Courses You Can Take Right Now For Free: Ivy League College Classes

Most of us have a lot more free time now that we’re staying home more and social distancing. With spending a lot more time at home, I and a lot of people have been using this time to tackle a taste or focus on a project that they’re been putting off. Whether you’ve found yourself having more free time or looking to expand your knowledge, now is the perfect time to take advantage of the countless free courses completely free at the moment.

There are countless courses being offered for free at the moment. Everything from Ivy League to learning how to code to improve your Linked In Resume, there are tons of different courses all for completely free, but only for a limited time.

I’ve been doing my own research from different articles and blog posts of different courses you can take for FREE during this time. Some of these courses are more blog specific and website-specific courses, but there are also tons of courses that are geared towards just about any interest.

I’m personally dedicating time weekly to completing a number of courses to better my education, improve my resume and my skill set.

I’ve always been someone who enjoys learning. I enjoyed my college classes and growing up, I always enjoyed school. After graduating nearly three years ago, I missed the academic atmosphere. Although taking online courses isn’t the same as going to college and being in the class environment, I still get that same result of learning new information, studying, and assessments to mark my progress.

Coursera.Org

Coursera offers online college courses from Ivy League schools around the U.S. and right now they have a huge range of FREE courses that you can take and get an official certificate for FREE. I’ve definitely taken advantage of this offer and have enrolled in six courses and hope to enroll in more before the May 31st deadline.

Although I find that online courses aren’t as involved as in-person classes, this is a great option to update your resume, Linked In account, and learn a new skill without paying for anything.

I mean, how cool is it to say that you took a course at Yale or Harvard?

You can also create an account from anywhere in the world and with the video lectures, reading assignments and weekly quizzes, you’re able to track your progress on your own timeline while still having that college course structure, which is really great for fitting it in when you have free time.

Courses I Enrolled In:

Moralities of Everyday Life – Yale University
An Introduction to American Law – University of Pennsylvania
Personal & Family Financial Planning – University of Florida
Marketing Analytics – University of Virginia
Introduction of Personal Branding – University of Virginia
The Strategy of Content Marketing – University of California, Davis

Some courses you have to pay a small fee to get the certificate at the end of your course, but others are completely free with the current COVID-19 situation.

You can check out the list of free courses here before the May 31st deadline.

Linked In Remote Work Course

If you’re looking to switch your career or have found yourself like the millions of others unemployed, updating your Linked In is a great way to give yourself a leg up when it comes to the job-hunting process.

This Linked In courses goes through multiple areas like How to Navigate Finding a New Job in this Climate, Working Remotely and even Mindfulness Courses to help you be more mindful during your time in social isolation. These courses are definitely something that you would be great to spend the afternoon doing and refreshing your Linked In, regardless if you’re employed or not at the moment.

Some of these courses are under 1 hour and some more involved courses are multiple videos and over 10 hours long in total.

The Navigate Finding a New Job in this Climate is great for whether you’ve had you got laid off or got your hours to reduce or eventually looking for a new job. In this course, you get to discover how to create a recovery plan, cultivate resilience, explore other career options, update your resume, network virtually, and improve your job search and interview skills.

People tend to change jobs and even careers countless times throughout their working lifespan. Regardless if you’re still currently working, this is still a great course to take in my opinion for the future.

Skillshare

You may have heard of Skillshare before. It’s a very popular platform with tons of tutorials and courses on a wide range of different subjects from anything from photography, animation, to creative essay writing. Skillshare is offering free courses for specific people to aid with the COVID-19 which means you can learn some new skills in Animation, Design, Illustration, Lifestyle, Photo & Film Business, and Writing.

If you have a .edu or .k12 email address, you can take Skillshare classes for free. If you don’t have either of those email addresses, you can sign up for a free trial or enter your information for a need-based 2-month free Skillshare account. You can learn more about that here.

Bit Degree Courses

If you’re looking to get into the digital marketing or tech world, Bit Degree is the place for you. Bit Degree has everything from Instagram Marketing Courses to Email Strategies to How to Effectively Run a Meeting.

This is a great platform to take a lot of courses in a short amount of time.

There are courses that are a little as under an hour while some are a few hours long. Some are retailing for just $17 and up to well over $100. However, all the courses are offered completely free for a limited time.

Some Courses That I’m Going to Look Into Taking Include:

Since most of the courses are just a little over an hour each, I can definitely fit in a course or two a day in my free time. If you’re looking to learn some new skills in the marketing/tech world, but can’t commit to a full 8 week-long course like on Coursera, looking into Bit Degree Courses may be a great option for you!

Obviously, I don’t think what’s going on in the world currently is a good thing, whatsoever. It’s definitely devastating.

However, you can use this time given to us to take a moment and learn a new skill you always wish you knew how to do or just something that interests you, but not something you would necessarily go back to college or pay money to learn. These sites above are offering you almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn tons of new information and skills for completely FREE. Which in my opinion is pretty amazing and definitely something I’m going to try and take advantage of.

I hope this post gave you ideas of some courses that you may be interested in taking right now or a new skill you want to give a try.