It’s never too late to learn some new skills, but sometimes it can be hard to find the time or the resources. However, lately a lot of us have had a bit more free time on our hands that we are used to. If you’ve found yourself in this situation, it may be the perfect time to start picking up those skills and bulking up your CV!
But where do you start?
These are a few of the best places to find free online courses that will provide you with all the resources you need without breaking the bank.
FutureLearn
FutureLearn has long been a friend of students looking to boost their university applications or make themselves more employable, and if you haven’t heard of it yet, you’re missing out! But like we said, it’s never too late to get started. FutureLearn offers a wealth of short courses on subjects ranging from the arts to politics to healthcare to computer science. Whatever your passion is, you’ll find a course to match it. What’s more, each course comes with a rating based on hundreds of users’ reviews, and it tells you how many weeks (and how many hours per week) your course will take up. Thanks to these handy features, you can figure out if you have the time to commit to the course, and see if people think the course is worth the commitment.
If you’re in the market for a free online marketing course, FutureLearn has 13 to choose from!
Coursera
Coursera offers free and business options. If you’re looking to use their courses to train your employees, Coursera for Business costs $400/user/month and ‘empowers employees to master new skills with unlimited access to our catalog’. However, if you’re just looking for yourself, you can also join for free as an individual and get access to free courses from top universities. Each course tells you how long it will take to complete, what level it is (beginner, advanced etc), how the course has been rated by other learners, and it even tells you what percentage of learners have gone on to start new careers or received tangible career benefits from the course.
Coursera is slightly harder to navigate than FutureLearn. In addition, there are a lot more paid courses that make it harder to find the free course of your dreams on Coursera than it is on FutureLearn. However, with a little searching you still have plenty of courses to choose from ranging in subjects from arts and humanities to maths and logic to business.
edX
Ever wanted to study at iconic American universities such as Harvard, Berkeley and MIT? Well, it may not be such a far-fetched dream after all. With edX, you can get access to free courses from these universities and more! Want to learn to code? Interested in data science? Keen to brush up on your Shakespeare knowledge? edX offers courses in these and many more.
The site is easy to navigate and each course lets you know how long it will take, what level it is, and what prerequisites there are. The only slight catch is that payment is required to get a verified certificate at the end of the course. However you can still do the course and learn all the skills for free!
So if you’ve been waiting for a sign to pursue that interest of yours, this is it! It’s time to find the perfect course, learn some new skills and boost your CV. You won’t regret it, we promise.