UXPriya - Coursera

Challenge

Universities were hesitant to award credit for Coursera courses because existing assessments were too easy to cheat on. Answers were often shared online, undermining trust in exam results.

The problem was especially visible in large international classes, where cheating concerns put partnerships and for-credit programs at risk. I worked across product, engineering, legal, and marketing to align scope and timelines, while leading faculty research to uncover what universities needed to trust Coursera assessments.

Approach

Audit
‍Mapped the educator platform and existing assessment tools to identify weak points in rigor. 

‍Research
‍Interviewed faculty from large international programs, where classes often had 1,000 students per teacher and cheating was harder to monitor.

‍AI Experiments
‍Used generative AI to create varied question banks mapped to Bloom’s Taxonomy. 

‍Validation
‍Ran usability sessions with instructors to refine flows, controls, and confidence in AI outputs.

Final Designs

The final tool gave educators a simple, self-serve flow:

Generate new questions for an existing Coursera course
Automatically add those questions to a reusable Question Bank
Add everything to a new assessment with randomized questions across learners and time and attempt limits to strengthen integrity

Create shells for new courses and manage existing content
Mark English courses as available for translation only when they were ready
Prevent other locales from translating unfinished or incorrect courses
See course structure and translation progress in one view
Use better search, filters, and navigation to move faster

This gave educators a fast, flexible way to build credible assessments and gave universities confidence that students were being tested fairly.

Outcomes

Rapid adoption and access
‍Within four months, 48 institutions launched credit-worthy AI-powered assignments, expanding access without requiring subject matter expertise.

Stronger credentials
Rigorous assessments made courses harder to game, helping universities award credit in emerging fields while lowering authoring costs