Google Career Certificates at TEEI: Learning on Coursera, Studying Together

In July 2026, Grow with Google approved TEEI to distribute Google Career Certificate Scholarships: 500 places on Coursera, free to the people who take them. By 3 November, 454 people had joined Google’s certificate programmes through TEEI, and 93 learners had completed a combined 414 individual courses.

The certificates are part of the self-paced learning in TEEI Skills Academy, alongside DataCamp. Everyone with a place shares a study room, where they talk, plan sessions together and look for someone who is free to study now. From the same TEEI account they can reach live teaching with professionals in Skills Academy, conversation practice in TEEI Language and career mentoring in TEEI Mentorship.

Google develops the certificate programmes and sets the curriculum. Coursera hosts the courses, the assessments and the credentials, and sends the invitations. We distribute the scholarships and run the study rooms, live teaching, language practice and mentoring around the courses.

Who the places are for

We offer the Google certificates to people from Ukraine, wherever they live, and to women from Latin America and Afghanistan. Each group has its own page on TEEI’s website. On the page for women, six of the ten certificates are taught in Spanish, and every course of the other four has Spanish subtitles.

Anyone who already takes part in a TEEI programme can also ask for a place from inside their TEEI account.

What learners study on Coursera

The programmes open through TEEI cover data analytics, project management, UX design, cybersecurity, digital marketing and e-commerce, IT support and AI. There are more advanced programmes in data analytics, business intelligence and IT automation with Python, and shorter specialisations such as Google AI Essentials and Google Prompting Essentials. A learner chooses the one that fits their work, their studies or a move into a different field.

A Professional Certificate is a sequence of courses. In Google Data Analytics, learners begin with analytical thinking and the questions data can answer. They move on to preparing data, working with databases, cleaning data and checking the results, and finish by presenting what they found. TEEI’s catalogue shows each course and its modules, so a learner can look at the actual work before choosing a programme.

We built these pages from Coursera’s public catalogue and its course pages. They show Coursera’s own content: level, pace, teaching language, the courses, the hours for each and the modules inside them. Only the ten programmes Coursera classes as Professional Certificates carry that name, and the nine shorter specialisations are listed as what they are. Each certificate’s English edition links to its Spanish or Portuguese edition where one exists.

The study itself happens on Coursera. Learners work through the material, complete exercises and assessments, and come back to the programme at their own pace. Google sets the curriculum, the course records stay on Coursera, and Google issues the certificate when a learner finishes the whole sequence.

From a request to a place

A learner asks for a place under Learning Resources in their TEEI account, in TEEI Language or TEEI Mentorship. It takes one click and no form, because their name and email address come from their sign-in. We send the request to Coursera straight away, without a member of staff approving it first, and Coursera emails the invitation. The learner does not need a Coursera account beforehand.

The whole flow runs on Coursera’s API, built into TEEI Language, TEEI Mentorship and TEEI’s website. When a learner asks for a place, the platform sends the invitation through the API and reads the programme’s member list to see who has accepted. TEEI’s website collects the enrolment report every day. TEEI follows each place from the request to acceptance, and the daily reading counts the learners who enrol and the courses they complete.

Each invitation is tied to the request rather than to an account. It carries four things: the learner’s name and email address, the request’s id and the programme’s id. The reference we give Coursera is that request id, never an address or an account number. Someone who has a TEEI account in both programmes receives one place, not two. If Coursera already has an invitation for that address, we recognise it instead of sending another. If the person is already in the programme, we record their access at once. A request the automatic process cannot complete stays visible to the TEEI team, who resolve it by hand.

The learner accepts the invitation on Coursera and signs in with the address it was sent to. While invitations are outstanding, TEEI reads the programme’s member list through the API every 15 minutes and marks a place as accepted when the person appears in it. Coursera’s list is the record we go by, so someone the team adds directly in Coursera is picked up the same way. If the list cannot be read, that round changes nothing. A learner who has not accepted a day after asking gets one reminder, which explains that the address has to match. From the card in TEEI, they can open the Google programme on Coursera directly.

People without a TEEI account ask through the form on the certificate pages. It writes to the same records as the platform, so TEEI has one count of the places. Coursera counts a licence when an invitation is accepted. Because each invitation can become a place, the form limits repeat submissions and holds a suspicious one for the team instead of sending an invitation.

When the count reaches the limit, a new request joins a waiting list. The TEEI team can withdraw an invitation that has gone unanswered for a week and offer the place to the people waiting, oldest first. We read Coursera’s member list before and after, so someone who accepted in the meantime keeps their place.

The same request gives the learner a seat in the Google Career Certificates room. There is nothing else to apply for.

Study rooms: studying alongside other people

A self-paced course is usually studied alone. We built the study rooms in Skills Academy so that learners have other people around the course. Each learning resource has its own room: learners with DataCamp share the DataCamp room, and everyone who has asked for a Google place shares the Google Career Certificates room. The room is listed in Messages, and it is the same room whether a learner arrives from TEEI Language or TEEI Mentorship.

Chat is where members ask about a course, recommend something that helped them or talk through what they are working on. Someone starting a certificate can ask people further along about the order of the courses. A learner stuck on a difficult topic can describe the problem, and others answer from their own experience.

Beside the chat is the Study area. On a wide screen the two sit side by side. On a phone, learners switch between the Chat and Study tabs, and the conversation stays where it was while they arrange a session. The room continues between video sessions. Members can return to the same discussion, arrange another meeting and keep studying with people they have already met. Questions about an invitation, signing in or personal details go to the TEEI Team in a private conversation, also in Messages.

Study now

Study now is for the moment a learner has time and would rather not study alone. They choose how long they have, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes, and whether they want one person, a small group of three to six, or either. While they wait, the room shows how many others are looking for the same length right now, as a number and never with names. They can keep chatting in the meantime.

Study now runs on the same matching engine as real-time practice in TEEI Language. Each room has its own pool, and a learner waits in one room at a time. Anyone who already has a TEEI session booked at that moment is left out of the round. When enough people are free for the same length, we create a study session in the room that starts at once, with a place for each of them. Each gets a notification with the way back into the room. If nobody is free, the learner can plan a session for later instead.

The match is on time, not on course or level. One learner can be in a Data Analytics module while another works through Project Management. They can talk through what they are doing, or work on their own material side by side and keep each other going. The course stays on Coursera. The room provides the people and the meeting around it.

A study session takes place in TEEI’s own video room, built on Amazon Chime SDK, the same video room TEEI uses for language conversations and live teaching. Underneath, a study session is an ordinary TEEI group session, so it comes with the same reminders and attendance record as the others.

Set a time, or find one together

For learners who prefer to plan, the Study area has two ways to arrange a session. Set a time lets a member pick a day and an hour and create the session there and then. It appears under Coming up with its creator already holding a place, and anyone in the room can join from the session card.

Find a time starts with a question to the room. The member who asks chooses the length, the days and hours to ask about, and how many people must be able to come, from two to twelve. Members mark the hours they are free. As soon as one hour reaches that number, the session is set up for everyone who marked it. The question sits under Coming up and in the chat, so the conversation and the planning stay together.

Every time is shown in the reader’s own time zone, so a learner in Kyiv and one in Bogotá see the same session at their own local hour. Any member can set up a study session. The room’s hosts also run two kinds of meeting in it. Certificate Coffee is for conversation. Certificate Exchange is for discussion or short presentations, with resources to share if the host adds them. A host can set the time, or let the room choose.

One room system for every learning resource

The DataCamp room and the Google Career Certificates room run on the same TEEI room system. They share the chat, the planning, Study now and the video room. Each has its own members, its own conversation and its own matching pool.

We built it that way so that every new learning resource in Skills Academy gets its room on a system that already works: chat, planning, matching and video from the first day, with its own members and purpose. A learner who studies on both DataCamp and Coursera has a seat in both rooms.

A professional, a conversation partner and a mentor

Studying with another learner and learning from someone who does the work are different kinds of help, and Skills Academy has both. A learner on Google Data Analytics can bring their work to a clinic and discuss how they checked their data, or why they chose to present a result one way.

Volunteers who work in the field teach live in five formats. A workshop is guided practice around one task. A clinic is time to bring your own work or question to someone who uses the skill professionally. An expert Q&A gives a group time to ask about a field, and a webinar shows how a professional uses a skill. A class meets weekly for two to six weeks, with work in between.

Before booking, a learner can see who teaches the session, what it covers, what to prepare and what they should leave with. Discover lists the sessions by topic, date, format and language, and My Academy keeps a learner’s bookings, class meetings and tasks together.

In a class, learners submit work, assess it against the class criteria and receive feedback. First feedback from AI is labelled as such, refers to the learner’s own work, and is separate from the class team’s assessment. A person on the class team reviews the work, and a completed class earns a Skills Academy class certificate. The Google certificate remains Google’s qualification, earned on Coursera.

Understanding a subject is not the same as discussing it at work in another language. In TEEI Language, a learner books a one-to-one video conversation with a volunteer and brings the topic. For someone on Data Analytics, that might be explaining an analysis, describing a chart or answering questions about a project. For someone preparing for a new role, it might be interview practice. Group conversations are open too.

TEEI Mentorship pairs a learner with a volunteer who works in the field they are aiming for. Together they talk about which skills to build, how the profession works, how to present earlier experience and what to do next. A learner can meet a mentor before choosing a certificate, while working through it or after finishing it.

A learner combines these in their own order: a Google certificate on its own, a study partner alongside it, or a clinic, a conversation partner or a mentor when a question calls for one.

What learners have done so far

Once a day, we read the programme’s memberships and enrolment report through Coursera’s API. From this reading we keep four totals and the date it was done, and nothing per person: people who joined, learners enrolled in a course, learners with a completed course, and completed courses. Coursera records the course learning. TEEI records attendance at its own sessions separately.

Of the 454 people who had joined by 3 November, 329 joined during September and 109 in October. A certificate such as Google Data Analytics is designed to take about six months at ten hours a week.

Coursera’s report for October, sent on 3 November 2026, recorded 452 of the 500 places in use, 209 active learners and average learning hours of 6.0. In that month learners completed 13,076 items inside the courses and took 2,682 assessments. The courses with the most active learners were Foundations: Data, Data, Everywhere, with 75, Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions, with 34, and AI Fundamentals, with 27. The first two open Google Data Analytics.

What the places have made possible

In four months, the scholarships from Grow with Google have given 454 people a place on Google’s certificate programmes, free. Ninety-three of them have already completed a combined 414 courses, and in October alone learners took 2,682 assessments. Coursera hosts the learning, and its API runs the invitations and the reporting in TEEI’s systems. Around the courses, learners have a room of people on the same path and a way to look for others who are free to study. Live teaching, conversation practice and mentors are there when they want them.

To the teams behind Grow with Google and the Google programmes on Coursera: thank you for the places, and for the courses our learners are working through. And thank you to the learners who took them.

While places remain, people can ask for one through the certificate pages on TEEI’s website, and anyone in a TEEI programme can ask under Learning Resources in their TEEI account. The Google Career Certificates room is in Messages.