The dynamic nature of today’s world requires you to constantly upgrade yourself. Whether it is a new skill, a language, or even playing a new instrument, adding to your existing set of skills has become necessary. However, not everyone has the time to enroll in advanced degrees or colleges. You can go for available online courses with certifications.
With most people already working a 9 to 5 job, or their startup, it is virtually impossible to make time for anything else. Besides, the conveyance can be a daunting problem too. Fortunately, the digital era has opened up quite a lot of opportunities in this regard. There are online courses available in nearly all disciplines; whether it is a language course, or learning to play piano, or maybe a training workshop in teamwork, you can certainly expect to find a relevant online course in the vast world of the internet.
Why take up online courses with certificates?
The bonus of online courses with certificates is that you can access it from any place in the world. You could be sitting in the UK, enrolled in an online course at Harvard University! Most online courses also offer flexible hours for you to complete your coursework. This means that you could watch the course videos at the time that best suits you. This helps you improve your resume while having minimal effect on your work routine.
So, without treading into the wonders of online courses, let’s shed some light on some of the best online courses that come with Certifications. Be mindful that some of these courses are free, however, others might require you to pay a small fee. Nevertheless, the fee is minimal compared to what the courses will cost you if not online.
Coursera
If you are a student, you might already be familiar with Coursera. It is one of the digital platforms that congregates hundreds, if not thousands of courses under one roof. Founded by Stanford University professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, it offers online courses with flexible learning hours. There are courses available from leading educational institutes such as Stanford, Princeton, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania.
There are a variety of courses from all disciplines including business, personal development, sciences, writing, and even data science. The courses are a modest 4- week long to ensure your grasp on the content, but not so long as to get monotonous or repetitive. The courses themselves are virtually free. Anyone can log in and access the content, however, you need to pay a small subscription fee to get the certificates.
Moreover, you don’t need to fret if you are a beginner, there are levels mentioned on each course and quite a lot of them are beginner-friendly. However, that certainly doesn’t imply that there isn’t anything for advanced learners. There is something for everyone on this remarkable digital platform. So, be sure to log on to www.Coursera.org and browse through the incredibly vast range of courses present.
Udemy
Udemy is another hub of online courses with certificates. As of 2020, Udemy has over 130,000 courses taught by over 57,000 highly qualified instructors. The platform offers courses in most disciplines, but their business-related skills are by far the most popular ones.
There are PowerPoint presentations, PDF assignments as well as some videos that cover the coursework. The students can access this content from anywhere in the world and go through the content in the allotted time. They are then required to display the acquired skills usually in the form of structured assignments. Udemy also offers training programs for business to improve their overall efficiency. Udemy, much like Coursera, has a blend of both free and paid courses; it largely depends on the type of course and the instructor.
Harvard Business School Online
Who hasn’t heard of one of the most respected schools of advanced learning? Harvard is an ivy league college that is surely the dream of every student. However, even if you didn’t succeed in getting into this prestigious institution, you can now enroll in their online courses and get awarded with Certifications from Harvard University!
The program offers numerous business-related courses including Negotiation Mastery, Leadership Principles, Global Business World, Financial Accounting, Management Essentials, and much more. These courses help you acquire the most sought-after skills in today’s job market.
Future Learn
Future Learn offers a wide variety of short courses and postgraduate degrees. The platform offers online courses with certificates in many disciplines ranging from science, maths, and Engineering to business and linguistics. There are even courses for you to ace your IELTS or other linguistic tests.
The length of the courses differs according to the nature of the subject. Some courses are as short as two weeks, whereas others are 4 to 5 weeks long. Most courses, however, require you to allot 5 hours per week of your time in completing the coursework. It could include going through the presentation, allotted reading, or simply completing and submitting the given assignments.
Alison
Alison Courses are another opportunity for you to build your resumé or even just improve your overall lifestyle. The platform has courses available in lifestyle and health such as Nutrition, Yoga, Fitness, and mental health. It also offers various courses in the disciplines of Science, Information Technology, mathematics, humanities (psychology, media, sociology, law, economics, history, politics, etc) business, management sciences, and language.
About 1500 of these courses can be accessed for free in over nine different languages. Alison Courses also come with certificates that are widely recognized in most parts of the world.
Edx.com
Edx.com is a venture of the Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As you can expect from the brainchild of such prestigious institutes, Edx offers online courses with certificates from thousands of highly qualified instructors in various fields. The courses also include university-level courses that are highly advanced.
These courses are in the form of weekly learning sequences. This weekly coursework includes a combination of short videos, Presentations, notes, and assignments. The platform also offers certification upon the successful completion of most courses. If you don’t want to enroll in a course that doesn’t offer a certificate, make sure you check the specifics before you enroll. The verified courses come with a final assessment that requires you to pay a small fee. You can find out more information at www.edx.org
Google Analytics Academy
We believe that the all-powerful search engine Google doesn’t need an introduction. The organization, which is only growing every day, has recently introduced verified courses and training programs with minimal fees. The Google Analytics Courses allows you to enhance your skills set with numerous online courses with certificates that are taught by field experts. It is a hub of data analysis courses that can be taken by beginners or advanced students. The bonus is that Google synchronizes all the events in your calendar. You can put the other google apps such as Drive to better use too. The courses also come with a very strong Google Certification that is recognized all over the world.
We must warn you, however, that these courses are certainly not the easiest ones out there. But with determination and hard work, it would give you a bunch of analytical skills that would prove very useful in your work.
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn is a formal socializing platform for business colleagues. Unlike Facebook, it is very professional and allows you to connect with people from your industry and build connections.
Recently, LinkedIn has come forward with a variety of courses to help individuals strengthen their resume and improve their skills in various areas of business and IT development.
The coursework again is in the form of videos in which the field experts deliver the concepts effectively. The courses are kept short and professional, which you could already guess as the courses are related to business and management.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn Learning doesn’t offer much in the humanities, health, or science departments. So, if those are your preferred disciplines, you may want to check out other platforms such as Coursera or Udemy.
Most of the LinkedIn Learning courses are paid, but they come with a highly respected certification that significantly adds to your overall resume. So, in retrospect, they are still a good opportunity for you to improve your job-related skills on a budget.
British Council Online courses
The British Council is an organization by Cambridge University London that is responsible for many international exams that take place all over the world. These exams include the Ordinary and Advanced Level exams, IELTS, and GCSE.
The organization has expanded and introduced courses for students all over the world. As of now, there are very limited courses in the British Council Online Courses on their official website. But you may find some of their offered courses on other platforms mentioned in this article such as Future Learn and Coursera.
Oxford Home Study Centre
The world-renown center of higher education has come forward with its amalgamation of online courses. Most of these courses are already available on Coursera but you can access them from the Oxford Home Study center as well.
There are free online courses with certificates in business management, risk management, human resources, project management, and cybersecurity courses. The courses are arranged in terms of levels. The program offers a diploma (level 4) precedent by the certificate (level 3), level 2, and level 1 courses as well. The level 1 courses are very much suitable for beginners. So, you can choose according to your level of expertise. There are also courses in fashion designing, hotel management, diet and nutrition, public relations, psychology, wedding planning, travel, and tourism, etc.
The plethora of courses can be accessed from anyone, anywhere in the world. The bonus is that all these courses are taught by field experts and highly trained professionals, so you get the best experience possible. However, one possible drawback of these amazing courses is that they are not free; the level 4 courses may be as high as £310. But don’t fret over the course fee as you can split it into 12 installments over the course of one year. So, consider dividing the fee over the entire duration of the course. That compared with the fact that you are getting a well-respected certificate from a prestigious institute such as Oxford, makes up for the fee.
If you complete the coursework and go through all the course contents, you should be able to secure a much better job in the future due to the brand-new skills you would have acquired.
Which of the online courses with certification satisfies your needs and demand?
