Coursera: Degree Progress Tracking and Planning

Project Overview

The platform enables students to visualize their progress toward graduation, identify completed and remaining requirements, and strategically plan their course enrollments across multiple terms based on real-time term availability. This solution enhances the learner experience by offering clarity, reducing planning friction, and increasing on-time program completion rates. The project involved close collaboration across product, design, and academic teams to ensure alignment with diverse university partner structures and learner needs.

The experience brings together degree audits, requirement groups, and term availability into a single planning surface so students can make informed decisions quickly.

The Challenge

Degree requirements vary significantly across universities and programs, and planning tools often hide critical constraints until late in the process. The product needed to:

• Reflect complex requirement structures accurately across partner institutions
• Show completed vs. remaining credits with clear visual progress
• Surface term-by-term availability to support realistic scheduling
• Reduce student confusion and support advisors with consistent rules
• Scale across multiple degree programs without custom redesigns

Our Solution

We built a degree planning experience centered around clarity and actionability:

• A progress visualization that maps requirements to completion status
• A term planning workflow that incorporates live availability
• Requirement groupings that match institutional policies and reduce ambiguity
• Cross-functional alignment with product, design, and academic stakeholders
• A flexible data model that supports new programs without rework

Outcome

The result improved learner confidence and reduced planning friction, helping students chart a realistic path to graduation. It also enabled Coursera and university partners to maintain consistent program structures while scaling to new offerings.