Today, I’m excited to introduce Ollie, a standalone mobile learning app from Coursera designed to help you learn more effectively in just a few minutes a day. Available now for all Coursera Plus subscribers, Ollie allows you to build knowledge and develop new skills throughout the day — right from your phone.
Ollie brings together bite-sized lessons from leading partners across Coursera, including AWS, Duke University, and Microsoft. With just a few minutes between meetings or while winding down before bed, Ollie makes it easy to learn something new. In one of the most popular courses on our platform, Learning How to Learn, Barbara Oakley teaches a simple but powerful idea: we learn better through spacing, not cramming. Ollie was designed with that principle in mind.
Ollie combines adaptive AI, short-form content, and interactive practice to make learning easier during the day:
- Bite-sized lessons from leading Coursera partners: Start with a curated video — typically around 90 seconds long — drawn from high-quality content across Coursera’s catalog.
- Adaptive learning paths powered by Ollie AI: Personalized lesson sequences surface content based on learner interests and engagement patterns.
- Instant practice exercises: Reinforce active recall through lightweight activities such as matching and multiple-choice questions designed to help learners retain what they learn.
- Conversational AI support: Chat with Ollie AI to test understanding, ask follow-up questions, or explore concepts more deeply in real time.
- AI-generated content tailored to the moment: Ollie can generate lessons tied to emerging topics and news events, helping learners quickly build understanding through short videos, practice, and discussion.
- Designed for everyday use: Lightweight, mobile-first interactions make it easy to continue building knowledge throughout the smaller moments of the day.
To motivate learners and help them build a consistent daily habit, Ollie incorporates rewards that recognize progress over time. Learners can earn points, build streaks, unlock badges, and compare progress on leaderboards, making lessons feel more engaging, achievable, and rewarding every day. Features like Flow Mode for hands-free listening and Explore Mode for discovering new topics are designed to make it easier to reach for learning instead of succumbing to mindless scrolling.
Today’s learners increasingly expect skill-building to support both professional and personal growth, and many prefer short, video-based experiences that fit naturally into their routines. Ollie is designed to complement Coursera’s broader learning experience, including the Coursera mobile app.
Ollie started as an experiment to help people build better learning habits, and we’re continuing to learn from how people use it. We’re excited by the initial response and will continue to explore how Ollie can be used as part of our ongoing offerings.
Join Coursera Plus today to get access to world-class content, and Ollie!
Currently offered in English only. Access is currently available to Coursera Plus subscribers. Future availability may vary.
