Skillshare is for people who want to develop creative skills or need help learning the ins and outs of running a creative business. It’s especially good at helping people with drawing, painting, digital arts, photography, cooking, writing, sewing, and other crafts. One aspect of Skillshare that we appreciate is that it does have some very short courses or lessons within courses that you can complete as a one-off. For example, if you just want to practice drawing cacti for five minutes, Skillshare has videos that will indulge your creative cravings. Thanks to the range of courses, certificate programs, tutorials, and more that have been designed to teach you timely, career-relevant skills, you don’t have to go far to make a big change.

There’s a course called Self-Driving Car Engineer, developed in partnership with Mercedes-Benz, Nvidia, Uber, and other companies. Explore an array of educational options on Coursera, including bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees from leading universities around the world. If you’re looking to gain career-ready skills, check out a Professional Certificate in computer science or IT, data science, business, or marketing. The best way to describe Wondrium is to call it couch-side edutainment. It’s not geared toward teaching you hands-on skills or helping you achieve a specific learning goal (though it does have some skills-focused classes).

Code Yourself! An Introduction to Programming

Really, it’s for people who have a paid LinkedIn membership because access to LinkedIn Learning is included. If you wouldn’t get much out of the other benefits of a paid LinkedIn subscription, then we don’t recommend paying nearly $40 per month just for LinkedIn Learning. Wondrium is a subscription-based video streaming service that focuses on educational programming. Wondrium was formerly called The Great Courses Plus, and while it has expanded its catalog in recent years, it still has everything that The Great Courses Plus had. The courses come across as a series of TV lectures or simple documentaries.

• Whether you’re learning synchronously or asynchronously online, you don’t have to worry about the hurdles of getting to class.
• The next time you feel like you need some fresh ideas, take a spin through one of these sites and learn something new.
• Many of those software programs come from Lynda.com, which was acquired by LinkedIn some years ago.

Designed to summarize the IT Fundamentals and Cloud specialization courses, this course is ideal for individuals seeking non-IT practitioner roles, such as project managers. It provides essential insights into the IT field, equipping you to collaborate effectively with IT teams and make informed decisions within your role. If you seek a non-technical role in the IT industry, this course provides you with a strong foundation so you can thrive in the ever-evolving IT landscape. Each of the online IT courses on Alison are free, as are all of Alison’s online courses.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy focuses on learning materials for students in kindergarten through early college. That doesn’t mean other people can’t use it or find immense value in it. However, when you look at the available courses, you will notice that many closely map to the US education system. So, for example, there are courses under the heading High School Physics.

That said, Udacity is best for people who are willing to pay a few hundred dollars per month to complete one of its highly targeted Nanodegrees. As one of the best online learning platforms because it lets you create games, quizzes, and other interactive content for your learning materials. Whether you are designing games and quizzes or playing them, Kahoot! We love that it adds engagement to all kinds of get-togethers, whether in the classroom, meeting room, or living room. You can not only bolster your subject knowledge when you learn online, but you can also hone transferable skills, like communication, critical thinking, adaptability, and more. When you learn online, you also sharpen your ability to work independently, or without supervision, which is a valued skill among employers.

Best for Business Skills

We included Udemy in this list of the best online learning platforms because it sells discrete video courses on an array of topics. Many people end up using Udemy because they met an instructor through another context, and the instructor pointed them to Udemy to purchase their course. Generally speaking, Udemy’s content covers both personal and professional development, How Was the Career Fair in Almaty with excellent lessons in management training, software use, and programming. We like that you can pay for Udemy courses one by one, with prices varying per course, or you can get access to a catalog of content with a business subscription. Regrettably, the subscription prices are high, and you need a minimum of five people for a business account.

First, you hear about the confidentiality, integrity, and availability triad and then about intellectual property and confidential information. Then you will learn about types of threats, breaches, and attacks. You will explore password management, access control, authorization, and single-sign-on authentication. In lesson two, you will learn about safe browsing practices such as application ecosystem security, plug-ins, extensions, and toolbars. You will also learn about public browsing risks, safe browsing techniques, and virtual private networks.

You can decide your learning space.

Khan Academy is especially adept at teaching math, science, computing, economics, history, and personal finance, among a few other subjects. You get sequential material, too, so you can work through one lesson at a time in order until you’ve learned what you need to know. In addition to universities, many major companies now offer programs designed to help you learn a new aspect of a career—or bolster your skill set. Google, IBM, Meta, and Salesforce all offer Professional Certificates on Coursera. These focused programs can be an excellent way to expand your industry knowledge or get started in a new field. Many years ago, there was a learning site called Lynda.com that was absolutely brilliant at teaching software skills, such as how to use Photoshop and other business-level creative skills.

Coursera is one of the best online learning sites that offers plenty of free video courses and materials. It also partners with universities to make some of their degree programs available online. If you want the degree, you have to apply to the program and pay tuition to the school, just as if you were an in-person student.

Best for Quizzes and Games

You get additional materials, such as PDF handouts and sometimes community forums where you can upload examples of your work to get feedback from other learners. While its pricing has jumped around over the years, Skillshare now has a reasonable annual cost. Coursera is for people who want access to real university classes and have the self-discipline to follow through on all the assignments, which can often take weeks or months to complete. You mostly learn through videos, readings, quizzes, and assignments. If you use Coursera for free, you may be able to get feedback on your assignments from other learners but not the instructor. Coursera is best for learners who can handle college-level course material.

The first lesson addresses software applications, where you learn about the differences between open-source and commercial software, software versioning, file formats, and components of web browsers. In the second lesson, you will explore some basic programming concepts. In the third lesson, you investigate databases, where you compare and contrast different types of database storage and manipulation. Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to store and transmit data. IT is one part of information and communications technology (ICT). An IT system is a group of users operating an information system that includes data, computers, software, hardware and all other peripherals.

If you need to learn specific job skills, there are two online sites that we recommend. One is Udacity because it teaches highly specific, job-focused skills. If you are aiming to get a job from one of the companies that Udacity partners with, the Udacity courses could give you a leg up. While Udacity offers a handful of courses that aren’t technical in nature, the majority are, and they are highly specific.