Coursera Makes Courses & Certificates Free During Coronavirus Quarantine: Take Courses in Psychology, Music, Wellness, Professional Development & More Online

Over the past decade or two, devel­op­ments in the tech­nol­o­gy of the World Wide Web have made learn­ing at home pos­si­ble in a way it was­n’t before. Over the past month or two, learn­ing at home has gone from option to neces­si­ty, pre­vent­ed as many of us are from going out to a class­room by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. If you’ve tak­en cours­es on the inter­net before — and espe­cial­ly if you’ve picked them from our selec­tion of 1,500 you can take for free — you’ve no doubt heard of Cours­era, one of the major online learn­ing plat­forms. Now through May 31st, a peri­od dur­ing which the num­ber of poten­tial stu­dents will sure­ly remain high, Cours­era has made more of its class­es free for the tak­ing.

“To help our com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing this crit­i­cal time, we’re launch­ing new, free resources, as well as sur­fac­ing inter­est­ing course col­lec­tions, com­mu­ni­ty dis­cus­sions, and expert inter­views,” says the offi­cial Cours­era blog. “While many cours­es on Cours­era are already avail­able for free with­out a cer­tifi­cate, this pro­mo­tion enables you to not only access lec­tures and quizzes, but also to earn a free cer­tifi­cate for cours­es that offer them.” The blog high­lights these col­lec­tions of cours­es, describ­ing them as fol­lows:

• Free online cours­es for men­tal health and well-being: from de-mys­ti­fy­ing mind­ful­ness to under­stand­ing the sci­ence of hap­pi­ness, we’ve col­lect­ed top well­ness cours­es to help you pri­or­i­tize men­tal health and well-being dur­ing these uncer­tain times.
• Free online cours­es for high school stu­dents: from cal­cu­lus to gui­tar for begin­ners, we’ve round­ed up cours­es to help high school stu­dents every­where keep learn­ing.
• Free online cours­es for col­lege stu­dents: from prepar­ing for an inter­view to learn­ing data sci­ence, we’ve col­lect­ed cours­es to make it eas­i­er to keep learn­ing.
• Free online cours­es for career devel­op­ment: from cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing to per­son­al brand­ing, we iden­ti­fied cours­es to help you build impor­tant career skills.
• Free online cours­es for build­ing your cloud tech­nol­o­gy career: from machine learn­ing to cloud com­put­ing, we’ve curat­ed a set of cours­es to help you grow your career in an increas­ing­ly dig­i­tal world.
• Free online cours­es for under­stand­ing pub­lic health: from the sci­ence behind COVID-19 to com­mu­ni­cat­ing dur­ing glob­al emer­gen­cies, we’re mak­ing pop­u­lar pub­lic health cours­es com­plete­ly free.
• Free online cours­es in Span­ish: from well­ness to pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, we’re mak­ing pop­u­lar Span­ish-lan­guage cours­es avail­able for free.

The post also includes the fol­low­ing instruc­tions for how to redeem a free course:

1. First, click the link to vis­it a pro­mo­tion page.
2. From the pro­mo­tion page, click to vis­it a spe­cif­ic course and wait for the page to ful­ly load. Once loaded, you will see a pro­mo­tion ban­ner at the top of the page. If you don’t see the ban­ner, please refresh the page.
3. Next, click the “Enroll for free” but­ton.
4. Select “Pur­chase Course.” Note that with the pro­mo­tion applied, there will be a mes­sage in paren­the­ses that says “Your pro­mo­tion will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be applied at check­out.”
5. At check­out, your pur­chase total will read “$0.”
6. Com­plete check out and start learn­ing!

Among Cours­er­a’s cur­rent free offer­ings you’ll find a host of cours­es includ­ing “Get­ting Start­ed with Music The­o­ry” from Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, “Social Psy­chol­o­gy” from Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty, and “Cloud Com­put­ing Basics” from Learn­Quest. You’re as like­ly to come across sub­ject areas into which you’ve long been mean­ing to get deep­er as prac­ti­cal edu­ca­tion per­ti­nent to the times we now live in. Take “Sit Less, Get Active” from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh, or “Sci­ence Mat­ters: Let’s Talk About COVID-19” from Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don, a virus-relat­ed course of the kind we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego’s “Con­vert­ing Chal­lenges into Oppor­tu­ni­ties” is also not with­out its rel­e­vance, to the future as well as the present. After all, the coro­n­avirus will hard­ly be the last chal­lenge in which we’ll need to find our own oppor­tu­ni­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Watch “Coro­n­avirus Out­break: What You Need to Know,” and the 24-Lec­ture Course “An Intro­duc­tion to Infec­tious Dis­eases,” Both Free from The Great Cours­es

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Dyson Cre­ates 44 Free Engi­neer­ing & Sci­ence Chal­lenges for Kids Quar­an­tined Dur­ing COVID-19

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.