Dive Brief:

• Coursera, the for-profit massive open online course provider, has partnered with the University of Sao Paulo and the State University of Campinas in Brazil to create new courses debuting in 2015.
• The MOOC provider’s volunteer translator community is working with the Lemann Foundation, a non-profit education group in Brazil, to make 28 existing courses available in Portuguese, by the end of the year.
• Veduca, an online course provider that translates MOOCs into Portuguese, has also been working since June 2013 with the two universities, Edukwest reports.

Dive Insight:

Coursera’s first Brazil-created MOOCs will be finance and entrepreneurship courses. The MOOC provider has also taken on R7, one of Brazil’s largest web portals, as a partner in its expansion into the country. Coursera is looking at the opportunity as not only a Brazilian one, but for reaching 215 million Portuguese speakers worldwide. While Veduca is much smaller than Coursera, it has a head start in the market, with the two Brazilian universities offering a combined 31 Veduca MOOCs so far, including a master’s business degree in engineering and innovation.