The Best Free Online Courses Everyone Should Take This Year
The days when you graduated from college, started your career and never looked back, long gone. Lifelong learning is not just a catchphrase, it is an essential aspect of survival. Even a quick look at the last few decades shows how quickly things are changing, not only in terms of your actual work, but even in the way we work, collaborate, and measure success.
There’s a good chance you’ll change jobs at some point in your life: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, people change jobs an average of 5.7 times when they’re under 24, and an average of about two times when they’re over 45. . And as we go through The Great Retirement, that pace is likely to pick up, meaning you’ll need to keep both your tough and social skills as a razor if you’re going to make it in the future.
Luckily, there are tons of helpful resources, including many free online courses, to keep you up to date. Sites like Coursera , Udemy , and edX offer an extensive list of free courses, many sourced from top colleges and universities (including Ivy League schools, if you think that’s important). These courses are completely online and can usually be taken at your own pace, and include skills that just about everyone will need in the coming years, regardless of your profession.
Take this free logistics and project management course
Anyone who has worked professionally in the last few years knows that just about everyone has to be a project manager to some extent. And mastering the skills of logistics and project management will not only bring you professional benefits – our personal lives are also becoming more chaotic by the minute, and working remotely means that we combine everything from morning meetings to afternoon laundry on the same schedule.
To stay on top of everything, a course like Introduction to Project Management at the University of Adelaide is ideal. This completely free course will introduce you to the basics of project management and teach you how to apply them both in work and in your personal life. This includes how to prioritize, how to scope any project, and how to develop manageable schedules and realistic costs.
Take this free lesson for problem solving and decision making
Leaders love people who can solve problems on their own. Solving problems requires confidence and the ability to be decisive, but this must be combined with experience and understanding. On the other hand, the feeling that you are underqualified and constantly making terrible decisions is universal.
A free online course that can help you is called Effective Problem Solving and Decision Making. This course will help you develop the critical thinking skills that are the foundation of problem solving. It will also teach you how to identify mental obstacles that can cause decision paralysis, risk analysis, and other skills useful in assessing problems and developing solutions.
Take This Free Programming and Computer Science Lesson
You don’t have to be an experienced programmer who can whip up an application over a lunch break, but you increasingly need to understand the basics of how these tools are conceptualized, developed, and deployed, if only because you’re more likely to moment will interact with the development team.
A solid introduction to computer science will give you an excellent foundation for the future we all already live in. Introduction to Computer Science from Harvard University is a great choice. It offers an overview of both the conceptual skills involved (including algorithmic thinking, abstraction, data structures, software engineering, and web development) and an immersion in practical skills such as programming languages and development platforms. After this course, you will be able to watch people start discussing the resources needed to develop software tools.
Take This Free Mindfulness and Happiness Course
You should never underestimate the importance of soft skills, and one of the most important is your own mental health and happiness. This has become even more important as more of us constantly work, sleep and live in the same confined space. It’s easy to get Cosmic Madness if you never leave your apartment (or put on your pants).
Happiness and mindfulness are not accidental, there is science behind them. UC Berkeley offers The Science of Happiness to teach you positive psychology, a new concept that teaches you practical strategies for nurturing psychological and emotional well-being. In an increasingly distant world, ensuring your mental and emotional health will be more important than ever.
Take This Free Machine Learning Course
If you can’t beat them, join them. We’re not quite at the level of Skynet yet, but AI-driven automation is projected to cut up to 85 million jobs over the next few years.
There is no clearer sign that skills related to artificial intelligence and machine learning will be absolutely essential for everyone’s professional and personal future. After all, there is a possibility that we will all have to interact with AI in one way or another.
Stanford University offers ” Machine Learning “ , a broad introduction to the field that will give you a solid understanding of data mining, pattern recognition, different ways to train AI, and best practices. As machines become smarter and AI tools more common, we all have no choice but to get smarter, if only to keep up.
All of these courses are free in terms of money, but you will have to invest your most valuable resource – your time. However, if you want to stay afloat in the uncertain future, the benefits are well worth it.