Her co-founder and fellow Stanford professor AndrewNg said the online courses would open up university to many more students and "credit-bearing college courses is a huge milestone toward that goal".
Founded by two Stanford computer science professors, Daphne Koller and AndrewNg, who took a leave to start Coursera, the company has yet to lay out a plan for generating revenue.
Coursera, recently founded by Stanford professor AndrewNg, will offer not only free online courses, but also a great deal of individualized instruction in the form of grading, testing, student-to-student help and certificates of completion.