Professional Online Learning Opportunities

Date: 04-08-2020 | Category: For Job Seekers,News | Reading Time: 3 Minutes

By Christine Olsen, MBA, Career Coach and Program Manager

How many times have we heard from our clients that they wish they had more time to brush up on skills or learn new topics or software applications relevant to their profession? Answer: too often.

Whatever their job status, they can make good use of their time at home learning to improve both soft and hard skills at no cost!
In addition to the popular LinkedIn Learning (was Lynda.com) which is offered to paying LinkedIn members, or free for the first 30 days of use, there are many other education options for those who want to enhance the basic academics (math, writing), or industry-specific related skills and knowledge, (SQL, Salesforce, project management, communication). Below are some recommended sites for you to explore. Let’s make social distancing productive by readying for career next steps!

Code Academy Dedicated specifically to teaching coding – how to write the code necessary to develop interactive websites using the most useful languages – HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Python, Ruby, and PHP – and does it within the browser using interactive tools featuring a centralized dashboard where you can monitor your progress, plus organizes lessons into complete modules. This lets you learn an entire language without needing to pick the next course manually.

Open Culture Find hundreds of university courses without having to visit and search for each university’s own site. This is a very helpful resource with easy to browse categories for finding many courses in one area of study. Try Open Culture’s 1000 lectures, videos, and podcasts from universities around the world.

Coursera is one of the leading providers of massive open online courses (MOOCs) – it is a website that partners with universities and organizations around the world to bring a wide variety of topics and perspectives to one searchable database giving the site an extremely wide range of in-depth courses – some provide certificates of completion to recognize that you passed the class. This is a great place to enjoy learning in a structured classroom-style environment from home.

Kahn Academy is partnering with many post-secondary schools and curating many courses from around the web offering useable and impressive depth on many different subjects. The lectures are short and share a handful of information at a time but build on each other as you progress.

Udemy is a site that mixes free and paid course content – similar in concept to Coursera – but additionally allows users to build custom courses from lessons.

edX primarily focused on courses in math, the sciences, and engineering edX is a great option for free online education offering fully online courses from many different schools with teachers, discussion boards and quizzes primarily focused on courses in math, the sciences, and engineering.

MIT Open Courseware MIT Open Courseware is a treasure trove of the course material if you’re looking to learn more about science, computer and engineering topics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT is among the top universities for those subjects.

Stanford Online
Stanford Online offers self-paced and session-based courses. Some courses require iTunes, but most are completed in your web browser. Stanford Online is a great site for world-class courses, though the topics are somewhat limited.

Sites offering free online courses during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic which may be helpful to you and your family members!

Alison Explore resources from top universities

Academic Earth Get started with some coursework

Class Central Discover free online courses