ve given our learners entry to information that prepares them to achieve a world the place evolving know-how modifications the methods we stay daily. 

On-line studying by Coursera for Campus helps college students study from content material developed by the brightest minds in trade and academia, and empowers them to be future leaders and innovators within the world workforce.