Coursera is a leading online learning platform for higher education that offers courses from more than 200 of the world's top universities and industry educators — from Ivy League American universities like Columbia to famous British educational institutions like the Imperial College London and top enterprises like IBM. To date, 77 million learners from around the world have taken online courses with Coursera.
So, what have they been logging in to learn lately? In 2020, the top Coursera courses reflected an understandable bias toward COVID-19-related topics like contact tracing, but courses involving well-being, psychology, and information technology remain ever-popular.
Read on for the top 10 Coursera courses with the highest daily enrollments in the United States from January 1 to November 30, 2020. And don't worry, you can still take them now. Enrollment is free, though you'll pay if you want a certificate; this cost varies.
- The Science of Well-Being from Yale University
Yale professor Laurie Santos has taught three million online happiness seekers.
Yale professor Laurie Santos has taught three million online happiness seekers.
IMAGE: IAN MOORE / MASHABLE
In this course, you'll face a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and build more productive habits. It's taught by psychology professor Laurie Santos, who reveals misconceptions about happiness, annoying features of the mind that lead people to think the way they do, and the research that can help you change. At the end of this approximately 19-hour course, you will be prepared to successfully incorporate a specific wellness activity into your life.
- COVID-19 Contact Tracing from Johns Hopkins University
In this introductory-level course, you'll learn about the science of SARS-CoV-2, including information about the infectious period, what the clinical presentation of COVID-19 looks like, evidence for how SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted, and why contact tracing can be such an effective public health intervention. You'll be taught how contact tracing is done, learn the most common barriers to contact tracing efforts, and discover strategies to overcome them.
Technical Support Fundamentals from Google
This course is the first of a six-week series that aims to prepare you for a role as an entry-level IT Support Specialist. You'll learn about the different areas of Information Technology, including computer hardware, the internet, computer software, troubleshooting, and customer service. By the end of this course, you should be able to understand how the binary system works, assemble a computer from scratch, and install an operating system on a computer.Machine Learning from Stanford University
Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. In this 60-hour course taught by Andrew Ng, one of the cofounders of Coursera, you'll learn about the most effective machine-learning techniques and gain practice implementing them and getting them to work for yourself. The course will also teach you about the theoretical underpinnings of learning and how to quickly and powerfully apply these techniques to new problems. You'll consider Silicon Valley's best practices in innovation when it comes to machine learning and AI, and get a broad introduction to machine learning, data mining, and statistical pattern recognition.Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects from McMaster University UC San Diego