Coursera, Inc., a leading online learning platform, officially launched Generative AI (GenAI) Academy in Malaysia today, following its successful global launch earlier this year. The academy offers a blend of foundational literacy and executive education programs from top research universities and companies at the forefront of AI, including Microsoft, Stanford Online, Vanderbilt University, DeepLearning.AI, Google Cloud, and AWS.
A report by Access Partnership and MyDIGITAL Corporation estimates that GenAI could add $113 billion to Malaysia’s GDP, with education and upskilling as critical drivers. The academy is designed to equip executives and their employees with the skills needed to thrive in an AI-driven workplace, supporting Malaysia’s ambition to be a digitally-driven, high income nation.
The foundational literacy program — GenAI Academy for Everyone – provides a comprehensive understanding of GenAI’s core principles, applications and impact, enabling employees to enhance productivity and innovation using AI tools. The GenAI Academy for Executives helps leaders develop a deep understanding of AI’s broad applications and market influence, guiding them in making strategic and ethical choices while leading their teams through rapid change.
“Emerging technologies like Generative AI are transforming the way we learn, teach, and work,” said Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda. “It holds immense potential for innovation and productivity but also poses risks. To navigate these challenges and fully unleash its capabilities, leaders need access to high-quality genAI content. Our GenAI Academy aims to equip executives and employees with the skills to adopt AI safely and effectively.”
In addition to the Academy, Coursera also introduced several new AI-powered platform experiences to better serve learners and institutions in Malaysia:
- Simplified Chinese translations: More than 4,400 courses are now available in Simplified Chinese including some of the most popular courses in Malaysia, such as Generative AI for Everyone from DeepLearning.AI, Programming for Everybody from the University of Michigan, and What is Data Science? from IBM.Learners can access course readings, lecture video subtitles, quizzes, assessments, peer review instructions, and discussion prompts — all in the local language.
- Coursera Coach (beta) for Coursera Plus subscribers, Coursera for Business and Coursera for Government learners: A GenAI-powered virtual learning assistant that provides personalized feedback, answers questions, and summarizes video lectures and resources. Coach will also support learners with interaction in the local language.
- Coursera Course Builder: An AI-assisted authoring tool that enables any business, government, or campus customer to easily and quickly produce custom private courses at scale. Based on prompts from human authors, the course-building tool will auto-generate content, including course structure, descriptions, readings, assignments, and glossaries. Authors can seamlessly blend modules from participating world-class industry and academic partners on Coursera with content from experts in their own organization.
“Malaysia’s digital economy vision depends on its ability to develop a skilled and diversified workforce. With the surge in digital jobs and remote work, we’re excited to empower Malaysian learners and institutions with several AI innovations to bridge the rural-urban gap and build an inclusive workforce,” said Jeff.
Since the pandemic, Coursera’s Malaysian learner base has grown nearly four-fold, with 754,000 learners and 1.4 million enrollments. Leading companies, and universities including Axiata, Panasonic, Telekom Malaysia, Johor Corporation, Maxis, BAC Education, Wawasan University, Unirazak University, Mantissa College are using Coursera’s enterprise offerings to build a future-ready workforce.
