Coursera for SZTE Lighthouse 2.0 agreement signed
Jeff Maggioncalda giving his keynote speech at the University of Szeged, on January 23, 2023. Photo: Szilvia Molnar / Szegedify
Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda and the leadership of the University of Szeged signed the Coursera for SZTE Lighthouse 2.0 agreement on Monday, January 23.
The agreement - the first of its kind in Europe - was signed by Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, Prof. Dr. László Rovó, rector, and Dr. Judit Fendler, chancellor of the University of Szeged during a spectacular ceremony at the university's main building.
The historic-scale contract is an upgrade of the present agreement, allowing all staff and students of SZTE to access the online course materials available on the Coursera interface without restrictions. Lighthouse 2.0 also means that the courses and educational content of the most famous universities, including for example Yale and Johns Hopkins University, as well as companies like Google and IBM can be easily incorporated into the training courses in Szeged.
From now on, thanks to the extensive use of Coursera, a complete map measuring and processing the skills at the University of Szeged can be prepared, and the targeted and interdisciplinary development of skills can be even more emphasized during university education. Since Coursera's teaching materials and the related skill map respond sensitively to the changing expectations of the global labor market, it can help prepare students even more effectively for the challenges that await them.
Photo: Szilvia Molnar / Szegedify
In his opening speech, Prof. Dr. László Rovó spoke about how the goal of the Coursera Lighthouse 2.0 collaboration is to create a complex higher education service system, unprecedented in Europe, which aims to promote student success and increase the satisfaction of labor market participants, thereby expanding the social responsibility of higher education.
Jeff Maggioncalda spoke about how higher education has to adapt to the fast-changing digital world and that all conditions are given at the University of Szeged to keep pace with these changes. He also emphasized that both Coursera and SZTE strive to provide training that is suitable for the labor market and that this can be achieved most effectively by working together and in cooperation.
The full ceremony, including Jeff Maggioncalda's keynote speech: Transforming higher education for the digital world, can be watched on SZTE's YouTube channel.
