Google Unveils a Digital Marketing & E‑Commerce Certificate: 7 Courses Will Help Prepare Students for an Entry-Level Job in 6 Months

in Google, Online Courses | January 30th, 2025

Sev­er­al years ago, Google launched a series of Career Cer­tifi­cates that will “pre­pare learn­ers for an entry-lev­el role in under six months.” Their first cer­tifi­cates focused on Project Man­age­ment, Data Ana­lyt­ics, User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design, IT Sup­port and IT Automa­tion. And they have since released a cer­tifi­cate ded­i­cat­ed to Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑Commerce, which incor­po­rates train­ing on lever­ag­ing AI to enhance mar­ket­ing strate­gies and e‑commerce oper­a­tions.

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑Commerce Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of sev­en cours­es, all col­lec­tive­ly designed to help stu­dents “devel­op dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and e‑commerce strate­gies; attract and engage cus­tomers through dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels like search and email; mea­sure mar­ket­ing ana­lyt­ics and share insights; build e‑commerce stores, ana­lyze e‑commerce per­for­mance, and build cus­tomer loy­al­ty.” The cours­es include:

In total, this pro­gram “includes over 190 hours of instruc­tion and prac­tice-based assess­ments, which sim­u­late real-world dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and e‑commerce sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place.” Along the way, stu­dents will learn how to use tools and plat­forms like Can­va, Con­stant Con­tact, Google Ads, Google Ana­lyt­ics, Hoot­suite, Hub­Spot, Mailchimp, Shopi­fy, and Twit­ter. The cours­es also focus on some time­ly AI topics–like how to kick­start mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy ideas with AI, or use AI to help you under­stand your audi­ence.

You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es. If you con­tin­ue beyond that, Google/Coursera will charge $49 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $300 after 6 months.

Explore the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑Commerce Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

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10,000+ Free Online Certificates & Badges: A Resource for Lifelong Learners

in Online Courses | January 15th, 2025

For those look­ing to boost their skills or explore new fields with­out break­ing the bank, Class Cen­tral has done the heavy lift­ing. Known as a search engine for online cours­es, Class Cen­tral has com­piled what might be the largest col­lec­tion of free online cer­tifi­cates and badges avail­able any­where. From tech giants like Google and Microsoft to elite uni­ver­si­ties like Har­vard and Stan­ford, this list cov­ers a diverse range of sub­jects and skill sets.

There was a time when the world’s top uni­ver­si­ties used to offer free cer­tifi­cates for com­plet­ing online cours­es. While most of those cer­tifi­cates are no longer free, many of the cours­es them­selves remain open to learn­ers, cov­er­ing top­ics like Com­put­er Sci­ence, Lit­er­a­ture, and Busi­ness.

Cer­tifi­cates can serve as both moti­va­tion and proof of achieve­ment for com­plet­ing online cours­es. While plat­forms like Cours­era and edX have moved toward paid cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, a sur­pris­ing num­ber of free options remain — if you know where to look. Thank­ful­ly, Class Central’s guide makes it easy to find these oppor­tu­ni­ties.

What’s Includ­ed in the Guide?

The arti­cle orga­nizes free cer­tifi­cate offer­ings by providers, includ­ing:

  • Google: Over 1,000 free cer­tifi­cates and badges in top­ics like dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, Android devel­op­ment, and AI.
  • Har­vard: Free cer­tifi­cates for their pop­u­lar CS50 series and oth­er online cours­es.
  • Stan­ford Med­i­cine: Med­ical cours­es offer­ing free cer­tifi­cates and CME cred­it.
  • LinkedIn Learn­ing: 110+ hours of free cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in busi­ness, tech­nol­o­gy, and design.
  • Sem­rush Acad­e­my: 90+ cours­es with free cer­tifi­cates focused on mar­ket­ing and SEO.
  • CodeS­ig­nal: 700+ free skill cer­ti­fi­ca­tions to val­i­date cod­ing, tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties, and soft skills.

If you’re ready to explore the full list of free cours­es and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, head over to Class Central’s detailed guide: Mas­sive List of Thou­sands of Free Cer­tifi­cates and Badges. It’s a trea­sure trove for any­one look­ing to learn some­thing new, enhance their resume, or sim­ply sat­is­fy their curios­i­ty — all for free!

 

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Launch Your Project Management Career with Google’s AI-Enhanced Professional Certificate

in Artificial Intelligence, Google, Online Courses | October 31st, 2024

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Back in 2021, Google released a series of cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, includ­ing one focused on Project Man­age­ment. Designed to give stu­dents “an immer­sive under­stand­ing of the prac­tices and skills need­ed to suc­ceed in an entry-lev­el project man­age­ment role,” the cer­tifi­cate pro­gram fea­tures six cours­es over­all, includ­ing:

  • Foun­da­tions of Project Man­age­ment
  • Project Ini­ti­a­tion: Start­ing a Suc­cess­ful Project
  • Project Plan­ning: Putting It All Togeth­er
  • Project Exe­cu­tion: Run­ning the Project
  • Agile Project Man­age­ment
  • Cap­stone: Apply­ing Project Man­age­ment in the Real World

More than 1.7 mil­lion peo­ple have since enrolled in the course sequence. And Google has now updat­ed the cours­es with 6 new videos on how to use AI in project man­age­ment. The videos will teach stu­dents how to boost project man­age­ment skills with AI, iden­ti­fy poten­tial project risks with gen AI, use AI to improve project com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and more.

The Project Man­age­ment pro­gram takes about six months to com­plete (assum­ing you put in 10 hours per week), and it should cost about $300 in total. Fol­low­ing a 7‑day free tri­al, stu­dents will be charged $49 per month until they com­plete the pro­gram.

All Google career cours­es are host­ed on the Cours­era plat­form. Final­ly, it’s worth men­tion­ing that any­one who enrolls in this cer­tifi­cate before Novem­ber 30, 2024 will get access to Google AI Essen­tials at no cost.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

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Learn Data Analytics & AI with Google, and Fast-Track Your Career

in Data, Online Courses | October 17th, 2024

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We’re liv­ing in the age of data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI). Every sec­ond, vast amounts of data are being gen­er­at­ed, processed, and ana­lyzed. And increas­ing­ly AI plays a cen­tral role in how that data gets man­aged. For com­pa­nies, gov­ern­ments, and indi­vid­u­als alike, under­stand­ing data is essen­tial. This makes Data Analytics—especially when accom­pa­nied by AI skills—a valu­able asset for most pro­fes­sion­als.

Enter Google, which recent­ly launched a pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate in Data Ana­lyt­ics–one that will “have you job-ready in less than 6 months.” Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of eight cours­es, includ­ing “Foun­da­tions: Data, Data, Every­where,” “Pre­pare Data for Explo­ration,” “Data Analy­sis with R Pro­gram­ming,” and “Share Data Through the Art of Visu­al­iza­tion.” And now the course sequence has incor­po­rat­ed videos explor­ing how to lever­age arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence when work­ing with data. Over­all this pro­gram “includes over 180 hours of instruc­tion and hun­dreds of prac­tice-based assess­ments, which will help you sim­u­late real-world data ana­lyt­ics sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place.”

Upon com­ple­tion, students–even those who haven’t pur­sued a col­lege degree–can direct­ly apply for jobs (e.g., junior or asso­ciate data ana­lyst, data­base admin­is­tra­tor, etc.) with Google and over 150 U.S. employ­ers, includ­ing Deloitte, Tar­get, and Ver­i­zon. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es here. If you con­tin­ue beyond the free tri­al, Google/Coursera will charge $49 per month. That trans­lates to about $300 after 6 months, the time esti­mat­ed to com­plete the cer­tifi­cate.

Final­ly, it’s worth men­tion­ing that any­one who enrolls in this cer­tifi­cate before Novem­ber 30, 2024 will get access to Google AI Essen­tials at no cost.

Explore the Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate by watch­ing the video above. Learn more about the over­all Google career cer­tifi­cate ini­tia­tive here. And find oth­er Google pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cates here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

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Death: A Free Online Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable

in Online Courses, Philosophy, Yale | September 10th, 2024

It pays to think intel­li­gent­ly about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Shelly Kagan does just that, tak­ing a rich, philo­soph­i­cal look at death. Here’s how the course descrip­tion reads:

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will exam­ine a num­ber of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mor­tal­i­ty. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that death may not actu­al­ly be the end is con­sid­ered. Are we, in some sense, immor­tal? Would immor­tal­i­ty be desir­able? Also a clear­er notion of what it is to die is exam­ined. What does it mean to say that a per­son has died? What kind of fact is that? And, final­ly, dif­fer­ent atti­tudes to death are eval­u­at­ed. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is sui­cide moral­ly per­mis­si­ble? Is it ratio­nal? How should the knowl­edge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

Major texts used in this course include Pla­to’s Phae­do, Tol­stoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, and John Per­ry’sA Dia­logue on Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty and Immor­tal­i­ty. Kagan also lat­er pub­lished a com­pan­ion book–simply called Death–which can be pur­chased online.

You can watch the 26 lec­tures above. Or find them on YouTube and iTunes in video and audio for­mats. For more infor­ma­tion on this course, includ­ing the syl­labus, please vis­it this Yale site.

This course has been added to our list of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD (1963)

Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adven­ture and Cre­ative Act

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How, Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion, He Recit­ed a Line from the Bha­gavad Gita: “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds”

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive

in Art, Museums, Online Courses | June 27th, 2024

If you want to immerse your­self in the world of Pablo Picas­so, you might start at the Museo Picas­so Mála­ga, locat­ed in the artist’s Span­ish birth­place. But to under­stand how his work devel­oped through­out his life, you’ll have to get out of Spain — which is just what Picas­so did to accel­er­ate that devel­op­ment in the first place. At the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, an ambi­tious young Euro­pean painter had to go to Paris, the con­ti­nen­t’s art cap­i­tal. Picas­so end­ed up spend­ing much of his life there, mak­ing it the most suit­able loca­tion for the Musée Picas­so, home to the sin­gle largest col­lec­tion of his art­works, from paint­ings and sculp­tures to draw­ings and engrav­ings, as well as an even larg­er archive of pho­tographs, papers, and cor­re­spon­dence.

Now, you don’t actu­al­ly have to make the trip to Paris to see these col­lec­tions, or at least an increas­ing­ly large por­tion of their hold­ings. As Sarah Kuta reports at Smithsonian.com, thou­sands of Picas­so’s art­works are “now acces­si­ble from any­where with an inter­net con­nec­tion, thanks to a new online archive cre­at­ed by the Picas­so Muse­um. The muse­um has dig­i­tized thou­sands of Picasso’s art­works, essays, poems, inter­views and oth­er mem­o­ra­bil­ia, includ­ing items that have nev­er been seen by the pub­lic before.” The project began last year, with the dig­i­ti­za­tion of “around 19,000 pho­tos”; if all goes accord­ing to plan, the muse­um will even­tu­al­ly make “an addi­tion­al 200,000 doc­u­ments” avail­able online.

Browse the Musée Picas­so’s online archive and you’ll find many works that, assum­ing you haven’t yet achieved full Picas­so immer­sion, you won’t have seen before: Femme couchée lisant from 1953, seen at the top of the post, for instance, or the ear­li­er Mas­sacre en Corée just above. (Despite liv­ing in Korea myself, I had no idea that Picas­so paint­ed a Kore­an War-themed pic­ture, much less an episode of his­to­ry that took place in the very neigh­bor­hood where I used to live.) Not every­thing is by Picas­so, a good deal hav­ing been made by artists with whom he was asso­ci­at­ed, like Man Ray, who took this 1937 pho­to­graph of Picas­so and his His­pano-Suiza car. You can find much more of inter­est in the archive’s themed sec­tions, like “Féminin / Mas­culin” and “Picas­so iconophage,” which are nav­i­ga­ble only in French — a lan­guage that, in any case, every Picas­sophile should learn. Enter the dig­i­tal archive here.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

The Mys­tery of Picas­so: Land­mark Film of a Leg­endary Artist at Work, by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot

A 3D Tour of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate a Mas­ter­piece in Just Five Min­utes (1955)

The Louvre’s Entire Col­lec­tion Goes Online: View and Down­load 480,00 Works of Art

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

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Learn to Become a Supply Chain Data Analyst with Unilever’s New Certificate Program

in Business, Online Courses | March 25th, 2024

Sup­ply chains—we nev­er thought too much about them. That is, until the pan­dem­ic, when sup­ply chains expe­ri­enced severe dis­rup­tions world­wide, leav­ing us wait­ing for prod­ucts for weeks, if not months. That’s when we start­ed appre­ci­at­ing the impor­tance of sup­ply chains and their resilience.

Com­pa­nies like Unilever rely on sup­ply chains to man­u­fac­ture their goods (e.g., Dove, Lip­ton, and Ben & Jer­ry’s) and then move them around the globe. For Unilever, it’s essen­tial that their sup­ply chains remain effi­cient and strong. Work­ing in part­ner­ship with Cours­era, the com­pa­ny has cre­at­ed a new Sup­ply Chain Data Ana­lyst Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate to help entry-lev­el pro­fes­sion­als learn more about using data to man­age effec­tive sup­ply chains. Designed to be com­plet­ed in rough­ly four months, the cer­tifi­cate con­sists of four cours­es: 1) Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment and Ana­lyt­ics, 2) Using Data Ana­lyt­ics in Sup­ply Chain, 3) Imple­ment­ing Sup­ply Chain Ana­lyt­ics, and 4) Sup­ply Chain Soft­ware Tools.

As stu­dents move through the pro­gram, they will learn how to “achieve cost sav­ings, reduce lead times, enhance cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, and adapt to chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions through data-dri­ven insights and ana­lyt­i­cal approach­es.” They will also learn key skills like demand fore­cast­ing and how to mon­i­tor sup­ply chains for secu­ri­ty risks.

Empha­siz­ing real-world expe­ri­ence, stu­dents will “take on the role of an ana­lyst for a fic­ti­tious con­sumer goods com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in organ­ic farm to table con­sumer prod­ucts. With over 20 unique assign­ments, [stu­dents will] use spread­sheets and visu­al­iza­tion tools to ana­lyze data and make rec­om­men­da­tions.”

You can audit the four cours­es for free, or sign up to earn a share­able cer­tifi­cate for a fee. Stu­dents who select the lat­ter option will be charged $49 per month. Cours­era esti­mates that the cer­tifi­cate will take four months to com­plete, assum­ing you’re ded­i­cat­ing 10 hours per week. That amounts to about $200 in total. You can enroll here.

For those inter­est­ed, Unilever has also recent­ly released a new Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Ana­lyst Cer­tifi­cate, which you can find here.

In addi­tion, until March 31, 2024, Cours­era is offer­ing $100 off of Cours­era Plus, which will let you take 7,000 cours­es (includ­ing the ones above) and not pay for the cer­tifi­cates. If you plan to take a lot of cours­es, and want to earn cer­tifi­cates, it can be a cost effec­tive approach.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one: A Free Course from AI Pio­neer Andrew Ng

Google Unveils a Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑Commerce Cer­tifi­cate: 7 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

Google & Cours­era Cre­ate a Career Cer­tifi­cate That Pre­pares Stu­dents for Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Jobs in 6 Months

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Amazon Offers Free AI Courses, Aiming to Help 2 Million People Build AI Skills by 2025

in Artificial Intelligence, Online Courses | January 26th, 2024

Late last year, Ama­zon announced AI Ready, a new ini­tia­tive “designed to pro­vide free AI skills train­ing to 2 mil­lion peo­ple glob­al­ly by 2025.” This includes eight free AI and gen­er­a­tive AI cours­es, some designed for begin­ners, and oth­ers designed for more advanced stu­dents.

As the Wall Street Jour­nal pod­cast notes above, Ama­zon cre­at­ed the AI Ready ini­tia­tive with three goals in mind: 1) to increase the over­all num­ber of peo­ple in the work­force who have a basic under­stand­ing of AI, 2.) to com­pete with Microsoft and oth­er big com­pa­nies for AI tal­ent, and 3.) to expose a large num­ber of peo­ple to Ama­zon’s AI sys­tems.

For those new to AI, you may want to explore these AI Ready cours­es:

You can find more infor­ma­tion (includ­ing more free cours­es) on this AI Ready page. We have oth­er free AI cours­es list­ed in the Relat­eds below.

Note: Until Feb­ru­ary 1, 2024, Cours­era is run­ning a spe­cial deal where you can get $200 off of Cours­era Plus and gain unlim­it­ed access to cours­es & cer­tifi­cates, includ­ing a lot of cours­es on AI. Get details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence for Every­one: An Intro­duc­to­ry Course from Andrew Ng, the Co-Founder of Cours­era

A New Course Teach­es You How to Tap the Pow­ers of Chat­G­PT and Put It to Work for You

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one: A Free Course from AI Pio­neer Andrew Ng

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

How to Learn Data Ana­lyt­ics in 2024: Earn a Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate That Will Help Pre­pare You for a Job in 6 Months

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