Coursera now offers an AI-powered feed of short form educational content

Coursera, the online learning platform that hosts online courses from major universities and tech companies, announced on Wednesday a new app called Ollie, which offers bite-size lessons that take only a minute or two to complete. The lessons include short vertical videos, often around 90 seconds long, clipped from Coursera’s extensive library of learning materials. Users can find lessons recommended based on their interests through a front page or a social media-style feed, scrolling down to explore a range of topics or scrolling right to dive deeper into a particular subject. When they come across something interesting, they can watch the video, then take a quick matching or multiple-choice quiz to gauge their understanding. Users can also discuss the material by voice or text with Coursera’s AI. A cartoon mascot also named Ollie presides over the program, playing a role similar to Duolingo’s celebrated owl. Game-like features, including day-by-day streaks, badges, leaderboards, and reward tokens known as beans, are designed to keep users coming back. Once enough beans are collected by completing lessons, they can be cashed in for streak freezes and other rewards, including customizations to Ollie’s appearance. The program grew out of an effort to reimagine what Coursera could look like in the modern era, says CTO Mustafa Furniturewala. A small AI incubation team based out of Coursera’s Mountain View headquarters developed the experience, which is designed to use AI to customize offerings for individual users. Much of the code was written by Claude Code under the supervision of experienced human engineers, he says. [Image: Coursera] “Their goal was to build an AI-native learning experience from the ground up,” says Furniturewala. AI tools also helped locate and cut the lesson snippets from larger course materials. Material from Duke University, Vanderbilt University, AWS, and Microsoft is already available through the program, which is available to subscribers wit