Nearly 2 million students could be a step closer to getting credit for their work in free, online classes, under an agreement announced Tuesday.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera — an online platform for about 200 classes from 34 universities such as Princeton, Duke and Stanford — said the American Council on Education would begin evaluating about five Coursera classes initially for possible credit recommendations, and the number could grow. It would still be up to individual universities whether to grant credit to students who complete such classes, but a stamp of approval from ACE would likely go a long way toward persuading at least some U.S. institutions to do so.