Last Updated on December 14, 2022
Coursera Reddit is a website designed to connect with Coursera students, giving them a place to ask questions, share knowledge and connect with each other.
One of the best ways to learn how to learn is by studying other people who have excelled at learning. In this course, we’ll explore the principles and techniques that learners from all walks of life have used to excel at learning. We’ll study both informal and formal education methods, from K-12 schools to massively open online courses (MOOCs). And we’ll meet students who have learned on their own and in school, as well as teachers who have taught them how to learn.
learning how to learn coursera reddit
These Are the Most Useful Online Courses You Can Take, According to Reddit
There’s no shortage of online learning sites that list courses on every topic imaginable. But going through each and every one of them in the hopes of finding a course that appeals and is actually worth doing can take forever.
Why not save hours of your time and get to the good stuff immediately? We scoured dozens of Reddit threads in search of the most useful courses, so you don’t have to. From getting better at excel to learning how to power search, here’s a list of some of the most potentially life-changing online courses out there.
Learning How to Learn
First things first, do you even know how to learn? If you’re unsure, check out the Learning How to Learn course on Coursera that will introduce you to the learning techniques used by experts in various fields. Reddit user dhawal says that the course, which is divided into four weeks and takes about 15 hours to complete from start to finish, is “useful even if you are not a student […] It has helped with my productivity tremendously.” As someone who procrastinates a lot, I’ve already enrolled in this one.
Useful Excel for Beginners
“Learn all you can about Excel,” says a Redditor that has since been deleted. “Chances are, most of your co-workers are only good at the very basic Excel. […] You may just become your boss’s right-hand man/woman.” If you’re completely clueless in Excel (it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to add a new row to an Excel worksheet), take the Useful Excel for Beginners course on Udemy (for free). As another Reddit user says, “if you learn how to Excel, you’ll Excel at life.”
Introduction to Computer Science
You might never become a programmer. You mightn’t even want to. But that doesn’t mean that taking a course in computer science is pointless. According to one Redditor, “just learning the basics of how coding works helps you with all things computer-related. It’s like I’m better at understanding how computers think.” This computer science course by Harvard is straightforward enough for complete beginners but also detailed enough for those with some experience. It’s free (you can get a verified certificate for less than $100) and takes just 12 weeks to complete.
Want to start your own business but don’t know where (or how) to start? Do yourself a favor and take How to Start a Startup course put together by the entrepreneur Sam Altman at Stanford in 2014. The course, which, according to Reddit user bradhankins is “priceless for entrepreneurs,” is made up of 20 lectures that go over everything you need to start a startup, including how to raise money and build a product people love. Most of the lectures are taught by some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, like Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.
The Science of Happiness
If you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps lately (and honestly, with the way things are going, who isn’t?), consider taking the Science of Happiness course taught at UC Berkeley. Redditor mr_priapism says, “I was not in a good place before. At least try to get to the 6th week, which is on mindfulness. I feel so much better about my life and situation now.” It’s not all just theory, either. The course, which can be completed in 11 weeks (as long as you put in four to five hours a week), teaches practical strategies to nurture your happiness.
Basic First Aid
If you’re going to complete just one course from this list, take a deleted Reddit user’s advice and do a basic first aid course. You never know—your first aid skills could someday save someone’s life. The first aid course at First Aid for Free covers everything you need to know, including infection control, minor wounds, and major bleeding. The site also offers courses on advanced first aid, CPR, asthma, and more—all free of charge.
Google Power Searching
We use Google search every day. But most of us are not very good at finding relevant information on Google quickly. That’s why Redditor Rj4001 recommends that everyone take Google Power Searching and Advanced Power Searching courses. The “courses blew me away and totally changed the way I search for anything online,” he says. Who knew that being able to use Google properly is an actual skill—and one that most people lack.
how to learn coursera for free
A Guide on How to Sign up for Coursera Courses for Free
In a Nutshell: Look for a link to audit the course. We have marked it in these screenshots.
Here at Class Central we get asked all the time whether Coursera courses are really free. The Coursera user interface (UI) is designed to push learners towards Coursera’s paid offerings, and it may confuse new learners regarding what’s free on the platform and how to sign up for it.
Note: 1600+ courses are available completely free
How to Enroll in Coursera Courses for Free
In brief:
- Look for a link to Audit the course on individual course pages. The Audit option is not available on Specialization, MasterTrack, or Professional Certificate Pages so you need to navigate to the single course page first.
- Some courses include assessment items (but no certificate) for free. Simply sign up for Full Course, No Certificate.
- Some courses are paid-only. Look for the green $ symbol on the Class Central page.
- If you are unable to pay and want a certificate, you can apply to Coursera for Financial aid.
Read on for more details.
What is Coursera?
Coursera is an online education provider that offers online courses, popularly known as MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses, from top universities around the world.These partners include Stanford, Duke, Penn, Princeton, Michigan, Peking, and HEC Paris. Coursera also partners with companies like IBM, Google, and PwC — these companies have also launched courses on Coursera. Currently it has 190 active partners from 48 countries around the world.
As well as individual courses and 34 online degrees, Coursera offers 900+ groups of courses known as Specializations, Professional Certificates, and MasterTracks. Some groups of courses can be used as credit towards degrees available through Coursera, but these are not free when used as university credit.
Can you get a Coursera Certificate for Free?
Certificates were free in Coursera’s early days. Unfortunately, you can’t get a free certificate for completing Coursera courses now. Many MOOC providers have stopped offering free certificates for completing their online courses.
You can, however, apply for financial aid for most courses if you can’t afford to pay for a certificate.
Is Coursera Still Free?
Yes and no. A few courses on Coursera are paid only. These are indicated on Class Central by a small green $ symbol. One example is Image Understanding with TensorFlow on GCP.
At the time of writing this article, a big majority of the courses have some element of “free” — mostly the videos are free to watch but you need to pay if you want access to graded assignments and certificates. However, Coursera still has many courses for which even the graded assignments are completely free.
You must sign up (Join for Free) with Coursera before you can see the price. Your Class Central account is not the same as an account with Coursera.
How to Audit Coursera Courses
Coursera calls having access to the free portions of a course “auditing the course.” I first came across this concept of auditing when I went to Georgia Tech, where I got my Masters in Computer Science. I got my undergrad degree in India and we didn’t have the concept of auditing there.
Here is a quick definition from a university’s FAQ: Auditing a course allows a student to take a class without the benefit of a grade or credit for a course.
So when you are trying to enroll in Coursera courses for free, look for the word Audit after you select the Enroll For Free button. Audit does not include assessment items or a certificate, but lecture videos, course readings, and discussion forums are usually available for free. Coursera keeps tweaking their UI or testing different iterations so what’s on your screen on Coursera’s website may be different from our screenshots.
To avoid providing your payment details to Coursera, you need to select the Audit link.
What if the Audit link is not visible?
First, you need to find the course page. You cannot sign up for free via Specialization pages.
Most newly launched courses are part of a Specialization or Professional Certificate. Some older courses that were around twelve weeks long have been converted into Specialization format, with the original course split into multiple courses.
Professional Certificate and Specialization pages do not allow you to sign up for a single course. If you click on the “Enroll for Free” button, you will only be given an option to subscribe to the whole Professional Certificate or Specialization.
To audit for free, you need to find the individual course pages. If you scroll down a bit you will see a list of courses that are part of the Specialization. Click on a course name to go to the single course page.
Unfortunately, even though it lists the courses in the Specialization, the Specialization page may not necessarily link to the individual courses via the course name links. In this case, to visit the course’s page, copy the course name and paste it in the search bar on Coursera. Better yet, you could search for the course on Class Central — https://www.classcentral.com/search. We will also show you results of similar courses that are not on Coursera.
When you are on the course page, select the Enroll button and look for an Audit link as shown above.
Because some courses are part of more than one Specialization or Professional Certificate, you may see a pop-up like this one. Click Next, or first select the drop-down arrow to change the program.
The next screen shows the Audit link.
If you are on an individual course page and there is no Audit link, it may be one of the few paid only courses. You can check this by going back to the Class Central information page and looking for a green $ symbol for the COST.
Full Course, No Certificate
This pop-up appears for courses with free access to graded assignments. Simply select the Full Course, No Certificate option.
What is Coursera Plus?
The pop-up may include Coursera Plus information, but you are still looking for an Audit link.
Coursera Plus is a single payment that gives you access to most courses in the catalogue for 12 months, including assessments and certificates. While not free, if you want certificates for several courses or Specializations, it may be a worthwhile investment.
I hope you found this guide useful. Please let me know if you find a Coursera course that doesn’t fit the patterns described above.
