With its Strategy for the period 2021-2025, the University of Rijeka commits to the promotion of open education and profiles itself as an open and modern university that is constantly evolving through innovation and internationalization.
As one of the leading Higher Education institutions in Croatia, the University of Rijeka is on a mission to expand its education offering by signing a strategic partnership with Coursera on 16 December 2021.
This collaboration aims at providing opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to acquire the necessary future and cutting-edge skills to succeed in an ever-transforming and competitive job market, to improve their teaching and professional competencies, to encourage personal growth.
Coursera is the leading global online learning platform, with +6,500 courses available in high-demand areas such as business, soft-skills, computer science, data science, and engineering, as well as +400 industry certificates and career-relevant specializations that comprise a sequence of courses and virtual labs (Guided Projects).
With its unique Skills Transformation approach and its mission to transform people’s lives by democratizing education, Coursera has been recently recognized as a Certified B Corp Organization, meeting the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance and public transparency. Such achievement aligns perfectly with the University of Rijeka’s own mission to make a social impact whilst fostering sustainable development through the deployment of innovative educational methodologies, digital transformation, and a more collaborative and efficient teaching and learning approach.
The UNIRI & Coursera partnership will contribute towards the UNIRI’s 2021-2025 Strategy “European University of the Future”, through the delivery of certificates by prestigious universities and industry partners to UNIRI students, faculty, and staff.
“We are very pleased to have the opportunity today to sign the document that marks the beginning of the strategic partnership between Coursera for Campus and the University of Rijeka. Coursera is the leading platform for massive open online courses, offering content of the highest quality, and I am very happy that we are the first public university in Croatia and in this part of Europe to enter into this kind of strategic partnership with Coursera,” said Professor Prijić-Samaržija at the signing ceremony.
“We share a common vision and the idea of democratizing education through digital transformation and providing flexible and personalized curriculum opportunities to our students. No less importantly, our collaboration with Coursera will also provide opportunities for our academic and non-academic staff to further their education and improve their skills.”
The Rector mentioned that although the University of Rijeka is a relatively young university, it is very open to new initiatives and innovative steps forward, which fits well with the strategic direction of the YUFE Alliance, of which the University of Rijeka is a member.
At the occasion of the signing ceremony, Anthony Tattersall, Vice-President of Coursera in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, expressed his delight at the strategic partnership with the University of Rijeka, which, he said is an example of a university that wants to be a leader and a pioneer of innovation in the changing world.
“Today, many countries are struggling with graduate unemployment as a result of the pandemic and as a result of challenges in the marketplace, and many jobs are now open to remote workers”, Tattersall said. “Coursera can help create opportunities for students to work for large companies without having to leave the country, and gain skills needed to do the role”, he added.
“We expect that in the coming months and years many others will follow your lead, but at least in Croatia it will have started here, and it will have started with you, and that’s a really exciting thing to be a part of,” Tattersall concluded.
