There’s A Course For That!

Look beyond YouTube and discover free online resources to sharpen your skills and help your career

Here’s an expression that digital marketers know well: “The best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google.” The expression for YouTube is, “If you can’t find how to do it on YouTube, it’s not worth doing.” Neither of these axioms could be further from the truth and while streaming a video on how to fix a screen door or unclog a vacuum cleaner hose can be a “stress-saver,” this article is going to outline free resources and some not-so-free-resources that teach practical work skills as well as health and wellness tips to help advance your career and keep your mind and body healthy.

Your Time, Your Terms

The notion of “distance learning” has been around for decades; the University of Phoenix became the first school to offer a full portfolio of online college courses back in 1996. Correspondence courses were available by mail through the U.S. post office as early as the mid-1800s. This is nothing new; however, the proliferation of Wi-Fi back in the mid-2000s made online learning platforms increasingly popular because working learners could read, watch a video and study at their own pace.

The following online platforms are some of the most popular, but there are many other similar ones. Courses range from fun topics like “learn how to juggle” to skill-building subjects like “mastering pivot charts in Excel.” One thing most of these platforms have in common, however, is a leveling up strategy where free courses are available once you enroll, and other courses are pay to play.

Udemy.com has been around since 2010 and offers instructors an easy way to develop a course and upload the course on their platform as videos, PowerPoints or PDFs. There are over 200,000 courses to choose from—over 10,000 courses on Microsoft Excel alone and over 7000 courses on yoga! Anyone can create a course that Udemy deems appropriate but instructors who want to charge a fee have to level up to a premium instructor. Udemy then takes a percentage of that fee. Choose Udemy for a wide offering of courses and topics, but not if you’re looking for accredited certifications or degrees, although certificates of completion are offered. Businesses, both large and small, often use Udemy for team-based training, but if you just want to test it out on your own, they do offer a 7-day free trial and then plans that start at 20 dollars a month.

Coursera was founded in 2012 by Stanford University professors and is more focused on college-level courses to advance careers. Coursera aligns with universities and enterprise companies like Google or Meta to provide accredited certificates and graduate and post graduate degrees. Like Udemy, Coursera offers thousands of free courses, but premium lessons will either require a subscription or pay an upfront free. Coursera is a better option if you want to advance your career with skills and accreditations that can be impressive on a resume.

Teachable.com is an interesting online learning platform that allows creators (instructors) to design and upload their own courses ranging from defensive driving to how to mastering Google Ads. Subscription based with “free, good, better, best” levels, instructors can build their courses using the platform’s digital tools and then can promote their courses to students. Teachable is creator based, meaning it’s the platform to use if you want to teach and  their motto is “anything is teachable.”

UUniversity.com is a an online platform for eye care professionals (ECPs) who want to expand their ophthalmic knowledge and dispensing skills. Completely free to all leaners who enroll, UUniversity™ has an extensive library of ABO (American Board of Optometry) and NCLE (National Contact Lens Examination) courses that leaners can choose from and take at their own pace. Courses include live webinars, like Acing the ABO, recorded videos from industry experts, and PDFs, and each course includes a quiz at the end with an 80% pass rate required. Eye care professionals can obtain their ABO certification and UUniversity will take care of all the digital paperwork.

Is Online Learning Right for You?

Online learning platforms offer busy working folks a chance to grow personally and professionally, and millions of learners have either earned degrees or advanced their knowledge and skills to help them become a more valuable employee or a more well-rounded person who knows how make a pivot chart or how to juggle. Understandably, these platforms need to “keep the lights on” and eventually have to (or hope to) gain a fee from instructors and learners.

Like anything in life, taking that leap to learn something new will only happen if it’s important to you. One way to test the waters is to sign up for one free course or do a free trial, but then it’s up to you to find out what you want to learn and how much you want to grow.

Written by M.A. Giorgio