Coursera Chief Executive Officer Jeff Madzhonkalda met with rectors, vice-rectors and students of 25 regional universities participating in the Coursera Kazakh Tilinde project. The participants of the meeting discussed with great interest the first results of the implementation of a pilot project aimed at increasing the academic potential of universities in the regions.

The event, held at Astana IT University, was also attended by Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan Sayasat Nurbek, Chairman of the Public Fund "Kazakhstan Khalkyna" Bolat Zhamishev, Head of BMG Upskill Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, representatives of Coursera.
The head of Coursera spoke in detail about future opportunities, innovations, innovations in the education and labor market.
“We are excited to join forces with the Department of Science and Higher Education to develop critical skills for college students to thrive in the digital economy,” said Jeff Majonkalda, CEO of Coursera. "The early success of this collaboration is a testament to the demand for educational programs and services that develop competencies that are in demand in the labor market, and serves as an effective model for how governments and higher education systems can train the entire student population in professional skills using Coursera."

“We hope that the project will allow Kazakh students to join modern knowledge and new trends, become highly qualified and sought-after specialists in the market, and also increase the relevance of the Kazakh language. I want to note that the localization of the content of the best world courses in the Kazakh language will remain in demand, since in 2023 75% of graduates passed the UNT in the Kazakh language, which shows the current situation with a very significant proportion of applicants using the Kazakh language. And this figure will only grow,” said Bolat Zhamishev.

“Today, in the context of globalization and digitalization, growing competition in the global labor market, we need to build a flexible model of the national education system - open and competitive, providing continuous learning and improving professional skills. As part of the Coursera Kazakh Tilinde project, we began to translate the courses of the world's best professors into Kazakh. This is a very important initiative in terms of the future of our country, the potential of the language, as well as improving the quality and accessibility of education,” said Minister Sayasat Nurbek.

During the meeting, a workshop was also held on the topic “The experience of the best international universities using Coursera courses in the learning process” from the Coursera team.
The event ended with the awarding of students and universities that have successfully completed training on the Coursera platform. Among the awarded students is a 3rd year student of the EP "Biology-Geography" Altynsarin Institute Seytkarimova Dana Serikbaykyzy.

It should be noted that with the support of the Kazakhstan Khalkyna Foundation and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, 654 courses will be localized into the Kazakh language within the framework of the pilot project and 19,300 students from 25 regional universities will be able to take these courses. Today, more than 155,000 students study at these 25 universities.
Translation of courses is carried out thanks to the technical and methodological support of Coursera. To date, 50 courses in Kazakh and Russian have been fully translated and uploaded to the platform. Work on translating courses into Kazakh continues, and preparations are underway for the placement of the next 50 translated courses on the platform.
Currently, students from 25 regional educational institutions have completed more than 26,000 courses in total. Of these, 11,358 students completed the course in Kazakh, 8,653 students in English, and 6,096 students in Russian.
The most popular courses among Kazakhstani students were "Entrepreneurship: Building the Foundation for Business", "Team Leadership: Developing Leadership Qualities", "Workplace Relations in the 21st Century", "Time Management for Professional and Personal Productivity", "Differential equations for engineers”, “Effective problem solving and decision making”.
The official partner of Coursera in Kazakhstan is BMG Upskill. The company prepared the COURSERA-QAZAQSTAN platform and set up Cougar (computers and devices) centers at regional universities.