Do the darker, colder days affect your mood? What do you do about it if so?
Word of the Day: umbrage
This word has appeared in 58 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
Learn with Claude: Anthropic launches new content on Coursera to drive responsible AI innovation and workforce transformation
Now learners everywhere can gain hands-on experience and build practical AI skills with guidance from Anthropic’s experts.
By Greg Hart, Coursera CEO
Today, I’m excited to share that Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI research companies, has launched a course and a Specialization on Coursera that teach learners and developers how to work effectively with Claude, Anthropic’s trusted AI assistant.
As AI transforms every aspect of work, many employees are still unprepared — only one-third say they’ve received training on how to engage with AI at work. There’s an urgent need to scale practical AI education that boosts individual productivity and supports workforce readiness. Anthropic’s new content is designed to give learners direct, hands-on experience with Claude and help them build the confidence and skills to collaborate effectively with AI.
“Claude can transform your workday, acting as a brainstorm partner, a researcher, and a coder,” said Maggie Vo, Anthropic’s Head of Education. “But we know many people are still learning how to collaborate with AI safely and effectively. These courses address that gap by giving learners the skills and confidence to get the most out of Claude, from the fundamentals of getting started up to building agents.”
Learn to build powerful, responsible AI applications with Claude
Anthropic’s Building with the Claude API course teaches developers how to deploy Claude to build intelligent systems and streamline workflows. Through AI-driven dialogue and interactive sessions, learners receive real-time, personalized feedback as they build tools and agents that drive innovation.
Modules in the course include:
- Getting Started with Claude: Learn API fundamentals, model selection, and how to make your first API call to Claude.
- Prompt Engineering & Evaluation: Master the art of designing, refining, and testing high-quality prompts for reliable results.
- Claude Features and Tool Use: Unlock advanced capabilities, including structured data handling, tool use, and response optimization.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP): Build modular, extensible AI applications using Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol.
- Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG): Combine Claude with external data sources to build powerful, knowledge-enhanced AI systems.
- Claude Code & Computer Use: Accelerate your development workflow with Claude Code and automated computer interactions.
- Agentic Workflows: Learn to design, orchestrate, and deploy multi-step AI workflows and autonomous agents.
Together, these modules equip learners with the technical foundation and real-world skills to use, develop, and deploy AI safely, effectively, and confidently with Claude’s API and developer tools.
Expanding access to AI skills through a partnership with AWIT
To complement the developer-focused content, Anthropic’s collaboration with Advancing Women in Technology (AWIT) brings AI learning to everyone — regardless of their background or experience. Real-World AI for Everyone is a three-course Specialization that helps learners of all experience levels build practical fluency for using AI in their daily work. The Specialization features:
- AI Fundamentals with Claude: Learn how to structure prompts and context to get useful, high-quality responses, and turn rough ideas into polished deliverables using Claude Artifacts.
- AI Collaboration with Claude: Strengthen your ability to think and create with effective prompting strategies, crafting unique messages for different audiences, and analyzing complex information with AI.
- AI Automation with Claude: Use Claude Projects to automate repeatable tasks, scale your results, and apply AI beyond text by using multimodal inputs and retrieval-augmented generation to achieve real-world goals.
“At AWIT, we believe that those who invest in becoming proficient with AI will excel,” said Nancy Wang, Founder and CEO of AWIT, SVP of Engineering at 1Password, and Venture Partner at Felicis Ventures. “Yet today, AI use remains uneven across different groups. And anyone, at any level, can benefit from deliberate, hands-on practice. That’s why we partnered with Anthropic to give Coursera learners worldwide access to real-world, curated AI learning experiences. Learners receive hours of experience with Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, guided by former Anthropic engineering manager Dan Mellott. Learners build fluency, confidence, and joy as they use AI to innovate, lead, and create lasting impact across every field and community.”
This collaboration — combining Anthropic’s commitment to safe AI, Coursera’s global learning platform, and AWIT’s inclusive learning content — empowers learners everywhere to engage with AI thoughtfully and apply it meaningfully in their work and communities.
Enroll in Real-World AI for Everyone or Building with the Claude API today.
Updated with revised content launch information as of November 18, 6:00 p.m. PT
How the iMSM Empowered Korede Oludiran to Reimagine His Business and Redefine His Career
After over 15 years of leading IT projects across public and private sectors, Korede Oludiran knew process improvement and change management inside out. But when he launched his own management consulting firm, Echo Oscar Inc., in Ottawa, Canada, he realized something was missing. His technical expertise alone wouldn’t unlock the next level of growth. He needed a deeper understanding of strategy, marketing, and organizational collaboration.
That’s when Korede discovered the online iMSM (Master of Science in Management) from Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The program, he says, “helped me rethink everything about how I manage, how I serve clients, and how I grow my business.”
A career rooted in project and process management
Korede’s professional foundation was built on project management. Since earning his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification in 2009, he’s led IT projects and process improvement initiatives across multiple industries. “I’ve always been focused on how teams work together (change management, process efficiency, and getting systems to align),” he explains.
In 2022, he turned that expertise into an entrepreneurial venture as he launched Echo Oscar Inc., a management consulting firm helping organizations improve processes, enhance collaboration, and implement change effectively. “We work with businesses to make things function better, from process improvement to change management to team collaboration to training,” he says.
But as he began growing Echo Oscar, Korede realized his company’s offerings could be more strategic and more attuned to clients’ needs. This is when he saw the opportunity to upskill, gain an additional credential, and enroll in the online iMSM with the University of Illinois.
Finding the missing link: Strategy and marketing
“I thought marketing was more about ‘go sell,’” Korede laughs. “But during my time at Illinois, I discovered how robust it really is. It’s not just about selling. It’s way more strategic than operational. It’s about deeply understanding your customers.”
Through iMSM courses like Creating Value: Developing a Marketing Mix for Growth – a part of Marketing Management BADM520, Korede learned how to think from the customer’s perspective. “That course was a turning point,” he recalls. “You need to ask the right questions and understand what your customers really need. That’s what helped me pivot my business.”
Armed with these insights, he launched a new user-focused survey at Echo Oscar to identify client pain points and streamline offerings. “I realized that team collaboration is the pivotal driver of process efficiency. If your team can’t collaborate, you won’t get the ROI of your process improvement,” he says.
The iMSM didn’t just confirm what he already knew from years about the importance of team collaboration; it gave him the frameworks and data-driven tools to act strategically in real time.
Korede’s path to Gies
When Korede began looking for a master’s program, flexibility was key. “I explored universities in Canada like Queen’s and Ottawa,” he explains. “But I needed something I could do while still running my business. That’s when I found the University of Illinois through Coursera.”
He appreciated how accessible the process was: from applying online with his copy of transcript from Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, to participating in live lectures and office hours.
And despite studying virtually, the connections were real. “At graduation, I met people I’d been talking to online for over a year. It was incredible to meet classmates and professors in person,” Korede recalls. “I even reconnected with my Operations Management and Marketing Management professors on LinkedIn afterward.”
From insight to action planning
Today, Echo Oscar Inc. is expanding its offerings with an 8-module training program on team collaboration, developed directly from what Korede learned in the iMSM program. “It was published this year,” he says proudly. “We created it because our survey results clearly showed that collaboration plays a key role in employee engagement and the overall success of the organization.”
He credits courses in operations management, organizational management and marketing management with reshaping how he runs his business: “Those courses made me realize where I was falling short. I wasn’t reaching the right people or serving them effectively. Now, our approach is more strategic and more data-driven.”
Why the iMSM was the right choice
“The MSM felt like an abridged MBA,” Korede explains. “We studied many of the same topics as MBA students — strategy, marketing, operations, leadership — but in a more streamlined format. It’s very solid and I loved the courses.”
He especially valued how Coursera allowed him to keep learning beyond graduation. “I’m still on Coursera now,” he says. “I had my graduation ceremony last year, my first time back in a classroom since 2008, but I want to keep learning.”
So why did he return to school after more than a decade? “I needed more mental energy — a challenge,” he admits. “And honestly, I wanted the credit. The Nigerian in me wanted the degree!” Korede laughs.
But beyond that, he says, “I wanted something to propel me forward for my career and for my business.”
Advice for others
Korede’s advice for aspiring learners is clear:
“Find what you want and make a decision about how you want it to affect your life and career. The University of Illinois is a big deal. It’s not a small university, and if you can have that collaboration with Coursera, don’t miss it.”
He also believes consistency is key to any success:
“Whatever you set your mind to achieve, you can do it. It might be tough, but consistency is the game. No matter how ‘not good enough’ your product is, you’ll sell, you’ll improve, if you stay consistent. Being the most consistent is often better than being the smartest.”
A career, redefined
From managing IT projects in Nigeria to running a consulting firm in Canada, Korede’s journey shows what’s possible when lifelong learning meets entrepreneurial ambition.
“The iMSM confirmed what I’d always known, but it also gave me the tools to turn that knowledge into strategy,” he says. “Now, everything we do at Echo Oscar has a clearer purpose: improving collaboration, efficiency, and impact. That’s the real ROI of my education.” Learn more about the program →
Learn with Claude: Anthropic launches new Specializations on Coursera to drive responsible AI innovation and workforce transformation
Now learners everywhere can gain hands-on experience and build practical AI skills with guidance from Anthropic’s experts.
By Greg Hart, Coursera CEO
Today, I’m excited to share that Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI research companies, has launched two Specializations on Coursera that teach learners and developers how to work effectively with Claude, Anthropic’s trusted AI assistant.
As AI transforms every aspect of work, many employees are still unprepared — only one-third say they’ve received training on how to engage with AI at work. There’s an urgent need to scale practical AI education that boosts individual productivity and supports workforce readiness. These new Specializations are designed to give learners direct, hands-on experience with Claude and help them build the confidence and skills to collaborate effectively with AI.
“Claude can transform your workday, acting as a brainstorm partner, a researcher, and a coder,” said Maggie Vo, Anthropic’s Head of Education. “But we know many people are still learning how to collaborate with AI safely and effectively. These courses address that gap by giving learners the skills and confidence to get the most out of Claude, from the fundamentals of getting started up to building agents.”
Learn to build powerful, responsible AI applications with Claude
Anthropic’s Building with the Claude API Specialization is a series of courses that teach developers how to deploy Claude to build intelligent systems and streamline workflows. Through AI-driven dialogue and interactive sessions, learners receive real-time, personalized feedback as they build tools and agents that drive innovation.
Courses in the Specialization include:
- Getting Started with Claude: Learn API fundamentals, model selection, and how to make your first API call to Claude.
- Prompt Engineering & Evaluation: Master the art of designing, refining, and testing high-quality prompts for reliable results.
- Claude Features and Tool Use: Unlock advanced capabilities, including structured data handling, tool use, and response optimization.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP): Build modular, extensible AI applications using Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol.
- Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG): Combine Claude with external data sources to build powerful, knowledge-enhanced AI systems.
- Claude Code & Computer Use: Accelerate your development workflow with Claude Code and automated computer interactions.
- Agentic Workflows: Learn to design, orchestrate, and deploy multi-step AI workflows and autonomous agents.
Together, these courses equip learners with the technical foundation and real-world skills to use, develop, and deploy AI safely, effectively, and confidently with Claude’s API and developer tools.
Expanding access to AI skills through a partnership with AWIT
To complement the developer-focused courses, Anthropic’s collaboration with Advancing Women in Technology (AWIT) brings AI learning to everyone — regardless of their background or experience. Real-World AI for Everyone is a three-course Specialization that helps learners of all experience levels build practical fluency for using AI in their daily work. The Specialization features:
- AI Fundamentals with Claude: Learn how to structure prompts and context to get useful, high-quality responses, and turn rough ideas into polished deliverables using Claude Artifacts.
- AI Collaboration with Claude: Strengthen your ability to think and create with effective prompting strategies, crafting unique messages for different audiences, and analyzing complex information with AI.
- AI Automation with Claude: Use Claude Projects to automate repeatable tasks, scale your results, and apply AI beyond text by using multimodal inputs and retrieval-augmented generation to achieve real-world goals.
“At AWIT, we believe that those who invest in becoming proficient with AI will excel,” said Nancy Wang, Founder and CEO of AWIT, SVP of Engineering at 1Password, and Venture Partner at Felicis Ventures. “Yet today, AI use remains uneven across different groups. And anyone, at any level, can benefit from deliberate, hands-on practice. That’s why we partnered with Anthropic to give Coursera learners worldwide access to real-world, curated AI learning experiences. Learners receive hours of experience with Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, guided by former Anthropic engineering manager Dan Mellott. Learners build fluency, confidence, and joy as they use AI to innovate, lead, and create lasting impact across every field and community.”
This collaboration — combining Anthropic’s commitment to safe AI, Coursera’s global learning platform, and AWIT’s inclusive learning content — empowers learners everywhere to engage with AI thoughtfully and apply it meaningfully in their work and communities.
Enroll in Real-World AI for Everyone or Building with the Claude API today.
Picture Prompt: A Night at the Museum
Would you want to have your own sleepover adventure at the American Museum of Natural History?
Word of the Day: perpetuate
This word has appeared in 108 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
What’s Interesting About the Place Where You Live?
A neighborhood? A group of people? A natural feature? A business? An annual event? Take a fresh look around your hometown and tell us what’s notable — no matter how small.
Weekly Student News Quiz: Climate Summit, Shutdown End, ‘Dapper Man’
Have you been paying attention to current events recently? See how many of these 10 questions you can get right.
Lanterns of Belonging: Affirming Children’s Cultural Identity through Play Therapy
Written by Alex Liau, learning & behaviour psychologist.
For many children, culture is not something distant or abstract. It is experienced daily in the food they eat, the stories they hear, the games they play, and the rituals they celebrate. In play therapy, acknowledging and integrating a child’s cultural identity and belonging strengthens their sense of self. It helps mend the emotional fractures that can arise from migration, navigating multiple cultures, or family transitions, allowing each child to feel seen, rooted, and whole.
Mei Yin, a seven-year-old Chinese-Singaporean girl, moved to Nigeria with her parents six months ago. At school, Mei Yin often felt different from her peers as she was the only Chinese student in the cohort of Nigerian kids. But in the playroom, she found ways to bring her culture into her world of play. What began with dolls and toy food evolved into a powerful journey of affirmation and self-expression, guided by her therapist, who helped her explore her identity and sense of belonging.
As the Lunar New Year approached, Mei Yin’s therapist asked her what she would like to work on during her session. Mei Yin observed the playroom and decided to work on the dollhouse. She arranged a miniature table in the dollhouse. Then she placed dolls representing her family around it and carefully “served” symbolic dishes: dumplings, noodles, and fish.
Her therapist noticed the care she took with this ritual. “It looks like this dinner is significant to your family,” the therapist reflected. Mei Yin’s face lit up. She began to describe how her grandparents in Singapore would lead the meal and how everyone ate together until midnight.
Through this reenactment, Mei Yin not only shared cultural pride but also communicated deeper feelings of identity and belonging. The playroom became a safe space for her to explore emotions tied to identity, distance from extended family, and the changes of living abroad.
Traditional Games and Language as Cultural Identities
Culture often shows up in the games children play. For Mei, it was the game of five stones, taught by her grandmother, and chapteh, a traditional shuttlecock game.
One afternoon, Mei Yin taught her therapist how to play a game called “five stones”. She laughed when the therapist struggled, proudly showing her how to toss and catch the small fabric bags with skill. In that moment, Mei wasn’t just playing. She became the “expert”.
Positioning children like Mei Yin as cultural experts builds their self-esteem and restores a sense of identity and belonging. For Mei Yin, teaching her therapist gave her power she did not often feel in her school environment, where her traditions sometimes went unnoticed. Through these games, she shared her heritage and reclaimed pride in her cultural identity.
Language is also a piece of cultural identity. Mei Yin often switched between Mandarin and English during pretend play, especially when acting out scenes with dolls. Sometimes she mimicked her parents’ voices in Mandarin, then switched to English for school scenarios.
Instead of correcting her, the therapist mirrored her language and occasionally asked, “Would you like to tell me what that means?” This small gesture showed respect and reinforced the idea that all parts of her identity were welcome.
Language mixing or code-switching is natural for bilingual children. In therapy, it becomes a way to honour their lived experience rather than something to “fix.” For Mei Yin, it meant she could fully immerse herself in the playroom without fear of judgment.
Understanding Symbolism from Tales
Cultural identity also comes alive through symbols. One day, Mei Yin chose a dragon toy from the toy shelf. She called it “Long Wei” and told a story about it protecting a rabbit from danger. The tale echoed themes of bravery and vulnerability, woven into her own emotional world.
The therapist chose not to rush into interpretation. She followed Mei Yin’s lead and listened with curiosity and respect. In doing so, she let Mei project her feelings of fear and courage into the symbolic story, where she found safety in metaphor.
Symbols like dragons, rabbits, or lanterns often hold layered meaning. They connect children to cultural mythology while offering pathways to express emotions too complex to state outright.
Representation Through Play Matters
Representation in the playroom matters. When Mei Yin noticed a doll wearing a cheongsam, she smiled and said, “She looks like my auntie in Singapore”. She later used red paper to craft a lantern, calling it her “wishing lamp”. The lantern became a symbol of both joy and longing, for her grandmother back home and for the traditions she missed.
These small moments affirmed Mei’s identity. The therapist did not need to offer solutions. Simply providing culturally diverse materials, such as dolls in traditional clothing, brushes for calligraphy, or miniature mooncakes, signalled to Mei Yin that her world was seen and valued.
Culturally responsive play therapy does more than support individual children. It acknowledges the intergenerational ties that shape identity. For Mei, reenacting scenes from reunion dinners and teaching traditional games helps her remember her grandparents and the cultural values they instilled in her.
By witnessing these expressions, the therapist became not just a facilitator of play but a cultural witness. This role validated Mei’s identity and sense of belonging, helping her process the emotional complexities of growing up between two worlds.
Fostering a Sense of Belonging Through Play
Mei Yin’s story highlights the deep connection between culture and a child’s sense of self. For children navigating bicultural or immigrant experiences, play therapy becomes more than a safe space. It helps them bridge both worlds. Through re-enacting traditions, sharing familiar games, switching between languages, and using cultural symbols, children express their identity and belonging. Therapists who embrace this process send a powerful message: every part of you is welcome here.
For Mei Yin, the playroom was not just filled with dolls and toys. It was filled with reunion dinners, lanterns of hope, and the pride of sharing her heritage. It became a space where she could fully belong in both Singapore and Nigeria and carry her culture proudly into her healing journey.
Play therapy, when it honours culture, becomes more than play. It becomes a sanctuary of identity, belonging, and intergenerational healing.
If you’re inspired to support children in building this same sense of identity and belonging, explore Alison’s free Diploma in Play Therapy. This comprehensive course introduces the foundations and practical applications of play therapy, empowering educators, counsellors, and emerging therapists to use play as a bridge between culture, healing, and self-discovery.
