Mandarin and Spanish: the Food and Beverage MOOC Speaks New Languages

The Bocconi MOOCs speak new languages. So far, every massive open online course produced by Bocconi and SDA Bocconi, with the help of the BETA innovation lab, was published in English on the Coursera platform. Things have changed with the re-run of the Managing Food & Beverage Companies, which was launched in July and is now an on-demand course. It's online again and it offers subtitles in Spanish, Mandarin, and Italian. An all-Spanish version of the course will be launched at the end of the month. It will be called Gestión de las empresas de alimentación y bebidas and it will offer subtitles, educational materials and quizzes in Spanish.

In the last few months, Coursera registered a growing request for MOOCs in Mandarin and Spanish, two of the most widespread languages in the world. Users speaking one of those two languages often renounce to sign up because of the lack of offer in their idiom. "The number of registrations increases dramatically when courses are offered in Mandarin and Spanish", says Valentina Todoro, one of the Bocconi MOOC project manager. "Food & Beverage has an international target, it has good chances to break through the language barrier". Only a few universities offer subtitles in languages other than English. "And when they do, they usually ask their community members to volunteer to do less-than-professional translations. We relied on our Language Center instead. The translations were done by Michela Della Monica, Carmen Gimenez, and Xiaoli Sun".

Managing Food & Beverage Companies is taught by Gabriele Troilo. It focuses on the challenges that managers and entrepreneurs in food and beverage businesses should be able to face. Most of the people who signed up to the on-demand version, which was launched in early September, are from the EU (40%, main countries: Italy, Spain, UK); 25% are Asian, 21% North American, 7% South American. No other MOOC can boast a 45 minute documentary like the one that was shot in the Modena area to describe the competitive advantage that comes from a particular geographical origin. "It's a new learning format that conveys knowledge in a more immediate way compared to traditional lectures", Troilo says. Coursera users saw the documentary and described it as enjoyable (59%), informative (59%), and stimulating (39%). There hasn't been a single negative comment. Along with video lectures and the documentary, the course features interviews with managers from Barilla, Berlucchi, Branca, Eataly, Grom, Manpower, MasterChef Italia, Heineken, TRND.