Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by this illustration — or tell us about a memory from your own life that this image makes you think of.
Post it in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
By Betty Vandenbosch, Chief Content Officer at Coursera
The pandemic has accelerated the rate at which universities worldwide are investing in online learning. To meet learner demand and changing expectations, your institution might be deciding with a renewed conviction to bring some of your most valued credentials online — your degree programs.
Universities now have many paths and potential partners to help launch online degrees. Coursera is fortunate to be a choice for many top institutions. However, every university has to decide who to partner with based on factors that align with their goals and mission. During my time as the chancellor of Purdue University Global, and since I’ve been at Coursera, the choices available and the selection criteria have become increasingly clear to me. I’d like to share what I have learned.
While it might seem that the first decision is whether or not to partner, you might be able to make that decision more astutely once you determine which partner would be best for your needs. You can use the following framework to help find the best partner to launch your first online degree or expand your portfolio.
Factors to consider:
Goal
Critical questions
Implications
Reach and Student Characteristics
Which demographic would you like to serve?
Would you like to reach new student profiles, such as working professionals?
Is your priority reaching students in new or existing geographies?
Select a partner who can best help you reach your ideal students.
Consider if you’d like to offer performance-based or other novel approaches to admissions to reach a new profile of students.
Scale
How many students do you hope to enroll per cohort?
How many cohorts do you plan to start each academic year?
Do you or your partner have the capacity to develop and grade up to several hundred assessments per course per term?
How can your partner help reduce technical DevOps or software costs for your degree?
Ensure your partner has a proven track record of filing and serving cohorts at your target size.
Carefully review partner’s technical tools for teaching and assessing at scale.
Understand software costs associated with delivering your degree programs.
Content Development and Production
What is your partner’s instructional design capability, and what level of support will faculty members receive (and require)?
How will and can your partner support hands-on learning?
Do you want to use your existing online courses as open content leading into your degree program?
Before developing your online degree, you must fully understand your partner’s support level and who will own and support the content.
Integrating open content that anyone can take before applying to a degree program can help broaden the applicant pool, build confidence in prospective students, and develop multiple revenue streams.
Innovation and Technology
What data, tools, and analytics will you have access to?
How advanced are your partner’s tech stack, uptime, and reliability?
How robust are features to prevent plagiarism, offer reliable proctoring, and conduct high-stakes assessments?
Does your partner have the financial stability to invest in long-term R&D, leading to new or improved features?
Data can inform your pedagogical choices, while reliable technology ensures assignment submissions won’t go down at a crucial time.
Upholding academic integrity increases the value of your degree programs and your university’s overall brand.
Online learning is rapidly evolving. A strong learning experience will determine student satisfaction, cohort growth, and retention.
Cost Transparency
Is the cost structure clear for both you and your partner?
Who pays for any upfront program costs?
How long will the contract be?
The long-term economic viability of your program depends on a transparent cost structure.
Student Services and Marketing
Do you prefer to co-manage online student services or outsource?
Do you or your partner have sophisticated technology for student support and retention services?
How much do you want to spend on marketing?
How confident are you in your partner’s marketing?
Having a clear understanding of how your partner interfaces with students is critical to building lifelong relationships.
Take marketing costs into consideration as you determine the accessibility and affordability of your degree programs.
Retention Rate
What is the retention rate of other programs the potential partner supports?
How has your partner’s degree portfolio expanded over time?
Determine the value and investment the potential partner places on building durable partnerships.
While your institution may have other unique factors to consider, I hope this framework provides a useful starting point. The decisions you make early on are critical to the long-term success of your online degree programs. You want to select a partner who will work with you to advance your mission, best serve your students, and help you build lifelong learning relationships.
Today, we’re excited to launch three new Professional Certificates from Google in the growing fields of Data Analytics, Project Management, and User Experience (UX) Design. They are designed to prepare learners for an entry-level role in under six months. The certificates don’t have any prerequisites.
When many people have been forced to reassess their work prospects, the certificates can offer stepping stones to well-paying careers. They will serve a broad range of learners: new grads landing their first job, front-line workers seeking stable employment, mid-career professionals making a pivot, or parents planning their return to the workforce. Each certificate is completely online, self-paced, and costs $39 per month.
Data Analytics Professional Certificate – In the U.S., there are nearly 15,000 open entry-level data analytics roles, with an annual median entry-level salary of more than $63,000. This seven-course certificate explores analytical skills, concepts, and tools used in many introductory data analytics roles – including SQL, Tableau, RStudio, and Kaggle.
Project Management Professional Certificate – Employers will need to fill nearly 2.2 million new project-oriented roles each year through 2027, according to the Project Management Institute. This six-course certificate prepares learners to launch a project management career. It covers industry-standard tools and methods, including the agile project management system, and key soft skills, such as stakeholder management, problem-solving, and influencing.
User Experience (UX) Design Professional Certificate – UX design jobs are projected to steadily grow over the coming years, with median salaries for an entry-level role around $82,000. This seven-course certificate explores UX principles, UX terms, and industry-standard tools, including Figma and Adobe XD. By the time they complete the program, learners will have three portfolio projects to use in their job applications.
Each certificate includes resources to help learners enhance their resumes and prepare for interviews. Upon completion, learners can share their information with 100+ partners committed to sourcing talent from Google certificate programs, including Deloitte, Anthem, Verizon, Snap Inc, and other top brands. Google is also launching apprenticeships in the certificate fields of data analytics, project management, and UX design, with applications opening in April. To make the new programs more accessible, Google is offering 200,000 scholarships to learners across the U.S., Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
The new certificates further expand the catalog of career-focused Google content on Coursera, including the previously launched Google IT Support Certificate, which has helped connect thousands of learners with in-demand IT skills. With an expanding selection of job-relevant certificates, Google and Coursera are proud to act on a shared commitment to helping learners around the world develop the necessary skills to enter growing fields.
“My name is Sylvia Kaur. I’m a Project and Programme Manager and I have worked for companies both in the UK and the Middle East.”
How did you learn about Alison?
When I first moved to the Middle East, I had a job in which I needed to know about sales, marketing and the financial functions of a business. I did a search on Google for courses relating to these and found Alison.
What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?
I have done many, but I believe my first course was the Diploma in Sales Management. I chose it because of my new job and also because I’m very entrepreneurial. My goal is to start my own business.
How have Alison courses affected your career?
The knowledge I’ve gained from Alison courses has helped me in different aspects of my career. My knowledge of finance, sales, Human Resources and business in general needed to be improved and Alison has helped me gain new skills. These have been invaluable in helping me to carry out my work effectively. The soft skills courses have also helped to mould me into more of a professional.
What’s your favourite way to relax from studying?
Sitting and having tea in a nice hotel or cafe.
Where are you working and what are you studying now?
I am currently a Project Manager and I am studying an MBA at university part-time.
What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?
I am looking to gain more experience in my field and to hopefully start my own business one day.
If you could learn absolutely anything in the world from an Alison course, what would it be?
Probably how to effectively expand a company globally.
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
I would recommend Alison to anyone. The fact that Alison offers courses in so many different professions and business functions for free is amazing.
By signing up for Codecademy for Teams, you already put one of the hardest parts of learning to code behind you — getting started. But if you need a little extra motivation, here’s a tip: stay focused on the benefits that’ll come from from what you’re learning, like career advancement or more exciting projects.
Need a little inspiration? Six learners share what they experienced as a result of upskilling with Codecademy.
“I can have better conversations with developers now.”
If you’re in a non-technical role, learning a programming language means you’re able to speak the same language as the engineers, developers, or customers you’re working with. Less gets lost in translation, which makes it easier for everyone to stay on the same page as far as expectations and timelines.
Take it from Johnnie, Business Intelligence (BI) Team Lead at The Motley Fool, who completed the Python course:
“This has been the first time I’ve been able to successfully retain Python. I can remember the syntax now, I can remember the functions now. It hammered it into my head better than any other times I tried to learn it with videos or books. I’m more confident and I feel more understanding of our devs. I can have better, more contextual conversations with them now.”
When you know the technical lingo and have a basic understanding of how products are built, it leads to more natural conversations with those in other functions, which — you never know — could spark the next big idea at your company. Calli Bonnet, a Product Manager at Paradox shares:
“I love getting the opportunity to chat with other people who are doing similar things and bounce ideas off each other. When we talk about a product or requirements, we’re all talking the same language now.”
New tools pop up all the time and you can never be sure which one your team may adopt or which one a future employer may prefer. Keeping up with technology trends is the way of work these days, so the more knowledge you have, the better. It’s this idea that motivates Gary Taylor, BI Analyst at The Motley Fool, to keep learning:
“For me, it was expanding my toolbox. When you look at the tool set that gets used in data science a lot, Python is way up there. Your critical data analysis tools — like Django, NumPy, or pandas — are all derived from Python.”
“The products I manage are shipped at higher quality.”
By understanding how code works, you’re able to think through the technical requirements of building a product, adding a feature, or fulfilling a customer request. This helps you more accurately gauge what’s possible — and what’s not — given your resources, ultimately resulting in better products. As Product Director at Paradox, Jessica Sarceda experiences this:
“I am in a very strategic and product heavy role, and through learning with Codecademy (SQL in particular), I can now better communicate with clients on their reporting requests, speaking to what’s realistic technically and map those reporting needs to engineering. I have found that the more I can technically understand the scope of products I manage, the more likely the product is to be shipped at high quality.”
“We’re getting opportunities to work on bigger projects.”
When you know how a product works inside and out, it shows. And when leadership picks up on this, they’ll be more likely to trust you with bigger, more strategic projects. This was the case for a group of product managers at Paradox who learned to code together. Calli from the team shares:
“We’re getting the opportunity to work on more strategic initiatives that involve looking at our database, looking at the data we have, and thinking about how we can potentially restructure it. I don’t know that leadership would give us that opportunity if we didn’t have a basic understanding of how the product works, what’s possible, and what’s not possible. We’re getting more opportunities, bigger opportunities as product people.”
“I felt stuck in my day-to-day tasks. Now I have some independence.”
Getting through your work becomes a lot easier when you don’t have to rely on others for their technical skills or knowledge. Not to mention, it feels pretty empowering to be able to run with tasks on your own. This was the case for Marco De Libero, a senior BI analyst, who tells us:
“To perform very basic analyses, I needed to interrogate an old, slow, and basic software to retrieve my raw data in the first place. Furthermore, any advanced extraction needed a data engineer to do the job. I felt stuck in my day-to-day tasks. My wake-up call was when my data engineer co-worker suggested that I pick up some SQL skills to provide me with some independence when completing my tasks. I’ve built some exciting analyses that I could never have completed had I not started my coding journey with Codecademy.”
“My company recognized my growth.”
Climbing the corporate ladder is a thing of the past. Today, it’s way more common to dip your toes into new areas, try out different roles, and apply a mix of different skills at work. The result could be career advancement or work that’s more fulfilling, which was the case for Jorge Alejo at dataPlor. He explains:
“As I’ve developed more skills, I’ve created multiple, company-wide business intelligence dashboards, provided custom datasets for everyday operations, and assumed command of a variety of processes at the console level. My company has recognized my growth and I have since moved into data analytics for operations and business intelligence, which is now my main responsibility.”
Keep coding, keep growing
We know learning a new technical skill isn’t easy. But, as the learners above can tell you, it’s worth it. So, keep putting one foot in front of the other and don’t stop until you reach your goals.
Speaking of reaching your goals, what are you aiming to achieve by learning how to code? Let us know in the comments below! And if you’re still figuring out where to get started, we have some recommendations for courses based on your current team and role. Check them out here.
As an undergraduate, he had been relatively comfortable with the foreign policies of Republicans like Senator Robert A. Taft and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He became more critical after he entered the University of Wisconsin, where he studied under Professor Fred Harvey Harrington and where he and two other future professors, Lloyd C. Gardner and Thomas J. McCormick, were recruited to be William Appleman Williams’s teaching assistants.
In 1955, Professor LaFeber married Sandra Gould, whom he had met at Hanover. She and their daughter survive him, along with a son, Scott; two grandsons; and a granddaughter.
After he earned his doctorate in 1959, he was hired as an assistant professor at Cornell, joining a star-studded roster of political scientists that would include Allan Bloom, Andrew Hacker and Theodore J. Lowi. He became a full professor in 1967 and, unlike many colleagues, continued to teach undergraduates regularly. The students in his class “History of American Foreign Relations” gave him standing ovations.
His formal dress gave him gravitas in an era of growing turmoil on campus.
“Wearing a tie to teach, for example, might signify a belief that teaching is a different and more serious enterprise than anything else he does,” Professors Rotter and Costigliola wrote in 2004. “Certainly the decision to look very different from how he sounded, to create and then confound expectation in this way, gave LaFeber a special authority of the sort often lacking in radicals in the 1960s-’70s. It was in part because of the contrast in form and substance that students paid attention.”
In 1976, Professor LaFeber was the first faculty member invited to deliver Cornell’s commencement address, and in 2002 he was named the first Andrew H. and James S. Tisch distinguished professor. In 2006, some 3,000 Cornellians filled the Beacon Theater in Manhattan to hear him deliver what was billed as his farewell lecture, titled “A Half-Century of Friends, Foreign Policy and Great Losers.”
His books include “The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898” (1963); “Creation of the American Empire: U.S. Diplomatic History” (1973); “The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective” (1978), which was credited with nudging the Senate into ratifying the treaty relinquishing the canal (National Review called its support of the treaty “predictable”); “The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad Since 1750” (1989); “America, Russia and the Cold War” (the most recent edition of which was published in 2006); and “The Deadly Bet: LBJ, Vietnam, and the 1968 Election” (2005).
Professor LaFeber’s books won praise for placing American foreign policy in the context of domestic politics and the sometimes neglected agendas of other nations. He also took the long view of history, which was a prudent perspective for a fan of the Chicago Cubs, a team that before 2016 had not won a World Series since 1908.
“As someone once said,” Professor LaFeber noted, “‘Anybody can have a bad century.’”
What do you think this image is saying? How does it relate to or comment on society or current events? Can you relate to it personally? What is your opinion of its message?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
Meghan and Harry, the second son of Prince Charles, abruptly announced in January that they planned to step back from their royal duties, seek financial independence and spend part of the year living in North America. It triggered the most serious crisis for the British royal family since the death of Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, in a car crash in 1997. The news media labeled the fracas Megxit.
… Harry and Meghan — beloved by millions of fans, who see them as daring and modern, and reviled by an equally vehement faction, which sees their royalty-spurning actions as unbecoming — have long been expected to set up shop in Hollywood. Before he gave up his Royal Highness title, Harry signed on for a project with Ms. Winfrey and Apple TV+ involving mental health. And Meghan provided narration for “Elephant,” a nature documentary that arrived on Disney+ in April.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word unbecoming in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how unbecoming can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
If you enjoy this daily challenge, try using multiple Words of the Day in a 50-word story that you submit to our Monthly Vocabulary Challenge.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
Were you among the 17.1 million viewers of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan? If so, how much did you already know about the couple and their break with the British royal family last year? What parts of the interview stood out for you?
Even if you don’t know much about the couple — or about British royalty in general — do you think this is an important story? Do the issues raised by the couple, especially about race and mental health, have broader implications for our society?
A year after Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in a fairy-tale wedding, she said in an extraordinary interview broadcast on Sunday night, her life as a member of the British royal family had become so emotionally desolate that she contemplated suicide.
At another point, members of the family told Harry and Meghan, a biracial former actress from the United States, that they did not want the couple’s unborn child, Archie, to be a prince or princess, and expressed concerns about how dark the color of the baby’s skin would be.
An emotional but self-possessed Meghan said of her suicidal thoughts: “I was ashamed to have to admit it to Harry. I knew that if I didn’t say it, I would do it. I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.”
Meghan, 39, made the disclosures in an eagerly anticipated, at times incendiary, interview on CBS with Oprah Winfrey that aired in the United States in prime time. In describing a royal life that began as a fairy tale but quickly turned suffocating and cruel, Meghan’s blunt answers raised the combustible issues of race and privilege in the most rarefied echelon of British society.
Meghan said that while her husband was deeply concerned about her emotional fragility — gripping her hand tightly at public events — her efforts to seek medical help were rebuffed by palace officials, who worried about the impact on the monarchy. She described herself as a sort of prisoner in Kensington Palace.
“I couldn’t just call an Uber to the palace,” she said.
Meghan did not say which family member had raised questions about her baby’s skin color, nor did she fully explain why the royal family had not automatically planned to confer a royal title, which would have provided security protection for the child. By convention, Archie would assume a royal title once his grandfather Prince Charles ascended to the throne.
If you watched the full interview, or even the short version above, what stands out for you? What are your reactions to the revelations?
Do you agree with those who think Meghan was brave and admirable in openly addressing her mental health challenges? Why or why not? What effects might her speaking out about them have?
The couple took on the issue of racism, noting its role both in the British tabloids’ treatment of Meghan and in her relationship with the royal family. Harry also discussed his own racial awakening. A Times critic writes that Harry became “more cleareyed, confrontational and emboldened to take on the British monarchy into which he was born, and the white privilege that holds it up and has benefited him his entire life.” What are your reactions to the revelations revealed in the interview about these issues? Did they surprise you? What effects do you think raising them this way might have in Britain or elsewhere in the world?
So, the media uber-celebrity thinks that interviewing the two escaped royal celebrities during a public health crisis is a good use of our attention. Aww, they were mean to me, says one of the two privileged spoiled brats. Why should I care? Why do you?
How would you answer this question? Is the British royal family and the story of Harry and Meghan something we should care about? Why or why not?
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
One of the resources we published last fall offered students three tips for making meaningful and engaging personal pieces — in writing, video, photography, painting, podcasting, cartooning or any other format. Now that the contest is over, if you match the work the judges chose with the tips, below, you can see that most pieces managed to follow all three. There is much more detail about each in this resource, but here is a summary of the tips and why they are important:
Create from who you are and what you genuinely care about. As we wrote: “When students are given the freedom to make what they want, and use their own real voices to do it, the resulting work shines. If there was ever a time to bring your own identity, circumstances and emotions into a piece, it is for a project like this one.”
Focus on something small to tell a larger story. As we told students: “A piece about, say, making brownies with your stepbrother at 3 a.m. can speak volumes about the experience of living in a blended family during quarantine. You don’t always have to reach for a ‘deep meaning’ — often that meaning is inherent in the details of the story itself, or in the way you tell it.”
Find a unique way to approach your topic by playing with genre, voice, tone, the use of detail and other craft tools. We explained: “Amid a pandemic that is affecting the entire world, it’s hard to come up with a topic that’s original. The good news is that you don’t have to — you just need to put your own special spin on it.”
As your students look through the collection to find inspiration, they might use these three tips as a lens. Ask them:
Which of the pieces in the Coming of Age collection seem to best follow each of these tips? Why?
How might following these tips help your own work? Which one do you think will be hardest for you? Why?
Good luck, and if you teach with this project, we’d love to hear how. Please post a comment here, or write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.
Thank You to Our Judges
The team that helped choose the 245 finalists included educators, Learning Network staff and Times journalists, as well as teenagers who have won previous Learning Network contests. In alphabetical order they were:
Tanya Abrams, Anushka Agarwal, Adee Braun, Amanda Brown, Alison Bruzek, William Chesney, Nicole Daniels, Shannon Doyne, Madeline Dulchin, Jeremy Engle, Nora Fellas, Ross Flatt, Madeline Fox, Annissa Hambouz, Henry Hsiao, Mara Gay, Nico Gendron, Michael Gonchar, Karen Hanley, Callie Holtermann, Isabel Hui, Isabel Hwang, Abel John, Lauren Kelley, Caroline Kravitz, Matt Kwong, Alexander Lee, Phoebe Lett, Simon Levien, Tiffany Liu, Rachel Manley, Sue Mermelstein, Wadza Mhute, Corinne Myller, John Otis, Alice Park, Elizabeth Phelps, Natalie Proulx, Liv Ryan, Adam Sanders, Katherine Schulten, Jessie Schwartz, Ana Sosa, Noah Spencer, Nicholas St. Fleur, Ananya Udaygiri, Emma Weber, Clare Zhang and Celina Zhao.
