Top 10 Online Education Sites You Need to Check Out

Learning Made Easy and Accessible

Whether you’re a university student, a newly-employed graduate or a seasoned employee, learning new skills from scratch is essential in finding your dream job or simply expanding your horizons.

There are a smorgasbord of skills for one to choose from – coding, psychology, graphics design, filming, business management, learning Mandarin … and so much more! But where does one know to begin?

Online, of course!

There are many educational websites out there that offer a wide variety of courses that you can learn on the go or from the comfort of your home. Some of these are completely free, while others require you to pay a once-off or subscription fee.

What Platforms Do I Use?

Before you embark on learning a new skills, take a look at the 10 best websites out there:

Coursera

Coursera works with world-class, accredited universities such as Harvard and other organisations to offer over 7 000 online courses, certifications and degrees in a variety of subjects and educational fields. Some of these courses are free, but others require varying fees if you want college credits, a professional certificate or a specialised degree.

On the other side of the coin, there’s also Coursera Plus, a subscription plan that gives users unlimited access to 90% of the learning programmes on the site. It costs $59 monthly or $399 annually.

Udemy

Offering over 200 000 video-based courses for a wide assortment of subjects, Udemy allows users to learn new skills as taught by top experts in their respective fields. While courses are free to use (introduction to photography, learning Microsoft Office, etc), a majority of these courses range from $12.99 to $199.99. A Personal Plan subscription gives you unlimited access to over 6 000 courses. It costs $26.99 monthly.

Bear in mind that while you do receive certificates of completion at the end of a course, these are not accredited (although most employers recognise that you are seeking to improve your skillset).

Skillshare

Whether it’s video-based training or in-person workshops, Skillshare caters to creative individuals and entrepreneurs. It offers over 35 000 classes in design, photography, arts, business and technology among other subjects. As you follow the classes, you will be able to create projects in real time. Unfortunately, Skillshare does not offer certificates of completion.

Another downside is that you will be required to pay an annual membership fee of $165 (which works out to $13.75 a month) when you join Skillshare. The first month is free, after which you will be charged. Fortunately, you will have unlimited access to every available course.

LinkedIn Learning

Integrated with LinkedIn, this site is favoured by professionals – it offers over 16 000 courses in business, technology and creative as taught by top experts in their respective fields. It also syncs with your LinkedIn profile, so it gives you course recommendations based on your job and skill set, as well as informs you which courses that your network contacts are studying. Certificates of completion are not accredited.

The Premium membership costs $29.99 a month (with the first month free as a trial period) or $239.88 annually (which works out to $19.99 a month).

EdX

Partnering with the likes of Harvard University, Wellesley and MIT, EdX focuses on providing over 3 500 courses in the sciences, arts, mathematics, languages and so on.

Some courses are free, but you will need to pay an average of between $50 and $300 to receive a certificate of completion. For accredited Bachelor’s degrees and Master’s degrees, you will have to dig deep into your pockets: it can cost you more than $10 000.

Codecademy

Codecademy is dedicated to teaching newbies and advanced users alike how to code. It offers over 300 courses in 14 programming languages such as HTML, CSS, Python, JavaScript and more. You will also be able to perform different tasks in order to practise what you learned in each work module.

Their Pro Plan costs $29.99 a month (with the first seven days free as a trial period) or $239.88 annually (which works out to $19.99 a month). If you subscribe to this plan and complete a course, you will receive a non-accredited certificate.

Duolingo

One of the most popular language-learning sites ever made, Duolingo allows users to partake in one of 100 courses in over 40 languages. These include English, French, Spanish, Mandarin and much, much more (including the fictional Klingon language!). Although it doesn’t offer accredited certificates of completion, the site does offer a certificate for the Duolingo English Test, which is officially recognised by numerous universities and educational institutions.

Duolingo is completely free, although frequent ads tend to interrupt the learning process. You are also equipped with five Hearts – for every question you get wrong about the material you just learned about, you will lose a Heart. It takes five hours for each Heart to refill. This curbs users from speed-running through the course without actually learning anything

By subscribing to Super Duolingo for only $6.99 per month, however, you will receive unlimited access to ad-free content and unlimited Hearts.

Academic Earth

Academic Earth offers a collection of curated courses from the world’s leading universities for free. There are over 1 500 videos from institutions such as Yale, Harvard and Princeton, and subjects range from business and IT to nursing and trades (catering, electronics repair, landscaping, etc).

While their collection of courses is free, certificates of completion offered by Academic Earth are not accredited, nor do you get college credits for completing a course.

MIT OpenCourseWare

Operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT OpenCourseWare is a reservoir of undergraduate- and graduate-level courses. More than 2 500 courses, lectures and supplement resources are offered in a variety of subjects: electrical engineering, literature, mathematics, teaching, economics and so on.

MIT OpenCourseWare is completely free and requires no registration. However, it does not offer any accredited degree, credit or certification.

Start Your Journey On the Right Foot

Each website comes with its own perks and disadvantages. It’ll be up to you to weigh these up carefully when choosing the one that best suits your interests, your financial situation and so on. At the end of the day, you want to decide on the option that will help you grow, broaden your perspective, and help you progress to the next phase of your life and career.