Marni Baker Stein is Coursera’s Chief Content Officer, where she oversees the company’s content and credential strategy and partner relationships. Marni has more than 25 years of experience in producing and scaling online and hybrid education programs.
Previously, she was provost and chief academic officer at Western Governors University, where she leads WGU’s academic programs, faculty, and teams. She drives the university’s focus on student success.
Prior to WGU, she served as chief innovation officer for the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning. She also worked as the senior associate dean of Columbia University’s School of Continuing Education, where she oversaw the school’s academic portfolio and was responsible for the development, design, and evaluation of all online and hybrid programs.
In August 2016, Stein was selected by the Department of Education to serve as a member of the National Technical Working Group charged with using technology to transform higher education through the expansion of the 2016 National Educational Technology Plan.
Stein has a Ph.D. in teaching, learning, and curriculum from the University of Pennsylvania.
Marni Baker Stein is Coursera’s Chief Content Officer, where she oversees the company’s content and credential strategy and partner relationships. Marni has more than 25 years of experience in producing and scaling online and hybrid education programs.
Previously, she was provost and chief academic officer at Western Governors University, where she leads WGU’s academic programs, faculty, and teams. She drives the university’s focus on student success.
Prior to WGU, she served as chief innovation officer for the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning. She also worked as the senior associate dean of Columbia University’s School of Continuing Education, where she oversaw the school’s academic portfolio and was responsible for the development, design, and evaluation of all online and hybrid programs.
In August 2016, Stein was selected by the Department of Education to serve as a member of the National Technical Working Group charged with using technology to transform higher education through the expansion of the 2016 National Educational Technology Plan.
Stein has a Ph.D. in teaching, learning, and curriculum from the University of Pennsylvania.
Welcome to Ed Tech insiders where we speak with founders, operators, investors and thought leaders in the education technology industry, and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to xr to K 12 to l&d, you'll find everything you need here on edtech insiders. And if you like the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily. I'm here at ASU GSB with Marni Baker Stein, the Chief Content Officer of Coursera. And we're just coming off the Coursera conference, where they announced a number of really exciting new features, new degrees, new things coming from the Coursera landscape. Welcome to the podcast.
Marni Baker Stein:Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.
Alexander Sarlin:So you have an amazing career in education, you're coming from W GU, you've been in a lot of different amazing organizations. Tell us about what excites you about Coursera. And what you're most thrilled about, that's happening this year.
Marni Baker Stein:Sure. So what excites me the most about Coursera is it's not long time ago, I fell in love with the problem of equity and access to education. And I've worked across many different sort of institutions and platforms to try to solve for that problem, both locally and globally. So I guess, globally, and so for me, after my amazing experience at Western Governors University, where I just learned a lot. I feel like I got my PhD at Western Governors University to like to then take all of that learning and bring it to a global platform, like Coursera is just it is so exciting. And really, it's it's, it's an honor, it's almost an overwhelming, like accountability that I feel for it. Some of the exciting things going on in Coursera. I mean, last week, we had Coursera conference, which was like jam packed loaded with really amazing announcements about where we're going the end of this year, and the next and beyond. One of the areas that we focused on that I just believe is both so complex, and so promising our new applications that harness the power of generative AI generally, and chat GBT, specifically, the first announcement we made, which may seem to many Well, that's just productivity, but I think is pretty revolutionary is what we're currently calling CourseBuilder, which allows faculty who are teaching private courses based on Coursera, open content, a much better discovery experience. So they can literally put learning outcomes, they can start a syllabus, or they can start the development of any kind of content that they're developing, they can create learning objectives, they can, they can scour the catalog for essentially atomic content that associates with that those learning objectives. So by atomic content, I mean, they could be video clips, they could be readings and other content that really aligns very closely with what they're trying to teach. That's awesome. Because that process in the past has been difficult to discover that content, it's been really clunky to try to include that content into private courses on on Coursera. So that's a that's a big win. And in addition to that, it's like having your instructional design assistant who can help you trailers and instruction lines and assessment types associated with those objectives really beautifully. Of course, it's not perfect, and it's all editable. But it's a great start, it's a great start for somebody who's putting a course together, it really reduces the time and I think probably increases the quality and the alignment of the content. So that was the first thing that was announced. And then the other thing that was announced is coach, which I'm super excited about, because that's a direct to learner impact. So whether that AI Howard coaches inside of a course, or floating program level, it allows learners to have conversations that personalize and contextualize their experience. So inside the course, if I'm in a chemistry course, or I'm in a leadership course, if there's a concept or a theory or a skill that is presented as part of the course content that I don't get, I can get just in time, basically tutoring and remediation on that content. Or I can actually have a conversation about how that content applies to my my role at work, how they, how it applies to my purpose for being in the course to begin with. And those conversations are pretty deep, and pretty interesting and very constructive, I think and I think will be really motivating for. For learners. I talk about how I think it will really radically increase the velocity of curiosity and learners in our Horses, I know that it's happening for me, just for chat GPT generally, and that conversational aspect of it is so it's so engaging. And beyond that I think coach helps with navigation at the platform level or at the program level as well. Anybody who's been to Coursera knows it's a massive catalog. And if you if there's if you're looking to learn something is probably there. But how do you find that? Or how do you get recommendations from that catalog about what's the next best thing for you to learn so that we can really get good at course, at Sarah at getting the right learner into the right content at the right time. For them, it's their goals or their, what they're looking for the purpose. So that is the Jenny I work. And then the last thing that that I just like to talk about which is connected is we announced some really amazing AR VR XR initiatives that are in some of them powered by meta, others not. But all of them have in common, the fact that they are scalable, immersive environments that include just these really engaging pedagogies that aren't a video and on a reading, that I think are going to be really impactful for teaching the kinds of skills has been difficult to teach online, but also engaging learners who maybe just don't like to watch lectures and read stuff. And once you engage with learning and in a new age, that's that was exciting, too.
Alexander Sarlin:It's so interesting. So AI is already being implemented both on the instructor side with this course creator tool. And on the learner side with this coach tool. And VR is coming out one other announcement that got me very excited. And I feel like it's a little bit of a theme of the conference here is the hiring solutions. And this idea of Coursera has career academies that can go inside universities. And then also the hiring solutions basically allows students to feature their Coursera work their projects, their you know, how many hours they've spent, what classes they've taken in a way that can really showcase their skills and skills has been a huge watchword of the conference, I'd love to hear your talk about how Coursera is thinking about allowing learners to really showcase their learning and skills.
Marni Baker Stein:Yes, so I am super excited about this. Because, you know, here we have Coursera. And like a massive open content catalog from the best instructors, faculty professors in the world, we have our gateway certificates and Career Academy, which are these certificates that are designed against very specific jobs. 1000s of practical hands on projects, like if you want to learn a new skill, like Excel, or whatever skill you may want to learn, as well as pathways into degrees now. And that is it's such an amazing instructional infrastructure, educational infrastructure, but it was really missing this kind of record or profile of what individuals were doing in the platform. So the hiring solutions application capability has two components to it. One is the skills profile itself, which gives a learner the option to construct based on achievements in the platform and experiences in the platform, construct profiles and construct profiles against different career outcomes. So there's some guidance in it as well. And I think that that's, that's in and of itself, very powerful, not only the ability for me to sort of showcase what I'm learning on Coursera, but also, for me to get guidance in what I showcase against different job roles that I may be interested or different career paths that I'm interested in. And then the other part of it, which is like really ambitious and cool, and that we're just starting to prototype and try out in India is then the hiring solutions piece of it, which is almost a matchmaking service between learners who have opted into profiles on the platform and opted into sort of this hiring solutions and employers who are in dire need for those particular roles. And those roles that were interested in a career paths are where their acute workforce shortages. And so we feel this could be incredible in terms of resource in terms of filling those talent pipelines, but also in sort of driving equity in access to those those opportunities.
Alexander Sarlin:Coursera has evolved over the years from having incredible university content to having content from leading companies, these, you know, Google and meta and IBM certificates. And now it seems to be leaning even further into actually, you know, being responsive to the global market for work, which the learners always were And Coursera was always being but but now it's really right on target, you can actually, you know, talk to employers and tailor the education to exactly where the jobs are going. And I'm curious as the Chief Content Officer, how do you work with employers to sort of see where the puck is going and where to double down on the Coursera catalog given the changes in the world?
Marni Baker Stein:Yeah, so When you you know, when Coursera started, I think it was a resource, it was always a resource to people who are looking to rescale or upskill, or, you know, skill. And it was chess, but it was a catalog, it was a MOOC catalog and with search capability and not Not, not just I mean, that was super powerful and very disruptive and, and a great, great resource. What were, as you say, like, what's happening now is we're understanding sort of are the the opportunity for Coursera to support like, very intentional, personalized contextualized learning journeys, as learners are building these profiles against value, whatever that value may be, there may be a particular career path, it may be a particular job role, it may actually just be a sense of self worth, worth and purpose or, or inner curiosity. But like those are journeys. So as a Chief Content Officer, there's a big difference between sort of sourcing, curating content for an open catalog, and sourcing, curating content against a learner journey to value, right. And so one of the ways that we're addressing this, and this is this has been a capability that's been building at Coursera. Over the last couple of years, before I got there is a research capability to really understand and geolocate workforce shortages and player demand for credentials and skills, ecosystems of education that are there to support those those pathways or not, and to sort of help Coursera understand where we fit in. So that is, that's one capability. And I think we've gotten to a point where it's actually starting to really inform decisions that we're making, but it's also just critical mission critical to what we're trying to do. And then yes, I mean, between having the world's greatest universities and having now many, many of the world's biggest employers, there is a convergence and a convening of the kind of real time intelligence that it takes to sort of understand not only, you know, what is the content, or what are the themes and topics that have to be in this journey, but what are the credentials that are being valued? And who best to teach and provide this content? Is it the employer themselves? Is it a university? Is it a professional association, and that's super exciting to be able to really pick the best partner for the best content at the right time. And do that intentionally so that it benefits the learner?
Alexander Sarlin:It's really, really exciting. And one more question for you just about the access and equity where we started. One of the other aspects of AI that people are excited about it has I haven't heard as much about it, as expected to the conference is instant translation is the ability to ask questions in any language. We know that Coursera has classes and I can't even imagine how many languages it's been translating them for years. But suddenly, you can actually have multilingual tools for learners. I'm curious how you see the future of that developing.
Marni Baker Stein:So I love this promise. And, you know, of course, large language models, generative AI, machine learning just generally is getting better and better on the translation friends, so that we're moving away from sort of the crude translation tools of that past couple of years that have emerged to much more sophisticated capabilities for doing language translation across all these disciplines. And across all of these languages, end to end and then in the courses, from trailer to instruction lines, to content to assessments. So we are really doubling down on our commitment to that which is very important to layer on top of that, this conversational capability as a component of the experience, where I can not only learn in my language, but then have a conversation with a just in time coach or tutor about what I'm learning and the applications of what I'm learning. Now we're starting to get to a much more refined sense of not only translation, but localization. And it's early days, but it's exciting. It's exciting, not only for access and equity, but it for me, it's exciting because it's basically like engineering, you know, literacies academic and professional literacies in some of these new realms and disciplines and kind of skills, capital in every language of the world, not just just English. And I don't think we've even yet begun to wrap our head around how transformative that will be.
Alexander Sarlin:I totally agree. It's really mind bending. This has been so interesting. I want to know more and more and more about this, but thank you so much for being here. My last 10 Second question, what is the most exciting thing you've seen at the conference so far?
Marni Baker Stein:Oh, gosh. That's a really hard question. Question. What I have seen is our edtech entrepreneurial community and our educational institutions and our big employers rallying around value for the learner. And I think that is a sea change in our higher education ecosystem and I love it.
Alexander Sarlin:Fantastic answer. I love that too. Thank you so much for being here with us on Ed Tech insiders. Marni Baker Stein, Chief Content Officer of Coursera.
Marni Baker Stein:Thanks for having me.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of edtech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the tech community. For those who want even more and Tech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.