Coursera online education provider releases Android app

Coursera, the for profit provider of massive online open courses (MOOC), has debuted on the Android platform three months after releasing on the iOS platform. The free for all app was launched on Thursday, on the Google Play store. The app is similar in look to its iOS counterpart. Coursera's main aim is to use the app to provide education to people worldwide, for free.

The Coursera app for Android companion app allows users to take online courses on a vast variety of subjects ranging from medicine to foreign languages. In addition, the app also allows the users to connect with students and professors and provides free online courses from over 100 top tier universities worldwide. Users can browse courses and watch lectures on the go.

Currently, Coursera provides over 600-plus courses offered by universities like Stanford and Yale. In addition users can sign up for upcoming course notifications, learn from top instructors, stream lectures online or download them for viewing offline. There are a total of 12 languages offered which include English, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Russian amongst others.

Coursera version 1.0.0 app currently requires Android version 4.0 or higher to be used. The developer is a subsidiary of the parent company Coursera. The app can be downloaded on the Google Play store and on the iTunes App Store. MOOC's are being provided by other providers such as Udacity. However, it is also important to note that most of the users of apps and online courses like these are the ones who have been to a regular college. For instance, even for Coursera, over 80 percent of the users are those who have gone to a regular college before.

Nevertheless with the Coursera app becoming available on the Android platform too, it would only work towards opening up new knowledge portals for people around the globe.