Has the vastness of space ever made your head spin at the speed of light? Have you ever wondered what a Dyson sphere is? Maybe you have a few questions about what people born on Mars would look like. In this course all these questions will be answered and so will many more. Futurism and Space Exploration is a fun and self-paced way to learn the answers to questions the amateur stargazer and space lover may have. The best part is that it’s all in bite-sized videos that are easy to binge.

Who should take this course?

Anyone with a love for space and a few out of the box questions about the more odd and interesting parts of space. If you are a beginner in star gazing and a person who yearns for straightforward easy to understand answers to unexpected questions, this course is for you. I would suggest it to students who would like a space themed hobby or those looking for a pastime that remains interesting even after the course as the answer given can be expanded on and discussed even further on other forums.

The instructors

The course is presented by PBS Space Time through YouTube and hosted by the quick paced smooth-talking physicist Dr. Gabe Perez-Giz and mellow-minded super-intellectual astrophysicist Dr. Matt O’Dowd. The two writers of the series gave easy to understand and logical answers in such as to simulate a casual discussion which helped in understanding the concepts presented in the series.

What will you learn?

We’ll not spoil all the surprises, but here’s a rough overview of what is covered in the course:

•         Exoplanets and where they are found.
•         Dyson spheres- what are they and how would we make one?
•         Terraforming planets and what we need to survive on another planet.
•         What secret NASA projects have been used in our daily lives.
•         How do wormholes work?
•         Can we reach hyper speed or travel at the speed of light?
•         The potential asteroid mining revolution.

To give you more information would ruin the fun of taking the course. The only way to find out all the questions and their respective answers is to watch the entire series.

Requirements

No degrees or formal education on the topics discussed is required. I would suggest a prior exposure to a few very basic principles of space is needed to fully grasp the gravity of the concepts discussed. The course is only about 4-hours long and is completely self-paced which allows you to take as much time as you need. I suggest a video a day which is about 10-15 minutes. This gives you about 20 days of interesting concepts and topics to ponder over.

Personal experience

I personally enjoyed the entire series. The short video format kept me engaged long enough to truly have a good understanding of the lesson and remained short enough to not bore me. The course is made for people with short attention spans and short bursts of time throughout their day. I felt like I learnt quite a lot without being bombarded with information or being left confused at the end of a lesson. The topics to this day remain relevant and interesting. The various lessons inspired me to look deeper into space and futurism.

In conclusion, the course is well scripted and written in such a way to keep the viewer engaged. The topics remained relevant and the short form is very digestible for those with odd working hours or short periods of free time. The hosts and writers are very knowledgeable and truly have a good way of explaining complex terminology. A brilliant course that anyone with a love for space should watch.

A course that is similar in style and topic is The Universe and Space stuff by Kurzgesagt- In a Nutshell.

The post Futurism and Space Exploration: a Perfect Start to the Wilder Side of Space Research appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

A Silent Voice is one of my favorite animes. Reason – its female lead, Nishimiya Shoko, is deaf, and the creators do an excellent job portraying her struggles, and most importantly, the use of sign language. I had never thought about sign language seriously before watching this anime, and it sparked my interest to learn more.

In this guide, I’ve selected the 10 best free and paid American Sign Language (ASL) online courses for you from the 50+ Sign Language courses on our catalog by following a well-defined methodology that you can find below.

But if you want to jump straight to the results, here are my top 10 picks. You can click on a course to jump to the corresponding section:

What is American Sign Language (ASL)?

American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language and is the primary language of the deaf community in the United States of America and in many parts of Canada. It is a visual language expressed by hand movements, facial expressions and body posture.

Sign language is not universal – different sign languages are used in different countries and regions. Some countries also adopt features of ASL in their sign languages. Like any spoken language, ASL has its own grammar and syntax that differs from English – its own rules for pronunciation, word formation and word order.

Why are American Sign Language (ASL) Skills Important?

In the USA, there are about 48 million people with hearing impairment, from which an estimate of 500,000 can sign language. Considering that service providers, educators, friends and relatives will also have some level of expertise, this number can be even higher.

Learning any language is not just about memorizing hundreds or thousands of words – you can also participate in a new community of people and better understand the Deaf Culture. Anyone can benefit from being able to communicate with the deaf and hard of hearing, parents, educators, first responders, and service providers, just to name a few.

And if you want to make a career out of it, there are thousands of jobs for Sign Language Interpreters on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor with an average salary of $29 per hour.

What is My Experience with American Sign Language (ASL)?

I am a Guided Project Instructor and a Beta Tester at Coursera, having tested many courses before they’re officially launched. I have taken over 50 online courses in various subjects.

My experience as an online learner and teacher has given me some perspective on what to look for in an online course. I used my experience to evaluate each course in this list.

Course Ranking Methodology

I built this ranking following the now tried-and-tested methodology I used in previous rankings (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:

1. Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database with 100K online courses and 200K+ reviews. Then, I made a preliminary selection of 50+ Sign Language courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks.
2. Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
3. Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content and they have to fit in a set of criteria and be ranked accordingly: comprehensive curriculum, release date, affordability, ratings and enrollments.

The end result is a unique selection of courses that combines a decade of Class Central data and my own experience as an online learner to try to get the best of both worlds. So far, I’ve spent more than 10 hours building this list, and I’ll continue to update it.

Course Ranking Statistics

Here are some statistics regarding this course ranking:

• Combined, these courses have accrued over 31.8K enrollments.
• 7 courses are free or free-to-audit and 3 courses are paid.
• The most-represented course provider in the ranking is YouTube, with 6 courses.
• All 10 courses are in English.
• The Sign Language subject is followed by over 4.2K learners on Class Central, and accounts for over 50 courses in Class Central catalog.

So without further ado, let’s get to my picks for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online courses.

1. ASL University: Lessons (ASL University)

My first pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is the free course ASL University: Lessons, offered by ASL University.

In this comprehensive course with hundreds of hours of engaging video lectures, interactive quizzes, and plenty of learning resources you’ll learn from scratch how to be a great communicator in sign language with the specialist Dr. William Vicars.

Vicars will build your confidence from the ground up, starting from spelling and simple daily sentences to more and more abstract concepts. He uses evidence based language learning with reinforcement, repetition, and a curriculum that covers the most frequent vocabulary from lesson one. 

Every lesson is given with an accompanying learner that will give you the opportunity to feel like you’re in a private class with the instructor and surely you won’t get bored while learning.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll cover 46 themed-based lessons:

In the first 30 lessons, you’ll learn the basics you need to communicate in ASL about yourself, your family, feelings, basic actions, food, clothes, animals, school and work, and traveling.

From lesson 31 to 45, you’ll learn more intermediate skills and start learning about more nuances in sign language to talk about more abstract concepts such as emotions and dreams. You’ll learn about sports, giving your opinion, gossip, hand tools, giving directions, holidays, and talking about your health.

Finally, you’ll learn more upper-intermediate and advanced concepts in the last 15 lessons: talking about numbers and money, travel, buying things/grocery, reading preferences, dating and relationships, academic, medicine and hospital talk, cars and driving, playing games, goodbyes, and social media.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 4 modules and 46 lessons. Each module involves about 23 hours of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos, readings and quizzes.

Fun Facts

• Vicars has a doctorate in Deaf Studies & Deaf Education from Lamar University and a masters in Deaf Education.
• He used to be a Professor of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies at California State University, Sacramento, and nowadays, he’s the president and owner of the Lifeprint Institute, a consultation business focusing on technology-enhanced delivery of ASL Instruction.
• He was born hard of hearing and has become progressively deafer.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

2. Beginner American Sign Language (ASL ) Course (Laura Berg Life)

My second pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is the free course Beginner American Sign Language (ASL ) Course, offered by Laura Berg Life on YouTube.

This free course has a good balance of lessons and practice. It starts with basic vocabulary and simple sentences, and gradually moves up to more complex sentences as you learn more ASL signs. At the end of each lesson, there’s a video dedicated to quizzes to test your receptive skills. By the end of the course, you should be able to sign basic ASL words and form simple sentences.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll cover ten-themed based lessons:

1. Introduction
2. Family
3. Describing people
4. Food
5. Home
6. Location and directions
7. Activities
8. School
9. Meetings and scheduling
10. Hobbies and interests

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 31 videos. Each video involves about 10 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of video lectures and video quizzes.

Fun Facts

• Gendron was born deaf and has been an ASL teacher for more than 25 years.
• His wife is also deaf and his kids are CODA (Child of Deaf Adult) which means their first language is ASL!
• Berg is the president and founder of My Smart Hands.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

3. ASL Basics (Learn How to Sign)

My third pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is the free course ASL Basics, offered by Learn How to Sign on YouTube.

Aimed towards beginners, this free ASL course is more of a collection or series of tutorials that teach you how to sign basic ASL words and phrases. The lessons will be helpful in your daily ASL conversations, starting with the alphabet and getting into simple words, common phrases,  greetings, feelings, situation-based signs, ASL sentence structure, and many more.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll understand the alphabet (ABCs), common and descriptive signs, numbers, questions, animal signs, greetings, farewells and introductions, days of the week and months of the year, affirmation and negation signs, and places around the town.

You’ll also learn about describing people, feelings and emotions, barista signs, meat and dairy signs, fruit and veggie signs, food signs, common phrases, summer signs, school signs, money, routines, sentence structure, and profession signs.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 48 videos. Each video involves about 5 to 10 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through video lectures only.

Fun Facts

• Meredith is a state certified ASL teacher and certified educational interpreter.
• She also holds a M.Ed. in Deaf Education.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

4. Learn & Master Sign Language (Udemy)

My fourth pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is Learn & Master Sign Language on Udemy.

One of the most comprehensive courses on this list, this course for beginners will help you master the receptive and the expressive components of ASL. The lessons are interactive, giving you a solid foundation in basic and advanced signing including vocabulary, sentences, narratives and dialogues. The course also contains enough practice opportunities as well.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll start with the basics which includes introductions, gesturing, the alphabet members of the family, and more. Then, you’ll progress to advanced techniques such as expansion features, classifiers, storytelling, and more. Other topics include how to communicate during emergencies, everyday activities, facts about the dynamic deaf culture, interacting at sporting events, and more.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 28 sections. Each section involves about 1.5 to 2 hours of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos, a lesson book and in-video practice quizzes.

Fun Facts

• Webb is a professional ASL interpreter and educator.
• This course used to be offered in DVD format, but now you can access it online from anywhere!
• Bridges is a deaf ASL educator, interpreter (CDI), workshop presenter, grandpa, father, and friend.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

5. American Sign Language Level 1 (Udemy)

My fifth pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is the American Sign Language Level 1 on Udemy.

This short course for beginners is a great way to get started with and learn the foundations of ASL. It will teach you easy and useful ASL topics such as the origins of ASL language, the alphabet and finger-spelling, family signs, feelings, verbs, key nouns, and much more. At the end of this course, you’ll also get to demonstrate a short story in ASL.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll cover the following:

1. Finger spelling
2. The ASL alphabet
3. Number signs
4. Colors
5. Animals
6. Food and drink
7. Family signs
8. Key verbs and nouns
9. Feelings and emotions
10. Sentences

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 10 sections. Each section involves about 10 to 30 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos and downloadable resources.

Fun Facts

• Manny Martin started learning ASL to communicate with his Deaf foster son in 1984. In 1992, he became an ASL interpreter and in 1994 an educator for kids and adults. 

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

6. ASL | Pronouns + Vocab + Practice | American Sign Language (Skillshare)

My sixth pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is ASL | Pronouns + Vocab + Practice | American Sign Language on Skillshare.

This course focuses specifically on the use of two types of pronouns – personal and possessive  – in ASL. You’ll learn to sign and recognize pronouns in ASL, increase your vocabulary and combine them to create useful phrases and sentences. And you’ll be able to achieve all this within a matter of a couple of hours.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn about handshapes, I/me vs. my/mine, you vs. your, he/she/it vs. his/her/its, pronouns 1st group, we/us vs. our, they/them vs. their, you (plural) vs. your (plural), pronouns 2nd group, and all pronouns.

You’ll also explore signs for apple, house, mom, cat, purse and shoes, noun vocabulary signs, pronoun + noun phrases, pronoun + noun (silent), signs for happy, sad, mad, scared, surprised and hungry, pronoun + adjective, and simple sentences (silent).

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 40 lessons. Each lesson involves about 2 to 8 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos and a final assignment.

Fun Facts

• When Michael was 3 years old, his brother got sick and lost his hearing, so Michael and his family decided to learn ASL and they all became fluent!

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

7. Learning Sign Language (Jack Hartmann Kids Music Channel)

My seventh pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is the free course Learning Sign Language, offered by Jack Hartmann Kids Music Channel on <provider>.

Whether you are a kid or an adult, songs will most surely not fail to hold a spot in your mind. Don’t be fooled by the course name; songs are a great way to learn sign language even for both kids and grown ups. This free course is well-suited for your kids or even yourself for learning ASL as well as Australian Sign Language and British Sign Language.

What You’ll Learn

This list includes the following songs you can follow (sign) along with Jack Hartmann and friends:

1. See It, Say It, Sign It (American Sign Language Alphabet Song)
2. We Are A Family
3. Greetings Song in Spanish with no subtitles
4. One Small Voice
5. Rap it, Read It, Say It, Sign It
6. We Are a Family
7. Auslan See it Say it Sign it (Australian Sign Language)
8. See it Say it Sign it (British Sign Language)
9. Animal signs (domestic and farm animals)
10. Sign the colors

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 20 videos. Each video involves about 2 to 5 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through video lectures only.

Fun Facts

• Hartmann has made over 55 albums with over 1,500 super fun movement songs for children.
• He is a 2016 Parents’ Choice Approved Award Winner for the CD, Brain Breaks.
• His music is research-based and teacher-approved to focus on helping children learn.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

8. Learn ASL in 31 Days (ASL Rochelle)

My eighth pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is the free course Learn ASL in 31 Days, offered by ASL Rochelle on <provider>.

As its name suggests, this free course will teach you ASL in 31 days, or more specifically, one topic each day. Within a matter of a couple of hours, you’ll be familiar with the alphabet, different words, numbers, fingerspelling, sentence structure, and much more.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn about the alphabet, questions, time, places, family, indexing, colors numbers 1 to 100, time, money, fingerspelling, emotions, food, animals, health, countries, states, agent signs, sentence structure, classifiers, idioms, and negatives.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 32 videos. Each video involves about 5 to 10 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of video lectures and video tests.

Fun Facts

• Rochelle has nearly 200K subscribers on her YouTube channel where she posts ASL content and tutorials.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

9. ASL Basics – All Lessons (Chris Gorges)

My ninth pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is the free course ASL Basics – All Lessons, offered by Chris Gorges on YouTube.

This fairly comprehensive free course is a collection of ASL tutorials on various topics such as the ASL alphabet, basic signs, words, phrases, colors, numbers, fingerspelling and more. You’ll also get a lot of practice through the practice lessons dedicated to certain sections, and tips to become fast and fluent.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn about high frequency words, basic signs and phrases to start a conversation, food and drinks, time, colors, days of the week, months of the year, numbers, animals, family signs (mom, dad, brother, sister), technology, outdoors, and words for winter.

You’ll also understand feelings and emotions, words for the beach while in oceanside, the alphabet, colors, pro-tactile ASL, best ASL dictionaries, interpreting stories in ASL, what a Rubiks cube can teach us about language learning, and office vocabulary.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 111 videos. Most videos involve about 1 to 5 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through video lectures only.

Fun Facts

• Chris Gorges is a certified sign language interpreter and educator in California.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

10. Starter Signs – Baby Sign Language (TalkBoxMom)

My tenth pick for the best American Sign Language (ASL) online course is the free course Starter Signs – Baby Sign Language, offered by TalkBoxMom on YouTube.

Babies pick up sign language fast. So it’s best to start teaching early. This short free course is specially made for babies (well actually their parents of course!) so that they can teach their babies simple words and phrases in ASL.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn different words and phrases in baby sign language such as finished, again, pretty, blanket, binky, banana, stop, beautiful, book, all done, change diaper, clean up, cold, cook, cup, cracker, come, want, like, doll, dance, dad, dirty, close, french fries, fall off, down, drink, eat, fall down, and fan.

You’ll also learn words and phrases such as stairs, go out, milk, more, music, runny nose, touch, and mix, medicine, gentle, give, go, grandpa, granddad or grandfather, hurt, juice, jump, kiss, laugh, library, brush teeth, grandma or grandmother, blocks, bubbles, bye, I love you, inside, look, love, dress (get dressed), car, and thank you.

More words and phrases include happy, hear, hug, listen, tissue, take turns, swing, sweep, stroller, stick, shoes, sick, sing, slow, and smile, snack, sorry, spill, spit, toilet, potty, poop, play, rice, coat, rattle, read, tree, you’re welcome, up, pray, spit up, ball, bath, toy, wait, wash hands, wet, heart, sleep, share, and hot.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 104 videos. Each video involves about 1 minute of work. Concepts are taught through video lectures only.

Fun Facts

• Olguin founded TalkBox.Mom to help families start talking in a foreign language (and ASL) the same day they start and reach their goals of becoming at least conversational.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

The post 10 Best American Sign Language (ASL) Courses to Take in 2023 appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

As avid online learners, my Class Central colleagues and I have completed hundreds of online courses over the years, including many with free certificates, as you can see in the collage below.

In 2023, free certificates have become rarer. But if you know where to look, there is still an abundance of free certificates available online for learning software development.

In this article, we bring together all the free certificates and badges that are scattered across the web. In total, the platforms below offer over 1000 free certificate courses for learning software development.

I started Class Central back in 2011, when universities such as Stanford began to offer some of their courses online for free. Since then, the Class Central database has grown to over 100K online courses.

Having written about online education for over a decade, I remember when platforms like Coursera and edX offered free certificates. Then, rather abruptly, free certificates seemed to pretty much disappear.

This inspired us to write a Massive List of Free Certificates and Badges. To our surprise, we discovered there were still thousands of free certificates available online. To date, that article has received 2M views.

In the same vein, this article aims to draw attention to the organizations that continue to support open education in software development by offering free certificate courses. These include:

• Learning platforms — e.g. LinkedIn Learning, freeCodeCamp, and FutureLearn.
• Leading universities — e.g. Harvard, the University of Helsinki, and HPI.
• Big tech companies — e.g. Google, Microsoft, and IBM.

More Free Certificates

If you don’t find what you need here, browse Class Central’s catalog of 100K courses or visit our thematic collections:

• Class Central’s Best Online Courses of All Time
• 1600+ Coursera Courses That Are Still Completely Free
• 1000+ Free Digital Marketing Certificates
• 800+ Open University Free Certificates
• 100+ FutureLearn Courses That Still Offer Free Certificates

You can find all our free certificates articles here.

Without further ado, here are the platforms where you can find 1000+ free developer certifications.

700+ Free Google Certifications

Google has launched several initiatives to teach people skills such as coding, digital marketing, and data analytics. You can find a complete list in our dedicated article.

Below is a selection of Google’s offerings:

• Google Analytics for Beginners ★★★★★(38)
• Get started with Google Maps Platform – web ★★★★★(4)
• Google Ads Search Certification ★★★★★(2)
• Google Analytics for Power Users ★★★★★(1)
• Google Cloud Essentials ★★★★★(1)
• Application Development – Python ★★★★★(1)
• YouTube Music Certification ★★★★★(1)
• Shopping ads Certification ★★★★★(1)
• Creating with Google Maps ★★★★☆(1)
• Intro to ML: Language Processing ★★★★☆(1)

freeCodeCamp’s Free Certifications

freeCodeCamp platform offers thousands of hours of learning content, broken down into certifications on subjects such as web development and data science.

Here are the certifications currently offered:

• Responsive Web Design ★★★★★(77)
• JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures ★★★★★(31)
• Front End Development Libraries ★★★★★(4)
• Data Analysis with Python ★★★★★(4)
• Quality Assurance ★★★★★(4)
• Machine Learning with Python ★★★★★(4)
• Scientific Computing with Python ★★★★★(1)
• Data Visualization ★★★★★(1)
• Back End Development and APIs ★★★★★(1)
• Relational Database (Beta) ★★★★★(1)
• Information Security ★★★★☆(6)

Harvard Free Certificate Courses

Harvard offers a series of academic online courses exploring various facets of computer science, including programming fundamentals and AI. You can find all the details in our dedicated article.

Here are Harvard’s current free certificate offerings:

• Introduction to Computer Science ★★★★★(140)
• Computer Science for Business Professionals ★★★★★(14)
• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python ★★★★★(11)
• Web Programming with Python and JavaScript ★★★★★(22)
• Computer Science for Lawyers ★★★★★(5)
• Understanding Technology ★★★★★(10)
• Introduction to Programming with Python ★★★★★(2)
• Introduction to Programming with Scratch ★★★★★(2)
• Introduction to Game Development ★★★★☆(3)

1000+ of Free Microsoft Badges

Microsoft offers thousands of modules and hundreds of learning paths to explore the company’s products, including Office 365, Visual Studio, and Azure. Once you finish a course, you’ll get a badge on your learner profile.

Here are some of the courses offered by Microsoft:

• Create and use analytics reports with Power BI ★★★★★(2)
• AZ-104: Configure and manage virtual networks for Azure administrators ★★★★★(2)
• Implement a Windows Server hybrid cloud infrastructure ★★★★★(1)
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals (CRM): Explore Dynamics 365 Marketing ★★★★★(1)
• Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals: Explore visual tools for machine learning ★★★★☆(1)
• Getting Started with Microsoft PowerShell
• Classify space rocks by using Python and artificial intelligence
• Microsoft Azure Fundamentals: Describe cloud concepts
• Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals: Get started with AI

1000+ of Hours of LinkedIn Learning Courses with Free Certification

LinkedIn Learning, the online learning platform integrated with the LinkedIn professional social network, offers hundreds of online courses and learning paths that include a free certificate. Here too, we have a dedicated article with a full list.

Here’s a selection of LinkedIn Learning free certificate courses:

• Communication Foundations
• Prepare for the CompTIA A+ Certification (220-1001 and 220-1002)
• Entrepreneurship Foundations
• Prepare for the CompTIA Network+ (N10-007) Certification
• Agile Requirements Foundations
• Finding a Job during Challenging Economic Times
• Administrative Professional Tips
• Professional Soft Skills Learning Pathway
• Video Interview Tips
• Recovering from a Layoff

University of Helsinki Free Certificates

The University of Helsinki offers academic online courses through its independent course platform, MOOC.fi, including the following courses which include a free certificate of completion:

• Elements of AI ★★★★★(715)
• Full Stack open 2022 ★★★★★(5)
• Java Programming ★★★★★(2)
• Cyber Security Base 2022 ★★★★★(2)
• Building AI ★★★★☆(13)
• DevOps with Kubernetes
• Ethics of AI
• DevOps with Docker
• Python Programming MOOC 2022
• Functional programming with Clojure

1000+ of Free Salesforce Badges

Salesforce, the cloud-based software provider, offers online courses through its Trailhead platform. You can learn skills related to Salesforce products. But you can also find courses on broader topics, such as blockchain or IOS development.

There are 1300+ modules and 100+ hands-on projects accessible free of charge on the platform. After finishing a module, you will get a free badge for your profile.

• Developer Beginner
• Developer Intermediate
• Developer Advanced
• Build Lightning Web Components
• AWS Cloud for Technical Professionals
• Develop with Mobile SDK
• Manage the Salesforce Way
• Get Started with iOS App Development
• Discover Trailhead Sample Apps
• Build Your Career in the Salesforce Ecosystem

MongoDB Free Certificates

MongoDB, the popular NoSQL database, offers free certificate courses through its learning platform, MongoDB University. Through these, you’ll learn database fundamentals of databases, and how to interact with them using various programming languages.

Here are some of the certificate courses MongoDB offers:

• MongoDB for Java Developers ★★★★★(18)
• MongoDB for Javascript Developers ★★★★★(1)
• MongoDB Basics ★★★★★(2)
• MongoDB for .NET Developers ★★★★☆(3)
• Basic Cluster Administration
• MongoDB for Python Developers
• MongoDB Performance
• Diagnostics and Debugging
• MongoDB for SQL Pros
• Data Modeling

Redis Free Certificates

Redis is a flexible data storage solution, akin to a lightweight database, that is used a lot in web development. Redis has a dedicated online learning platform, Redis University, where they offer free certificate courses to learn how to use Redis. These include:

• Redis for JavaScript Developers ★★★★★(1)
• Introduction to Redis Data Structures ★★★★★(1)
• Querying, Indexing, and Full-Text Search ★★★★☆(1)
• RediSearch
• Redis for Java Developers
• Redis for Python Developers
• Redis Streams
• Redis Security
• Running Redis at Scale

Cisco Free Certifications

Cisco, the IT and networking giant, offers a series of self-paced online courses through its Networking Academy platform that include a free certificate of completion. Here’s the list:

• Introduction to Cybersecurity ★★★★★(2)
• CPA: Programming Essentials in C++ ★★★★★(1)
• Cisco Packet Tracer ★★★★★(1)
• Cybersecurity Essentials ★★★★☆(3)
• Networking Essentials
• Introduction to IoT
• NDG Linux Essentials
• PCAP: Programming Essentials in Python
• Entrepreneurship
• JavaScript Essentials 1 (JSE)

90+ IBM Free Certificates

IBM’s platform CognitiveClass.ai offers 90 courses and 10 learning paths in data science, AI, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain.

The platform also provides a virtual lab environment allowing users to practice what they’ve learned in the courses. To earn a badge or certificate of completion, you need to score at least 70% in a course.

Here’s a selection of their free certificate courses:

• Deep Learning with TensorFlow
• Build Swift Mobile Apps with Watson AI Services
• Accelerating Deep Learning with GPUs
• Data Visualization with R
• Introduction to Open Source
• Using R with Databases
• Machine Learning – Dimensionality Reduction
• Predictive Modeling Fundamentals
• Text Analytics 101
• Mathematical Optimization for Business Problems

Kaggle Free Certificates

Kaggle is an online community for data scientists and aspiring data scientists alike. It offers over 50K public datasets, allowing you to build your own data science projects through Jupyter notebooks, and participate in competitions.

In addition, the platform offers a series of courses to learn the fundamentals of data science. Each leads to a certificate of completion.

• Python ★★★★★(3)
• Intro to SQL ★★★★☆(1)
• Computer Vision ★★★★☆(1)
• Intro to Machine Learning
• Pandas
• Data Visualization
• Intro to Deep Learning
• Data Cleaning
• Intro to AI Ethics
• Machine Learning Explainability

HackerRank Free Certificates

HackerRank, a platform for learning algorithms and data structures and preparing for coding interviews, provides skills certifications tests in topics such as problem solving, Python, and JavaScript.

Here are some of the tests you may complete to earn a certificate:

• Problem Solving (Basic)
• Python (Basic) Skills Certification
• Java (Basic) Skills Certification
• C# (Basic) Skills Certification
• JavaScript (Basic) Skills Certification
• SQL (Basic) Skills Certification
• Go (Basic) Skills Certification
• R (Basic) Skills Certification
• Node (Basic) Skills Certification

30+ DataCamp Free Certificates

DataCamp is a popular online platform for — you guessed it — learning about data science, but also general programming. The platform offers a series of courses that culminate in a statement of accomplishment. Here’s a selection:

• Beginning Bayes in R
• Basic Statistics
• Kaggle Python Tutorial on Machine Learning
• SQL Tutorial for Marketers
• Introduction to Python & Machine Learning
• Inferential Statistics
• Plotly Tutorial: Plotly and R
• Tidy Data in Python Mini-Course
• Introducción a Python (in Spanish)
• Introducción a R

100+ of Great Learning Free Certificates

Great Learning offers over a hundred free certificate courses in a wide variety of subjects, such as AI, data science, programming, cloud computing, and digital marketing. Here’s a selection:

• Microsoft Azure Essentials
• Data Analytics using Excel
• Introduction to Machine Learning
• Introduction to Cyber Security
• Cloud Computing Foundations
• Introduction to Deep Learning
• Introduction to NoSQL
• Introduction to Design Thinking
• Python Foundations
• Python Fundamentals for Beginners

60+ upGrad Free Certificates

upGrad is an online learning platform that offers over 60 free programs on subjects such as data science, business analytics, and technology.

Once you complete all the modules of a program, you’ll receive a certificate of completion.

Here are some of the free programs offered on upGrad:

• Programming with Python: Introduction for Beginners
• Introduction to Natural Language Processing
• Introduction to Data Analysis using Excel
• Introduction to Database Design with MySQL
• Data Science in E-commerce
• Introduction to Cryptocurrency
• React.js For Beginners
• Node.js For Beginners
• Core Java Basics
• Introduction to Blockchain Technology

100+ FutureLearn Free Certificates

FutureLearn, the European counterpart to Coursera and edX, offers hundreds of courses that include a “digital upgrade” — which, among others, entails a free certificate of completion. Again, you can find more details in our dedicated article.

Here’s a list of some of FutureLearn’s free offerings:

• Digital Skills: Digital Skills for Work and Life ★★★★★(2)
• Digital Skills: Digital Marketing ★★★★☆(7)
• Digital Skills: Web Analytics ★★★★★(1)
• Digital Skills: Social Media ★★★★☆(6)
• Digital Skills: Artificial Intelligence ★★★★☆(2)
• Digital Skills: User Experience ★★★★☆(1)
• Introduction to Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality
• Digital Skills: Reimagine Your Career
• Transforming Assessment and Recognition of Complex Learning Competencies
• Digital Skills: Mobile

Jovian Free Certificates

Jovian is an online data science bootcamp that offers a handful of free certificate courses. Here’s the list:

• Deep Learning with PyTorch: Zero to GANs
• Data Analysis with Python: Zero to Pandas
• Machine Learning with Python: Zero to GBMs
• Data Structures and Algorithms in Python
• Natural Language Processing: Zero to NLP

GitLab Free Certificates

GitLab, the popular version control website for hosting your repos, also offers free online courses to grow your professional skills.

Here are the free certifications on the platform:

• GitLab 101 Tool Certification
• GitLab 201 Tool Certification
• GitLab All-Remote Certification
• GitLab Manager Challenge

The post 1000+ Free Developer and IT Certifications appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

Are you tired of wasting time and energy manually deploying and managing your applications across various servers and environments? Do you wish there was an easier and more efficient way to handle these tasks? If so, then Kubernetes might be the solution for you, just as it was the solution for 61% of organizations.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that simplifies the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Whether you’re running traditional monolithic applications or microservices, Kubernetes can help you automate the deployment and management process across any infrastructure, whether it be on-premises, or cloud, or both (hybrid).

Read on more to find my top picks for the best Kubernetes course. Click on one to skip to the course details:

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes (also known as “K8s”) is an open-source container orchestration platform that was first developed by Google in 2014. Google had always used Docker containers to help squeeze every ounce of performance out of their servers to power intensive online services like Google Search and YouTube. To manage their rapidly growing number of clusters, Google built Borg (the predecessor of Kubernetes) to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Borg did this by providing a set of APIs and tools to help the developer define the desired state of your applications. Once that’s done, Borg will handle the rest automatically. This means developers can focus on building and improving your applications, rather than worrying about the technicalities of deployment and management, while operations teams can easily ensure the reliability and performance of their applications.

Realizing the potential for this technology to become the industry-standard for managing containerized applications (and to indirectly monetize from it with their cloud services), Google released Kubernetes as a free and open-source project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to help speed up adoption and development. And it worked! Kubernetes is now the de-facto standard for container orchestration, with 61% of organizations in 2022 using Kubernetes to streamline the management of their containerized applications.

Over the years, Kubernetes has continued to evolve and expand, with new features and capabilities being added to meet the needs of a growing user base. Although Google Kubernetes Engine makes up a significant portion of container tools, there are other alternatives that extend upon Kubernetes like Amazon ECS, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Red Hat OpenShift.

According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022, Kubernetes is the second most loved and highly sought-after tool among developers and DevOps engineers. Additionally, the 10th Annual Open Source Jobs Report confirms that there is high demand for cloud and container technology as agreed by approximately 70% of hiring managers and IT experts. The salary reflects the demand, with Kubernetes engineers making an average of $150,000 a year according to ZipRecruiter, which is well above what the average software engineer makes. Learning Kubernetes is essential for any DevOps engineer, so learn Kubernetes if you plan to become one!

Best Courses Guides Methodology

I built this ranking following the now tried-and-tested methodology used in previous Best Courses Guides (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:

1. Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database with 100K online courses and 200K+ reviews. Then, I made a preliminary selection of 300+ Kubernetes courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks.
2. Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
3. Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content and they have to fit in a set of criteria and be ranked accordingly: comprehensive curriculum, affordability, release date, ratings and enrollments.

Course Ranking Statistics

Here are some aggregate stats about the ranking:

• Over 1.3K people are following 300+ Kubernetes Courses on Class Central.
• All of the courses in this ranking except for the third require knowledge of containers (like Docker).
• 7 of the courses in this ranking are free, free-to-audit, or have free-trial, whereas the rest are paid.
• All of the courses are in English.
• Six of the courses are suitable for beginners, while two are for intermediates and another two more are for experienced developers.

Without further ado, let’s go through the top picks.

1. Kubernetes Tutorial for Beginners (TechWorld with Nana)

My #1 pick for the best Kubernetes course is TechWorld with Nana’s Kubernetes Tutorial for Beginners.

This free course is my top pick because it effectively balances theoretical and practical info in just 4 hours. Through the use of clear visuals and hands-on examples, Nana distills hard-to-understand concepts into the simplest of forms.

By the end of this course, you’ll have a thorough understanding of Kubernete components and architecture, and be able to use it to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

In order to take this course, you’ll need to know what containers are. If you don’t, but want a course that teaches both Dockers and Kubernetes, take a look at the third pick in this ranking.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll begin this course by learning about the main parts of Kubernetes, like Nodes, Pods, and services, and how they fit into the overall architecture of the system.

After studying its parts, it’s time to start using it! You’ll set up and use Kubernetes on your local machine with minikube and kubectl, and perform common tasks such as managing pods and deployments, and debugging issues.

Eventually, you’ll find yourself needing to organize multiple Kubernetes objects. Do not fret, namespaces and YAML configuration files are here to help! You’ll learn the difference between them —  where namespaces are used to organize and manage groups of Kubernetes objects, YAML is used to define and create those objects. You’ll also learn how to use ingresses to expose one or multiple services to the external world, as well as Helm, a package manager, for deploying applications to the web.

Finally, you’ll dive deeper into three specific components of Kubernetes: persistent volumes and persistent volume claims, which are used for data storage; stateful sets, which are used to deploy stateful applications like databases; and different types of Kubernetes services, and how to choose the right one for your needs.

How You’ll Learn

This course is four hours long. It contains a mix of animated theoretical explanations and hands-on demos for you to follow along.

Fun Facts

• Nana Janashia is a Docker Captain, AWS Container Hero, and a CNCF Ambassador. She mainly creates tutorials on DevOps concepts, like CI/CD, Docker, and Prometheus.
• TechWorld with Nana YouTube channel has over 700K subscribers where you’ll find plenty of DevOps full-fledged courses and tutorials for beginners. If you want to stay the pace with DevOps, you should subscribe to her channel!

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

2. DevOps with Kubernetes (University of Helsinki)

My 2nd pick for the best Kubernetes course is DevOps with Kubernetes from the University of Helsinki.

This course is a free open-source introductory course to Kubernetes with K3s and GKE, written by a web developer for web developers. You’ll develop software with a microservice architecture that utilizes Kubernetes to serve software that scales and deploys automatically, while managing it all. This course provides a free certificate of completion for anyone who completes all the exercises.

Having a community of developers to rely on when you face problems is crucial when learning, and luckily this course has its own Discord channel that anyone is free to join to ask questions.

To take this course, you should be familiar with containers, be able to independently develop web software, have knowledge of SQL databases, and know the basics of networking.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll start right off the bat by creating and running a Kubernetes cluster locally with k3d, and deploy a simple microservice. Then, you’ll fill in the details by studying Kubernetes internals such as debugging, networking, and storage.

In the next part of the course, you’ll focus on managing clusters. This will involve learning how Pods communicate with each other, how to group and label resources together, fine-tuning components using configuration files, StatefulSets, or Jobs, and lastly, monitoring the performance of your cluster.

Doing things on your local machine is fun and all, but it’s now time to explore cloud options, like Google’s Kubernetes Engine. You’ll create a deployment pipeline, enable continuous delivery in the cloud, choose between update strategies, use an open-source monitoring and alerting tool called Prometheus, and do GitOps — managing and deploying applications using Git as a single source of truth.

Finally, you’ll explore best practices for web development using Kubernetes. One of them is extending the Kubernetes API by defining your own custom resources, while another is monitoring and controlling network traffic using a service mesh. You’ll end this course by exploring several popular platforms that extend Kubernetes functionality like OpenShift and Knative.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 95 hours long. You’ll learn by going through the lecture articles and answering the exercises that appear within them. At the end of each part, you’ll be given a summary as well as a few coding questions to recap what you’ve learned.

To complete the course and get a certificate, you must submit solutions for all of the exercises in parts 1–5. There is no final exam for this course.

Fun Facts

• The course has 103 bookmarks on Class Central.
• University of Helsinki has partnered with Unity to create this course.
• This course is equivalent to 5 ECTS credits for University of Helsinki Students.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

3. Kubernetes Core Concepts (KubeAcademy)

My third pick for the best course to learn Kubernetes is KubeAcademy’s Kubernetes Core Concepts Learning Path.

This free learning path is much more hands-on than the first two picks in this ranking, with virtual labs and exercises. You’ll learn how to containerize with Docker and deploy a Kubernetes application, manage application lifecycle and configuration, networking considerations, workload options, and security.

No knowledge of containers or Kubernetes is required to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

The course begins with an introduction to containers with Docker, which provide a consistent environment for deploying applications and managing them after deployment.

But what if you have many different applications in many different containers? That’s where Kubernetes comes in. You’ll learn the fundamentals of cloud native infrastructure and understand how to deploy and manage applications in a Kubernetes environment, which will include approaches for handling development lifecycle and application configuration, with Pods and Containers.

You’ll cover cluster concepts where you can run many applications in a single Kubernetes cluster. Hence, you’ll study networking and traffic management to ensure the right user can access the right application. You may also have applications that require persistent storage, or have different configurations in different environments, or other requirements. You’ll learn how to satisfy these requirements. Finally, the course covers different types of workloads that can be run in Kubernetes and address security considerations for each.

How You’ll Learn

This learning path is 8 hours long. Each course in the series builds upon the last, and every lesson is followed by an in-browser virtual lab to reinforce the material covered.

Fun Facts

• VMware is a virtualization and cloud computing software provider. KubeAcademy is their learning platform for cloud technologies, taught by developer instructors at VMWare.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

4. Kubernetes Course – Full Beginners Tutorial (Bogdan Stashchuk)

Kubernetes Course – Full Beginners Tutorial is another excellent free course on Kubernetes.

This course is more developer-focused than the 1st course on this ranking, focusing more on the practical than technical aspects (which is why it is also quite short). By the end, you’ll be able to set up Kubernetes for your projects.

Prerequisites for this course include basic knowledge of containerization and experience with the Docker command-line tool.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll begin this course by covering the key features of Kubernetes, including terminology and the structure of a Kubernetes cluster. You’ll understand the structure of a Kubernetes cluster, including Nodes and Pods, and see how Kubernetes is used to deploy and manage containerized applications.

Then, you’ll install and set up kubectl and minikube — tools for running a single-node Kubernetes cluster — and build a small Kubernetes cluster locally on your computer and use it to scale deployments and perform rolling updates. You’ll also build a custom Docker image, push it to Docker Hub, and create a Kubernetes deployment based on this image.

Additionally, you’ll learn how to create services and deployments in Kubernetes using YAML configuration files and how to connect different deployments together. Finally, you’ll learn how to change the container runtime from Docker to CRI-O and deploy applications using CRI-O.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 3 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the course video and practicing what the instructor has taught in the video.

Fun Facts

• freeCodeCamp offers many other courses on various programming languages on their YouTube channel as well as on their website.
• Bogdan Stashchuk is a software developer and DevOps engineer that creates courses and tutorials on his YouTube channel and Udemy. Over 1M+ students have enrolled in his courses.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

5. Learn Kubernetes by Doing (A Cloud Guru)

Learn Kubernetes by Doing is a paid course jam-packed with hands-on labs and exercises to help you gain experience with Kubernetes for real-world usage. You’ll practice real-world scenarios in real cloud environments.

To be successful in this course, you should have a basic understanding of the Linux operating system, including system administrator concepts and containers.

What You’ll Learn

The course first covers Kubernetes basics where you’ll set up a local development environment. You’ll then discover the components of a Kubernetes cluster and how they work together by deploying a simple service and a microservice application.  You’ll also learn how to manage applications after deployment using tools like kubectl.

Next, you’ll delve into the theory behind Kubernetes and uncover how Kubernetes discovers and communicates with services, as well as some practical concepts like scheduling and managing the lifecycle of applications, and handling failures. You’ll also learn about persistent storage and how to use ClusterRole to ensure security.

This course will also cover testing strategies for your Kubernetes cluster, including how to perform integration and end-to-end testing, and monitoring and logging the performance and health of your Kubernetes cluster. Finally, you’ll learn advanced techniques for manually setting up and managing a Kubernetes cluster through bootstrapping and other methods, or in other words you’ll be “doing things the hard way.”.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 22 hours long. You’ll mainly learn by practicing through virtual labs that are powered by one or more Linux and their Cloud Playground platform.

Fun Facts

• A Cloud Guru is an online training platform established by its parent company, Pluralsight, for Information Technology. Most of the courses offered prepare students to take certification exams for the three major cloud providers (Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Amazon Web Services).
• If you want a more detailed look at how to set up Kubernetes ‘the hard way’, look at the 8th course in this ranking.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

6. Getting Started with Kubernetes (Nigel Poulton)

Getting Started with Kubernetes is a short paid course with free trial on quickly getting up and running with Kubernetes — the most important container management technology in the world. By the end, you’ll have theory and practical skills required to use Kubernetes on the job.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll start off by learning about the background and purpose of Kubernetes. Then, you’ll dive into the architecture of Kubernetes and its main components and services, so that you can understand how it all works together to create a production-ready container infrastructure. After that, you’ll get hands-on with Kubernetes by using Pods to deploy apps to a network. You’ll also cover how to connect your app to a cloud load balancer, and explore features like scaling, self-healing, and rolling updates. But don’t worry — the course will go over these trendy buzzwords in detail so you can decide which ones you want to include in your deployments.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 3 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos and following along with the instructor.

Fun Facts

• Nigel is a Docker Captain and expert in container technologies, with a background in designing and managing large-scale solutions in demanding corporate environments.  He is well-known in the tech industry for his videos and books on container technologies, with over 20 courses on Pluralsight.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

7. Introduction to Kubernetes (Linux Foundation)

Introduction to Kubernetes covers both basic and advanced concepts of Kubernetes architecture. If Linux is your beloved operating system, you’ll love this course.

This 14 weeks free-to-audit course teaches you how to deploy stand-alone and multi-tier applications, which will involve ConfigMaps, Secrets, and Ingress. Upon completion, you’ll have a solid understanding of Kubernetes and be able to begin using it to implement cloud native patterns.

Basic knowledge of Linux Command Line Interface (CLI) and container technology like Docker and rkt is required to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

Introduction to Kubernetes begins by discussing the recent trend of companies transitioning from monolith services to microservices, setting the stage for you to understand why Kubernetes was created in the first place and how it is used for container orchestration.

Next, you’ll study the architecture, primary components, and building blocks of Kubernetes. You’ll then be able to set up and access a Kubernetes cluster by yourself using the Minikube tool.

You’ll then learn in further detail about various ways of running and accessing applications on a deployed Kubernetes environment. Hence, you’ll learn about concepts like authentication and authorization for security, services for exposing applications, and ingresses for exposing services to external traffic, and ConfigMaps and Secrets for configuration and privacy. You’ll also uncover some of Kubernetes’ more advanced enterprise-class features, such as multi-node pod controllers, stateful application controllers, batch controllers. Finally, you’ll be shown several Kubernetes communities and how you can participate.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 42 hours long. You’ll learn by reading the course articles provided and taking notes. If you’re paying for the certificate, you’ll have access to the graded knowledge checks (quizzes) and the final exam that you’ll have to complete in order to obtain your certificate.

Fun Facts

• The course has 200 bookmarks on Class Central.
• Chris Pokorni is an instructor and founder of NQB8 Cloud Tech Consulting, with a background in Cloud Tech Consulting and experience teaching Kubernetes courses for both Administrators and Application Developers. He is certified in both CKA and CKAD and has worked as a consultant for small and large enterprises, leading workshops and designing solutions for HA Middleware/ESB, Datacenter Monitoring, and Hybrid Cloud Architecture.
• The Linux Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes the use and development of open source software, with a focus on the Linux operating system. It provides resources and support for individuals and companies involved in open source projects, including training, certification programs, and conferences.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

8. Kubernetes the Hard Way (A Cloud Guru)

Kubernetes bootstrapping is usually done with the use of installers or scripts like kubeadm.

But to get a deeper understanding of how Kubernetes works and how it can be deployed in a production environment, the Kubernetes the Hard Way course ditches all of that in favor of doing it manually. In the process, you’ll be able to troubleshoot even the most obscure of issues that may arise when deploying it in a production environment.

Prior knowledge of Kubernetes is required to take this paid course.

What You’ll Learn

The following topics are what you’ll cover in this course:

• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Provisioning the CA and Generating TLS Certificates
• Generating Kubernetes Configuration Files for Authentication
• Generating the Data Encryption Config and Key
• Bootstrapping the etcd Cluster
• Bootstrapping the Kubernetes Control Plane
• Bootstrapping the Kubernetes Worker Nodes
• Configuring kubectl for Remote Access
• Networking
• Deploying the DNS Cluster Add-on
• Smoke Test
• Wrap-Up

How You’ll Learn

This course is 17 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the video tutorials and more significantly, through hands-on, practical learning experience by completing the virtual labs.

Fun Facts

• A Cloud Guru has helped 2M+ people and more than 4,000 organizations level up their cloud skills.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

9. Kubernetes for Developers: Core Concepts (Dan Wahlin)

Kubernetes for Developers: Core Concepts teaches developers the fundamental concepts of Kubernetes and how to use it to deploy and manage applications in a reliable and scalable way.

In this paid course with free trial, you will learn about key Kubernetes resources, the benefits they offer, and how to get started using them effectively. By the end of this course, you will have a solid understanding of how to use Kubernetes to manage and orchestrate your containers.

You’ll need to know what containers are to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

The course begins by providing a big picture look at what Kubernetes is, what it’s composed of, and different ways it can be used as a developer. You’ll learn how to set up Kubernetes on your local machine and interact with it using kubectl. Then, you’ll discover one of the key resources provided by Kubernetes, Pods, and understand how to use them, along with other resources such as deployments and services to host and expose your application to the outside world.

Next, you’ll explore the role of ConfigMaps and secrets in managing configuration data and handling sensitive information. You’ll also learn how to troubleshoot Pods. Finally, you’ll see how to bring all of these concepts together to get an application up and running in a Kubernetes cluster.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 5 hours long. You’ll learn through a combination of lecture videos and hands-on demonstrations with the instructor.

Fun Facts

• Dan Wahlin is the founder of Wahlin Consulting and an expert in various programming languages and technologies, including JavaScript, Angular, Node.js, C#, ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Docker, and Kubernetes. He is a Google GDE and Docker Captain, and has previously been recognized as a Microsoft MVP and Regional Director. He has also authored over 30 Pluralsight courses.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

10. Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with Practice Tests (KodeKloud Training)

If you’re planning on taking the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification exam to demonstrate your hands-on skills and expert knowledge of Kubernetes, you’ll need a lot of practice.

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with Practice Tests is here to help you with that. This paid course focuses on advanced topics on Kubernetes and in-depth discussion into the various concepts around deploying a high availability cluster for a production use case, understanding more about scheduling, monitoring, maintenance, securities, storage, and troubleshooting.

You’ll also have access to a community Slack channel where you can interact with the instructors and other students. The course is also constantly updated to keep up with CKA exam’s quarterly updates.

To take this course, you’ll need a basic understanding of Docker and YAML.

What You’ll Learn

• Core concepts of cluster architecture: Pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments, and services
• Scheduling: including manual scheduling, DaemonSets, labels and selectors, resource requests and limits, and configuring multiple schedulers
• Logging and monitoring: options for the Kubernetes cluster and applications hosted on them, and how to view and manage the logs.
• Application lifecycle management: rolling updates, rollbacks, configuring applications, scaling applications, and health checks
• Cluster maintenance: operating system upgrades, cluster upgrades, best practices for upgrading, disaster recovery, and backup and restore methodologies
• Kubernetes security primitives: authentication mechanisms, TLS certificates, and securing various components within the cluster
• Networking: pod networking, service networking, and ingress networking
• Working with persistent storage: types of persistent storage, attaching persistent storage to applications, and configuring persistent storage for applications
• Troubleshooting: techniques for application, control plane, worker node, and network issues and failures.
• Advanced topics in Kubernetes: custom controllers, custom resource definitions, operator frameworks, among others.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 22 hours long.  The course provides hundreds of coding exercises where you can practice solving Kubernetes coding challenges in live lab environments directly in your browser. Hints and solutions are provided, and your work will be immediately validated and receive feedback.

Fun Facts

• KodeKloud Training is a CNCF certified Kubernetes training partner.
• KodeKloud Training also offer other courses on Kubernetes as well:
  • Kubernetes for the Absolute Beginners – Hands-on is for beginners with no experience with containers or container orchestration.
  • Kubernetes Certified Application Developer (CKAD) with Tests is for application developers who are looking to learn how to design, build, and configure cloud native applications.
• Mumshad Mannambeth is the CEO and founder of KodeKloud, where he creates interactive and hands-on training to make learning fun.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

The post 10 Best Kubernetes Courses to Take in 2023 appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

FutureLearn was the first MOOC provider to add a time-based paywall in 2017, limiting access after a course ends for free learners. Class Central has discovered that now, this paywall has been expanded further.

Basic Access vs Limited Access

Previously, the free tier was called “Basic access” but now it’s called “Limited Access”. The key difference lies in the additional “Learn at your own pace” row in the pricing chart shown above.

I enrolled in a FutureLearn course with free limited access and discovered that the second and subsequent weeks of the course were locked and would only become unlocked on a weekly basis.

When I tried to access the second week, an invitation popped up inviting me to pay for the course or join FutureLearn Unlimited (which is currently discounted until the end of February 2023).

So, if I want to binge the course (as I often do), I’ll have to pay for the privilege. Otherwise, I will need to take it week by week.

This is one of the first visible changes we have seen from FutureLearn’s new management. Last year, after facing a cash crunch, followed by layoffs, the company was acquired by Netherlands-based Global University Systems (GUS).

The post FutureLearn Under New Leadership Expands Paywall, Restricts Course Binging appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

Be it the runway or your office, looking fashionable turns heads. And it becomes even better when you design your fashion yourself. It’s not all that complicated as we think!

In this guide, I’ve selected the 10 best free and paid fashion design online courses for you from the 190+ fashion design courses on our catalog by following a well-defined methodology that you can find below.

But if you want to jump straight to the results, here are my top 10 picks. You can click on a course to jump to the corresponding section:

What is Fashion Design?

Fashion designing is all about designing clothes and its accessories, often influenced by culture and current fashion trends. It also involves visualizing the design on paper or digitally before it is sewn – something known as fashion illustration. Fashion designers use fashion illustration to show how the figure will look wearing a particular clothing item or accessory.

The video by Vogue below shows how fashion designer Thom Browne creates a masterpiece from sketch to runway.

Why are Fashion Design Skills Important?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of fashion designers is projected to grow 3 percent from 2021 to 2031, with about 2,300 openings projected each year on average over the decade. Also, the median annual wage was $77,450 in May 2021. You can find more information on occupational employment and wages of fashion designers as of May 2021 here.

Below are some career options listed by the National Institute of Fashion Technology, India.

What is My Experience with Fashion Design?

I like to be well-dressed – not overly styled but just the right amount that makes me me. As far as the design part of fashion is concerned, I’d say I’m more into illustration, even though the hobbyist in me might just purchase a sewing machine (I’ve used my grandpa’s old one before) anytime soon and start my own line!

Besides that, I am a Guided Project Instructor and a Beta Tester at Coursera, having tested many courses before they’re officially launched. I have taken over 50 online courses in various subjects.

My experience as an online learner and teacher has given me some perspective on what to look for in an online course. I used my experience to evaluate each course in this list.

Course Ranking Methodology

I built this ranking following the now tried-and-tested methodology I used in previous rankings (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:

1. Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database with 100K online courses and 200K+ reviews. Then, I made a preliminary selection of 190+ fashion design courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks.
2. Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
3. Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content and they have to fit in a set of criteria and be ranked accordingly: comprehensive curriculum, release date, affordability, ratings and enrollments.

The end result is a unique selection of courses that combines a decade of Class Central data and my own experience as an online learner to try to get the best of both worlds. So far, I’ve spent more than 10 hours building this list, and I’ll continue to update it.

Course Ranking Statistics

Here are some statistics regarding this course ranking:

• Combined, these courses have accrued over 5.9K enrollments.
• 2 courses are free or free-to-audit and 8 courses are paid.
• The most-represented course providers in the ranking are Domestika and Skillshare, with 3 courses each.
• All 10 courses are in English.
• The fashion design subject is followed by over 7.6K learners on Class Central, and accounts for over 190 courses in Class Central catalog.

So without further ado, let’s get to my picks for the best fashion design online courses.

1. Marc Jacobs Teaches Fashion Design (MasterClass)

My first pick for the best fashion design online course is Marc Jacobs Teaches Fashion Design on MasterClass.

If it was your dream to learn from one of the masters of the world of fashion, then here’s your chance. 11-time CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) Award winner Marc Jacobs is here to teach you fashion design from developing your own ideas to making the final piece. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn Marc’s design processes and techniques!

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn how to teach yourself design, find inspiration, sketch your ideas, choose fabrics, create shapes and silhouettes, patterns and muslins, construct your garment, explore case studies, and develop a collection.

You’ll also learn how to work with a team and collaborate, produce runway shows, design for Louis Vuitton, survive the fashion industry, and take a look at the instructor’s journey to pursue your love for fashion.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 18 lessons. Each lesson involves about 10 to 25 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through video lectures only.

Fun Facts

• In 1984, Marc Jacobs graduated from Parsons School of Design. 
• In 1992, he launched his infamous grunge collection for Perry Ellis which actually got him fired!
• Interestingly, he was the youngest to ever receive the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent for this collection.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

2. Pattern Cutting: Create Classic Tailored Trousers (Domestika)

My second pick for the best fashion design online course is Pattern Cutting: Create Classic Tailored Trousers on Domestika.

How cool would it be if you could make your own custom-tailored trousers? Well, if that’s what you’ve been looking for, then you’re in the right place. This course will teach you step by step how to make a pair of classic trousers from scratch right from taking measurements to designing a basic trouser block pattern.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn about basic pattern cutting including darts, curves, squaring off, and seam allowances, flat pattern cutting and useful terminology, tools and equipment, popular trouser styles, personalized trouser block, and sewing, fitting, amending and transferring the toile.

You’ll also explore drafting a two-piece waistband, pockets and fly front and trouser legs, stitching darts, pockets, and fly front, legs and waistband, alternative trouser styles, the welt back pocket and belt loops, and pattern cutting to create classic tailored trousers.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 21 lessons. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos, downloadable resources and exercises. There’s also a final project at the end of the course.

Fun Facts

• Omotoso is a designer and creative pattern cutter based in London.
• She made her first wearable pattern at just eight years old, and later studied art and design at Middlesex University.
• Her work has been featured in leading UK publications such as The Face, i-D, Fashion Weekly and The Observer.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

3. Creative Fashion Illustration Techniques (Domestika)

My third pick for the best fashion design online course is Creative Fashion Illustration Techniques on Domestika.

Are you someone (like me) who’s more interested in the illustration side of fashion rather than sewing? Then look no further. This course will not only teach you basic fashion illustration, it will actually show you how to experiment with traditional techniques and use mixed media along with perfect posing and styling.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn about materials, pose and styling, creating textures, drawing the pose, drawing the face, painting the illustrations with mixed media, finalizing the base, applying textures for the garments, cutting and adjusting, different backgrounds and context, taking pictures and posting on Instagram, and creative fashion illustration techniques.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 14 lessons. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos, downloadable resources and exercises. There’s also a final project at the end of the course.

Fun Facts

• Lim is a professional illustrator and designer from Los Angeles, California.
• She has studied at the Art Center College of Art and Design Pasadena, and UAL’s Central Saint Martins in London.
• Her work has been featured in Martin Dawber’s Great Big Book of Fashion Illustration, Beautiful by Gestalten, and Taschen’s The Illustrator: 100 Best from Around the World.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

4. Online Course: Fashion Design: Start to Finish (CreativeLive)

My fourth pick for the best fashion design online course is Online Course: Fashion Design: Start to Finish on CreativeLive.

This is the most comprehensive fashion design course on this list, well suited for beginners., including those who are not aspiring to be fashion designers. This class will introduce you to the world of fashion design, from research, sketching, pattern making to branding, marketing and everything in between.

What You’ll Learn

First, you’ll learn about student mood boards, fashion inspiration resources, new fashion frontiers, find a fashion specialty, craft a collection, learn to edit, draw, draft and sew, draw your muse, and sketch a figure and define a silhouette.

Next, you’ll render color, add texture, patterns and details, work with muslin, drape a basic form, drape folds, experiment with style lines, create and true a pattern, drape and pattern recap, construct clothes, and understand fashion marketing and branding.

After that, you’ll explore your audience, display, data and design, share your work, find your following, inform your brand, build your business model, tell your fashion story, establish relationships, be ready for change, and produce a fashion show.

Finally, you’ll develop a fashion show concept, build a team, create a timeline and checklist, make backstage strategy, work with front of house, schedule run of show, break down the event, increase your audience, PR for fashion shows, and deal with downtime.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 47 lessons. Each lesson involves about 5 to 30 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos and downloadable resources.

Fun Facts

• Calderin is the Director of Creative Marketing and an instructor at the School of Fashion Design.
• He is the author of The Fashion Design Reference and Specification Book formerly Form, Fit, Fashion.
• His other books include Fashion Design Essentials and Fashion Design, Referenced.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

5. Fashion Design Process (Zoe Hong)

My fifth pick for the best fashion design online course is the free course Fashion Design Process, offered by Zoe Hong on YouTube.

This course, or rather, a lecture series of fashion design tutorials, is a great option for beginners to get started with fashion design. By the end of this course, you’ll be equipped with all that you need to know about fashion designing, including the design process, fabrics, shapes, print design, fashion sketching, and a lot more – all for free!

What You’ll Learn

First, you’ll get an overview of the design process, and learn about concept development and mood boards, color and texture, fabrics and materials, shapes and proportions, 3D development, school vs. the industry, and portfolios.

Then, you’ll understand bodies, fit, and the plus size market, the print design process, developing and merchandising a collection, combining 3D and 2D elements to design, and creating color stories for your fashion collection.

Finally, you’ll learn about designing avant garde fashion, designing from runway to real life, designing for every price point, fashion design sketches, picking fabrics for your fashion collection, and designing a modern collection from vintage inspiration.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 20 videos. Each video involves about 15 to 30 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through video lectures only.

Fun Facts

• Hong teaches fashion design, illustration techniques, figure drawing, color theory, apparel tech design/product development and fashion business best practices.
• Other than YouTube, she also teaches at universities and arts organizations.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

6. Make and Customize Your First Bomber Jacket (Domestika)

My sixth pick for the best fashion design online course is Make and Customize Your First Bomber Jacket on Domestika.

When fast fashion is taking over the world rapidly, it’s a good idea to start making your own clothes – bomber jackets, for example. This course will show you how you can make your very own bomber jacket from scratch step by step, from using a sewing machine, cutting fabric and customizing it with embellishments and embroidery.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn about fashion history and design, materials and tools, mood board and inspiration, taking your measurement and finding your size, pattern, cutting the fabric, pockets, side and shoulder seams, collar, hem and lining, sewing the zip and cuffs, embroidery, applique, and quilting.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 16 lessons. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos, downloadable resources and exercises. There’s also a final project at the end of the course.

Fun Facts

• Higginson is a UK-based seamstress and pattern designer.
• She started her personal project “Made My Wardrobe” in 2016, and hasn’t bought clothes from shops since!
• She makes costumes for prestigious theaters like Sadler’s Wells and The Royal Opera House.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

7. Fashion Design 101 (Natalia Trevino Amaro)

My seventh pick for the best fashion design online course is the free course Fashion Design 101, offered by Natalia Trevino Amaro on YouTube.

This beginner-friendly free fashion design course will teach you quite a lot about fashion designing so that you’re ready to sew your own clothes. By the end of this course, you’ll be well-versed about fabrics and the basics of sewing, as well as be able to sew a dart, finish necklines and armholes, pattern flare pants, make ruffles, and a lot more.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn how to sew a dart, finish necklines/armholes with facings, trace your clothes to make patterns, pattern flare pants, manipulate dart, sew a scrunchie, put in an invisible zipper, make ruffles two different ways, and shirr fabric.

You’ll also explore how to pattern pants to your measurements, thread a serger and change the thread color, pattern a skirt to your measurements, pattern a torso to your measurements, and learn all about fabrics and the basics of sewing.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 15 videos. Each video involves about 5 to 25 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through video lectures only.

Fun Facts

• Amaro is a fashion designer and business owner.
• Her YouTube channel has over 100K subscribers where she vlogs about fashion and shares her daily routine as fashion designer.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

8. The Art & Craft of Making Clothes: Sew Your Own Best Pair of Jeans (Skillshare)

My eighth pick for the best fashion design online course is The Art & Craft of Making Clothes: Sew Your Own Best Pair of Jeans on Skillshare.

If you have the basic knowledge of sewing, then you’re ready to make your very own pair of jeans at home that are tailored to fit your body. Not that the jeans taught in this class are high-waisted, but you can design any waist height of your choice once you’re equipped with the skills. No prior experience in drafting patterns is required.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn about tools and materials, measurements, drafting the pattern, cutting, prep, back pockets, front pockets, the fly, waistband, front to back, and finishing touches.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 13 lessons. Each lesson involves about 5 to 25 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos and downloadable resources.

Fun Facts

• Perez’s background is in Fine Art, but her true loves are sewing and illustrating.
• Her illustrations have been published in the children’s book, Little Me, by Marka Sawyer.
• She has been sewing recreationally for almost 20 years and professionally for the past five, working as both a prototypist and manufacturer.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

9. The Beginner’s Guide to Fashion Illustration (Skillshare)

My ninth pick for the best fashion design online course is The Beginner’s Guide to Fashion Illustration on Skillshare.

This short, beginner-friendly course is all about fashion illustration. Made for all of you who love fashion and want to master unique illustration styles, this course walks you through the steps of creating fashion illustrations using basic techniques with pencil and paper. You can then add your art to decorate your home or even make cards for your friends!

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn about fashion illustration, walking pose, standing pose and side view, adding shape to your figure, and sketching and coloring florals, quilting, feathers, sequins and fur.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 13 lessons. Each lesson involves about 10 to 15 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through a combination of videos and downloadable resources.

Fun Facts

• Burt is a fashion illustrator and graphic designer.
• You can find more of her illustrations at her website.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

10. Grading Pattern Making Manual – Fashion (Skillshare)

My tenth pick for the best fashion design online course is Grading Pattern Making Manual – Fashion on Skillshare.

Made for intermediate learners, this course covers pattern cutting and making so that you can enhance your career in the field of fashion design. You’ll learn everything from the theory of grading, taking measurements, creating a split diagram to helpful tricks. By the end of this course, you’d have taken a step forward in your pattern cutting journey.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll get a brief theory on grading, create a measurement chart and grade increments, split a diagram on bodice and sleeve, split grid and cut up the bodice, and mark up the track lines on front bodice.

You’ll also explore grading up a front bodice one size, split diagram for a sleeve and grading up one size, measurement chart and split diagram for trouser, and track lines and grading up and down one size for a trouser.

How You’ll Learn

The course is broken down into 12 lessons. Each lesson involves about 5 to 20 minutes of work. Concepts are taught through video lectures only.

Fun Facts

• Barulis is a creative pattern cutter and maker and specialize in draping and modeling on the stand.
• She has worked at the heart of London and Paris fashion for over 15 years.
• Her clients include Victoria Beckham, Sienna Miller, Lady Gaga, Beyonce and The Duchess of Cambridge.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

The post 10 Best Fashion Design Courses to Take in 2023 appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

From Gmail to Maps, Google offers a ton of useful apps. For instance, this article was originally drafted on Google Docs, like most of our articles at Class Central. What many people don’t know is that Google also offers many online courses — and some of them include free certificates and badges!

Indeed, besides offering courses on platforms like Coursera and Udacity, Google itself runs a series of educational platforms with different goals. For example, the Grow with Google initiative and Google’s Digital Garage offer online courses to help learners gain digital skills or prepare them to run online businesses.

Fortunately, hundreds of these courses offer free certificates or badges. We even earned a few ourselves, as you’ll see below. So we decided to sift through Google’s entire online learning ecosystem to compile all their free certificate courses.

In total, we found over 700 courses, covering topics such as digital marketing, Google Analytics, and Google Cloud. You can find the full list below.

SEO

• SEO Fundamentals
• Semrush SEO Crash Course
• Content-Led SEO
• GA4 for SEO
• SEO for SMB Websites

Content Marketing

• Content Marketing
  Fundamentals
• Advanced Content Marketing
• Content and SEO Tactics for
  Agencies
• Mastering Digital PR

Marketing Strategy

• Marketing Analysis
  Fundamentals
• Launching a Profitable SMB
• Building a Social Listening
  Program

Learn proven tactics and strategies from top marketing experts.  Enroll for free.

More Free Certificates

If you don’t find what you need here, browse Class Central’s catalog of 100K courses or visit our thematic collections:

• Massive List of Thousands of Free Certificates & Badges
• 1000 Hours of Free LinkedIn Learning Courses with Free Certification
• 800+ Open University Free Certificates​
• 100+ Google Cloud Certification Training Courses
• Harvard Computer Science Courses with Free Certificate

You can find all our free certificates articles here.

Without further ado, here are Google’s online courses with free certificates and badges.

Free Google Analytics Certifications

As you can imagine, Google Analytics Academy provides online courses on Google Analytics, the company’s web traffic monitoring platform. Each course includes a series of videos and assessments.

After getting a score of 80% or higher on each assessment, you’ll earn a free certificate of completion, like the one above. These will appear on your profile on the platform, but you can also download them and share them via LinkedIn.

Here are the free certificate courses offered on the platform:

• Google Analytics for Beginners from Google via Independent ★★★★★(43)
• Advanced Google Analytics from Google via Independent ★★★★★(6)
• Google Analytics for Power Users from Google via Independent ★★★★★(1)
• Getting Started With Google Analytics 360
• Google Tag Manager Fundamentals
• Introduction to Data Studio

Later this year, Google will complete the transition to the latest major version of its analytics platform, Google Analytics 4. For the occasion, Google has launched new online courses. Here’s the list:

• Use Google Analytics to Meet Your Business Objectives from Google via Skillshop ★★★★☆(1)
• Discover the Next Generation of Google Analytics from Google via Skillshop ★★★★☆(1)
• Measure Your Marketing with Google Analytics from Google via Skillshop
• Go Further with Your Google Analytics Data
• Google Analytics Certification

Free Google Digital Marketing Certifications

Google Digital Garage provides 160 online courses to learn digital skills on a wide variety of topics. Most notably, the course Fundamentals of Digital Marketing offered by Google includes a free certificate of completion. The course includes 26 modules, each with their own video and quiz.

For each module you complete, you’ll earn a badge. Once you complete all the modules, you’ll unlock a certificate like the one above. All your badges and certificates will be added to your profile page.

(If you’re interested in digital marketing, you may want to have a look at our dedicated compilation: 1000+ Free Digital Marketing Certificates & Badges.)

Free Google Ads Certifications

Google Skillshop provides free training programs for a large number of Google services, including their marketing tools. There are courses on all the following subjects: Google Ads, Google AdMob, Google Marketing Platform, Google My Business, YouTube, and more.

In total, the Google Skillshop offers close to 80 online courses with a free certificate of completion. As usual, you’ll unlock the certificate once you complete the course assessments. One difference here is that these courses are all text-based. Below is a selection of some of them. You can find the full course list here.

• Google Ads Search Certification from Google via Skillshop ★★★★★(2)
• Google Ads Display Certification from Google via Skillshop ★★★★★(3)
• Certified Trainer Course from Google via Skillshop ★★★★★(1)
• Shopping ads Certification from Google via Skillshop ★★★★★(1)
• YouTube Music Certification from Google via Skillshop ★★★★★(1)
• Google Ads Video Certification from Google via Skillshop ★★★★★(2)
• Get Started as an Authorized Buyer from Google via Skillshop ★★★★☆(1)
• Learn the fundamentals of Google Ads Campaign Measurement from Google via Skillshop
• Get Started with Google AdMob from Google via Skillshop
• Get Started with Campaign Manager 360 from Google via Skillshop
• Create and Implement Engaging, Interactive Creatives with Google Web Designer from Google via Skillshop
• Serve Creative Ad Formats at Scale Using Google Marketing Platform from Google via Skillshop
• Make Impactful Creatives with Google Web Designer from Google via Skillshop
• Get Started with Search Ads 360 from Google via Skillshop
• Create and Manage Google Ads Video Campaigns from Google via Skillshop
• Learn How to Create Google Search Campaigns from Google via Skillshop
• Learn how to create and optimize Google App campaigns from Google via Skillshop
• Google Ads Apps Certification from Google via Skillshop
• Google Ads Video Certification from Google via Skillshop

Free Google Developer Certifications

The Google Developers Platform offers a wealth of resources for professional and aspiring developers. In particular, the platform has over 1000 online courses from beginner to advanced levels to learn:

• Programming: Kotlin, JavaScript, Go…
• Specific libraries: TensorFlow, Angular, Flutter…
• Software & services: Kubernetes, Maps, Pay…

Notably, a substantial portion of the platform’s catalog is dedicated to Android development.

You can take individual courses, but if you’re looking for a deeper dive, you may prefer one of Google’s 130 learning pathways. These consist of a sequence of mini-courses and culminate in a quiz. After passing the quiz, you’ll receive a badge that appears on your developer profile.

Here’s a selection of courses you may take on the platform:

• Build your first web app with Firebase
• Get started with Google Maps Platform
• Build apps with Flutter
• Introduction to SQL
• Get data from the internet
• Adapt for different screen sizes
• Build Actions for Google Assistant
• Kotlin fundamentals
• Get started with object detection
• Implement Material Design in web apps
• Develop locally with Firebase
• Make your Android app more accessible
• Use Actions on Google to make your home smarter
• Location-based features in Android
• Build cross-platform apps with Angular
• Advanced navigation app examples
• Android Basics in Kotlin
• Cloud Run and serverless computing
• Securely Deploying to Cloud Run
• Jetpack Compose basics

Free Google Certifications from Qwiklabs

Qwiklabs, a startup acquired by Google and since then rebranded to Google Cloud Skills Boost (though the Qwiklabs name lingers), lets you learn Google Cloud through a hands-on approach. On the platform, you can complete close to 600 labs in a real cloud environment.

In addition to individual labs, you can take full courses or so-called “quests”, which typically consist of a series of labs. There are over 300 courses and quests. These typically end with a timed assessment. Upon completion you’ll receive a badge.

Finally, there are 26 learning paths, which consist of a series of quests and courses.

While the platform offers free or free-to-audit courses, completing labs typically requires spending “credits”. However, there are multiple ways to get credits for free.

For instance, if you’re a student with a valid university email address, you can claim 200 free Qwiklabs credits through this page. That’s what I did a few years back, allowing me to earn the certificate above.

100+ Qwiklabs Quests

Qwiklabs quests, just like learning paths, consist of a series of labs. These are hands-on activities conducted within a real cloud environment. That’s what makes Qwiklabs special: you’re getting genuine hands-on practice.

For instance, if you start a Kubernetes quest, you’ll be dropped into a real GKE instance ⁠— that is, an actual virtual compute cluster created temporarily for you to practice on.

Here’s a selection of Qwiklabs quests:

• Google Cloud Essentials from Google via Qwiklabs ★★★★★(2)
• Application Development – Python from Google via Qwiklabs ★★★★★(1)
• Websites and Web Applications from Google via Qwiklabs ★★★★★(1)
• Flutter Essentials from Google via Qwiklabs ★★★★★(1)
• Creating with Google Maps from Google via Qwiklabs ★★★★☆(1)
• Intro to ML: Language Processing from Google via Qwiklabs ★★★★☆(1)
• Build Interactive Apps with Google Assistant from Google via Qwiklabs
• Dart Essentials from Google via Qwiklabs
• Applied Data: Blockchain from Google via Qwiklabs
• DevOps Essentials from Google via Qwiklabs

200 Qwiklabs Courses

Similar to quests, Qwiklabs courses consist of a sequence of lessons, quizzes, and labs. Upon completion of all the elements, you’ll unlock a badge for your Qwiklabs profile.

Here’s a selection of courses:

• Digital Transformation with Google Cloud
• Google Cloud Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure
• Google Cloud Big Data and Machine Learning Fundamentals
• Google Cloud Fundamentals for AWS Professionals
• Getting Started with Google Kubernetes Engine
• Getting Started with Terraform for Google Cloud
• Multi-Cluster, Multi-Cloud with Anthos
• Managing Security in Google Cloud
• Smart Analytics, Machine Learning, and AI on Google Cloud
• Applying Machine Learning to your Data with Google Cloud

The post [2023] 700+ Free Google Certifications appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

First of all, I must admit that mathematics and numbers are not my cups of tea, but this course made it look so simple and interesting that I found myself enjoying every single video and lecture.

To give more context, the course is called Understanding Clinical Research: Behind the Statistics from the University of Cape Town in South Africa; it teaches you how to read articles, studies and papers (from PubMed, for example) properly, which means:

• Looking for keywords;
• Knowing if the method was chosen correctly and wisely, in correlation to the data;
• Knowing which studies and papers are trustworthy;
• Knowing how to look for papers and studies properly;
• Knowing how to use specific formulas and interpret them in studies;
• And much more.

Editor’s note: This course has been featured in the Best Online Courses of All Time and Top FREE Coursera Courses of All Time.

Why I took this course

I must say that one of the reasons the course was so easy to follow is because Dr Juan H. Klopper, the instructor, did an amazing job explaining every detail, especially the formulas, in a simple and understandable way.

Now, you might wonder; Why should I do this course? Well, in my case it’s because I am studying psychology and when doing research, writing articles, and essays, and working on my thesis, I need trustworthy and professional sources; we must understand that Wikipedia is not one.

My background and skills stepping in this course were higher than basic because as psychologists we must know how to interpret data and how to conduct case studies but I must say that by the end of it, I learned way more than I expected.

Another big reason why I did this course and why I encourage people to try it is because sadly, we can find loads of “articles” and so-called “professionals” who fall to conclusions using wrong data or, even worse, use wrong approaches to contaminate the data and get the results they want and not the actual ones (studies about hormones usage is the perfect example).

About the course

The way this course works is the following;

• You have to watch videos and lectures and read the recommended material.
• Each week has graded and practice quizzes.
• Another way to be evaluated is with “Peer Review” for which you must look for a case study on PubMed and answer some questions; your answers will be reviewed by other people doing the course and you have to evaluate them (the course gives you a structure and questions to follow when evaluating others).
• You even have the chance to watch extra material and a chance to be an “Honour Student” which you can get if you do an extra “Peer Review” evaluation.
• The course has flexible deadlines.
• It is 100% online.
• It takes approximately 27 hours to complete.
• It has a variety of subtitles.

Conclusion

To conclude this review, I will say that this course is a must if you are interested or involved in the area of research or even if you would like to understand more about what all those numbers and statistics mean.

And do not be afraid of the numbers, by the end you will realize it’s not as hard as it looks and you would be even looking for more courses!

I hope this review helps you get an idea of the course and I encourage you to challenge yourself, leave your comfort zone and give it a chance!

The post A Deep Dive into UCT’s Course: Understanding Clinical Research – Behind the Statistics appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

On Udemy, anyone can offer a course. Since the platform launched in 2010, this approach has turned Udemy into the world’s largest catalog of online courses: they host 202,000+ courses.

According to the company, they have 57 million registered users. In 2020, propelled by the pandemic, they raised $123 million and increased their valuation by over $1 billion. In 2021, the company went public, which gave us a peek at their financials.

In the most recently reported quarter (2022 Q3), their total revenue increased 22% year-over-year to reach $158.4 million.

Surprisingly, despite its magnitude, Udemy’s catalog seems to have seldom been analyzed. If you are looking for course suggestions, here is my Udemy’s 250 most popular online courses.

So in this article, we’re going to break down Udemy’s numbers a little further. My colleague @Suparn collected data about the provider’s catalog. And with the Excel skills I acquired a few years ago (albeit rudimentary), I dug into the data. 

This analysis was first published in January 2021 and then my colleague @Archisha re-ran the analysis on the updated Udemy dataset. In 2023, here’s what we found.

Udemy By the Numbers

Course Categories

More than half of Udemy’s courses belong to the fields of Business and Technology, but they account for 74.6% of all enrollments.

Technology courses are the most popular. They have on average 5340 learners per course, well above the 3270 average across the platform.

Course Length

The average course length is 7.7 hours, while the median is 2.3 hours. As course lengths increase, average enrollments also increase: learners gravitate towards longer courses.

Courses that are less than 1 hour long have an average enrollment of 930, while courses 15–20 hours long have average enrollment of 5,300. There are over 6,000 courses longer than 20 hours — their average enrollment is 12,875.

Course Price

90% of Udemy courses are paid. Course prices range from $19.99 to $199.99 (without any discounts or deals). 

About 40% of Udemy’s courses cost less than $30, while 3% cost more than $100. When we analyzed the data back in 2021, 24% of the courses cost from than $100.

The changes in the list price doesn’t mean that the actual price that learners pay has changed. Based on the data in Udemy’s 2021 annual report, the average price a learner pays is $20.4, while the lowest listed price of a course is $19.99.

Udemy runs a lot of promotions bringing the cost of the courses down, though the frequency of these promotions has been reduced. It also localizes the prices in different markets, bringing the price down by a lot in low-income or emerging economies.

Course Language

Udemy courses are available in 77 different languages. 59% of all courses are offered in English. Here are the most common languages on the platform:

1. English — 59%.
2. Portuguese — 9%.
3. Spanish — 8%.
4. Turkish — 4%.
5. Japanese — 3.5%.

Course Enrollments

Combined, Udemy’s 202K courses have gathered ~662 million enrollments and average 3274 enrollments per course. What I found most surprising is that the median enrollment is only 240, which means that half of Udemy’s courses don’t reach 240 learners.

Currently, there are 718 courses with over 100K enrollments and 4 courses with over a million enrollments.

Do Udemy courses satisfy the Pareto 80/20 principle? I found that Udemy’s top-20% courses by enrollment account for 91% of all enrollments.

Course Ratings

In total, Udemy courses have received 53.7 million ratings. Class Central’s analysis found that 24K of Udemy’s 202K courses have no rating at all.

Ratings tend to be heavily skewed towards the positive side. 71% of the ratings are 4–5 stars. 1–2 star ratings represent only ~1% of all the ratings.

We also noticed that the rating is correlated with the length of the course. It might be just that the longer courses might be high effort and more polished.

[1] We combined Development and IT & Software.
[2] We combined Business, Marketing, Office Productivity, and Finance & Accounting.
[3] We combined Design, Music, Photography & Video into Art & Design.

The post 202K Courses, 662M Enrollments: Breaking Down Udemy’s Massive Catalog appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

Elixir is as magical as its name sounds.

By magical, I don’t mean that you need to memorize thousands of obscure incantations and syntax rules to use it — far from it (if you like Ruby, you’ll like Elixir). And I also don’t mean that only a select few from the academy of programming wizards can use it effectively — you can count on Elixir’s supportive community of developers and growing ecosystem of tools for that.

Instead, what I mean by magical is by how you can conjure lightning-fast scalable and reliable applications with ease. Its secret ingredient? The Erlang Virtual Machine, specially designed for concurrent systems. And mixed with the functional programming style, you can cast spells of clean and expressive code that is simple to understand and maintain.

That’s why many high-volume applications (like Discord and Pinterest) trust Elixir to handle traffic generated from its millions of users. In fact, systems written in Elixir almost never fail during production thanks to some clever engineering.

Have you fallen under Elixir’s spell yet? Read on more to see my top picks for the best course to learn Elixir.

Click on one to skip to the course details:

What is Elixir?

Elixir is a functional, dynamically-typed language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications. It was created by José Valim in 2011, who wanted to combine the concise, expressive syntax of Ruby with the concurrent and fault-tolerant Beam VM used by the Erlang programming language.

To detract for a moment, Erlang is a language developed in the 1980s for the Beam VM that was used to build reliable, distributed systems (such as those used in telecommunications), to great success. It uses the Actor model of concurrency, in which independent entities called actors communicate with each other by sending and receiving messages. Thanks to this model, high-volume concurrency can be achieved while being lightweight.

However Erlang, as it was originally developed for telecommunications, lacked the modern features and syntax needed for modern development. Hence, Elixir builds upon the strength of Erlang by extending its features while at the same time having a much simpler syntax for beginners to read, test, and write code.

That’s why 600+ companies such as Discord, Pinterest, and Heroku use Elixir to handle astonishingly large amounts of traffic and data on a consistent basis with little to no downtime. Along with Elixir’s extensive tooling and frameworks, such as Phoenix for web development, Ecto for databases, and ExUnit for unit testing, there are many reasons why Elixir is a great choice for programmers looking into data-intensive fields. Additionally demand for Elixir developers will probably increase as the world becomes more data-oriented, and perhaps that is why Elixir developers are the 5th most paid programmers according to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022.

Best Courses Guides Methodology

I built this ranking following the now tried-and-tested methodology used in previous Best Courses Guides (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:

1. Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database with 100K online courses and 200K+ reviews. Then, I made a preliminary selection of 20+ Elixir courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks.
2. Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
3. Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content and they have to fit in a set of criteria and be ranked accordingly: comprehensive curriculum, affordability, release date, ratings and enrollments.

Course Ranking Statistics

Here are some aggregate stats about the ranking:

• All of the courses in this ranking are free.
• All of the courses in this ranking require some basic familiarity with programming.
• All of the courses in this ranking are in English while one is in Spanish.
• None of the courses in this ranking require knowledge of functional programming.
• Around 480 people are following the Elixir topic on Class Central.

Without further ado, let’s go through the top picks.

1. Elixir School (Elixir School)

My #1 pick for the best Elixir course is Elixir School.

Elixir School is a free, open source resource for learning the Elixir programming language. The reason why I chose this as the #1 pick is because of how comprehensive its curriculum is. It covers the Elixir fundamentals all the way to the more advanced concepts of the language, along with popular Elixir tools and frameworks like OTP and Ecto.

Elixir School can be taken by learners of all levels, and includes examples, explanations, and a collection of coding exercises to help you practice and apply the concepts learned in the lessons.

What You’ll Learn

Elixir School covers lessons on 8 various topics, some of which are:

• Basics:
  • The course covers programming concepts common to many languages, such as data types, modules, control structures, functions, and collections.
  • However, the course also delves into the unique features of Elixir, such as pattern matching, the pipe operator, the Mix build tool, sigils, comprehensions, and more, that help you write concise and expressive code.
• Intermediate:
  • You’ll learn how to handle errors and exceptions in Elixir using control structures and functions.
  • Concurrency is also made easy in Elixir. You’ll learn about Elixir’s actor module and how it can help you write concurrent, parallel code.
  • You’ll also learn how to interoperate Elixir code with Erlang, create standalone executables, and define your own Mix tasks.
• Advanced:
  • You’ll study the OTP libraries and design patterns, including concurrency, supervisor, and distributions, to help you build scalable and fault-tolerant systems in Elixir.
  • Other more advanced concepts such as metaprogramming, umbrella projects, specifications, types, behaviors, and protocols will be covered.

In addition to the core language topics, the course also covers a range of libraries and tools that can be used to test code, process data, store data, and work with databases in Elixir.

How You’ll Learn

Elixir School covers 8 topics in total. You’ll learn by reading through the course articles and completing the code exercises given.

Fun Facts

• Sean Callan is a passionate software engineer with 20 years of experience. He has built companies, designed and developed critical business systems, and led teams on multi-billion dollar government contracts.
• Elixir School is fully open-sourced, that means that anyone can contribute to help improve the website, translate the lessons, or write for their blog.
• This course has been translated (partially or fully) into 20 languages, including German, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, and Japanese.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

2. Intro to Elixir (Tensor Programming)

My 2nd pick for the best Elixir course is Intro to Elixir YouTube series by Tensor Programming.

This course is an excellent introduction to Elixir, as it teaches Elixir in a concise and expressive manner (just like the language itself).

No knowledge of functional programming or Elixir is required to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

The course begins by giving a background of the Elixir programming language, how it is built on the Erlang VM. Then, you’ll study familiar programming concepts like data types, functions, and control flow structures. But, you’ll also add on some valuable Elixir concepts like its pattern matching syntax, guards, and macros.

Recursion and first-class functions are common-place in Elixir, as Elixir is a functional programming language. So, as almost everything you’ll use is a function, you’ll look at how the pipe operator is used to pipe the results of one function to another, and how it serves a useful role in managing large streams of data. Specifically, you’ll learn about data visibility and data abstraction, including supporting basic CRUD operations on data structures. Although data structures in Elixir are immutable, you’ll find them reasonably efficient and pragmatic.

Then, the course discusses the concept of processes and concurrency in the language through the context of processes and message passing. You’ll implement a generic server process using OTP and learn how to abstract common tasks like maintaining state, reacting to messages, and sending responses.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 3–4 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos and following along with the code examples provided.

Fun Facts

• Tensor Programming aims to educate people on how to program in many various languages, like Dart, Clojure, Kotlin, Rust, and Go. The channel contains

programming tutorials as well as live coding sessions that go along with the Tensor Programming Blog posts.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

3. Begin learning Elixir (Alchemist Camp)

My 3rd pick for the best Elixir course is the Begin learning Elixir path from Alchemist Camp.

If you have some programming experience but do not have any experience with Elixir, you should try out this course. Why? Because this course is free and project-based, meaning that you’ll learn by doing — a much more engaging and fruitful way of learning (for me at least).

You’ll start with simple projects that don’t require any dependencies and gradually work your way up to more advanced projects that use Mix, Ecto, HTTPoison, Phoenix, and more.

What You’ll Learn

This course is a project-based course. After setting up your development environment you’ll build the following:

• A simple guessing game using IO, functions, and modulo arithmetic in Elixir to let you have a taste of Elixir syntax.
• A CLI script that counts the words in a file, including reading files, splitting files into words, and working with regular expressions.
• A CLI Todo list app that reads and parses CSVs into an Elixir map and takes commands from user input, introducing tuples and atoms.
• An implementation of a minimal subset of Markdown in Elixir using Mix and a processing pipeline of regex replace functions.
• Another CLI script that can handle arguments and read a file.
• A Tic Tac Toe game board in Elixir using comprehensions, MapSet, module structs, enforced keys, pattern matching, and states.
• And finally, an app that fetches stats from YouTube and logs them every 6 hours into a database using HTTPoison, Poison, an OTP app to supervise a scheduler, and Ecto for database handling.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 6–7 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos, going through the course projects, interacting with other learners in the discussion section, and completing the challenges given.

Fun Facts

• Alchemist Camp is a website and channel focused on providing Elixir programming screencasts. Often, these screencasts involve helping beginners build fully-fledged projects. They also provide code snippets and challenges, and offer a premium membership.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

4. Learn Elixir (TechWeber)

Learn Elixir from TechWeber covers everything you need to know about Elixir programming. By the end of this course, you will have a thorough understanding of Elixir and be able to effectively use it in your own projects.

Some programming experience is required to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll start this course by learning the fundamentals, including the basic data types and how to use basic operators. You’ll then delve into more advanced topics, such as pattern matching and control flow structures, as well as learning how to use Elixir modules and functions.

In the next section of the course, you’ll delve into important concepts like recursion, enumerables, and streams, that can help you iterate over collections of data. You’ll also learn about processes, which are used to concurrently execute code and communicate between different parts of your application, along with the file system for reading and writing files.

Moving on, you’ll see how you can import and use modules and structs. Additionally, you’ll take a look at how Elixir is extremely fault-tolerant thanks to its robust error handling mechanisms.  You’ll also learn how to create and use protocols, as well as comprehensions and error mechanisms. Finally, you will delve into typespecs and behaviors, protocols and comprehensions, and Mix — Elixir’s build tool.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 6 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos and following along with the code examples provided.

Fun Facts

• TechWeber provides free video training courses on programming to users and beginners, including languages like Python, HTML, PHP, Node JS, MongoDB, MySQL and Web.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

5. Curso de Elixir de 0 a 100 (Martin algañaraz)

Curso de Elixir de 0 a 100 is a free comprehensive introduction to the Elixir programming language in Spanish, teaching the basics all the way to the more advanced part of Elixir.

No knowledge of Elixir programming is required to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

The course begins by showing you how to install Elixir on your system and use the IEx interactive shell for experimenting with Elixir code. You will learn about basic data types like integers, floats, and strings, and how to work with them using assignments, logical operators, and pattern matching. You will learn how to define and use functions in Elixir, including anonymous functions (lambdas) and recursive functions.

In addition to learning about core Elixir concepts, you will also learn about more advanced topics such as the pipe operator, modules, and the mix tool. But you’ll also study the most exciting feature of Elixir: implementing concurrent and parallel processes using GenServer. Then, you’ll learn about protocols, behaviors, and how to define and use custom data types. Finally, you figure out how you can deploy Elixir applications for the Internet to see.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 28 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos and following the instructor as he codes throughout the course.

Fun Facts

• Martin is a developer specializing in backend development and distributed systems. He loves learning different programming languages, paradigms, frameworks, and libraries.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

6. Discover Elixir & Phoenix (Ludu)

Discover Elixir & Phoenix is a free text-based course for beginners. If you’re learning Elixir for web development, this course is for you, as Phoenix is a web framework for Elixir.

Some programming experience is required to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

First off, the course covers the fundamentals of Elixir, like data types, atoms, control structures, and common data structures like lists and tuples. Then, you’ll see how to use pattern matching to easily extract data from complex data structures and perform different actions based on different patterns. Elixir’s build tool, Mix, will also be introduced to help you with your development needs.

Next, you’ll take a look at Phoenix and explore its wonderful plethora of features for web development. You’ll build the first pages of a web application called Messsengyr, a simplified version of Facebook Messenger. You’ll use templates, views, forms, and other structures you’d expect to see in a typical web development toolset. You will also learn how to integrate Phoenix with React and Redux. Other topics covered include authentication, database management with Ecto, and building a JSON API.

Finally, the course teaches you how to handle real-time events using Phoenix’s channels and websockets. You’ll learn how to implement sending and receiving messages, and then document and test the code before deploying it to the web.

How You’ll Learn

The course consists of 22 lessons. You’ll learn by reading through the course articles and implementing the code examples on your machine.

Fun Facts

• Tristan is a developer and designer. Ludu was his side-project while he was studying at KTH. Now, there are about a dozen courses teaching various programming languages and frameworks (in English and Swedish) on Ludu.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

7. Elixir (Exercism)

Exercism is a free online coding platform that offers a variety of programming exercises and challenges for all skill levels. It is a great resource for practicing your Elixir coding skills.

What sets Exercism apart from other exercise-based sites is its free mentoring service, which allows you to request personalized feedback from experienced Elixir programmers if you are stuck on a particular exercise or want to improve your code.

In addition, Exercism has a dedicated learning track for Elixir with a structured syllabus that guides you through a series of exercises designed to teach you the language concepts gradually. This makes it an excellent resource for learning Elixir in a structured, step-by-step manner.

What You’ll Learn

This course is divided into two sections: learning mode and practice mode.

In learning mode, you must complete learning exercises to unlock other exercises in the syllabus tree. This helps to ensure that you are not presented with problems that are too difficult for your current skill level.

The syllable contains concepts such as Elixir basics, anonymous functions, data types like floating points and booleans, data structures, conditional statements, regular expressions, and a lot more! Each topic starts with a learning exercise, and then some coding exercises of various difficulty to help you strengthen what you’ve just learned. These exercises may include easy tasks like creating ciphers to difficult tasks like implementing a basic reactive system.

In practice mode, you can choose from any exercises of three different difficulties as you feel confident enough to tackle them.

How You’ll Learn

This course is self-paced, so you can take all the time you need to complete the 150+ hands-on programming exercises. Each exercise comes with automatic feedback of your code as well as personal mentoring to help you understand your code’s strengths and flaws.

Fun Facts

• Exercism provides exercises on 50+ programming languages like Python, Kotlin, F#, and even WebAssembly.
• Their mission is to help everyone get really good at programming, regardless of their background, share the love of programming, and help people upskill as part of their upward social mobility.
• Around 260 people have contributed towards the Elixir syllabus and exercises, with over 600 mentors available at the time of writing.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

8. 30 Days of Elixir (Tim Morgan)

30 Days of Elixir is a walkthrough of important concepts and structures in the Elixir language, one exercise per day for 30 days. Just like Exercism, this walkthrough is best paired with other learning resources in this ranking to make the best use of your time.

What You’ll Learn

The first exercise in this course is of course the simplest one, where you’ll print a message to the world. This gives you a taste of the language’s syntax and structure. Then, you’ll immediately cover the built-in unit testing library as you’ll be using it for other exercises. Afterward, you’ll learn about file input and user input, data structures and manipulation such as list, maps, and records, and then implement the fibonacci sequence using recursion, overloading, pattern matching, and guard clauses. You’ll learn how to use processes to send messages back and forth between nodes.

The rest of the exercises involve building projects. For example, you’ll make a Sudoku board and then a Sudoku solver to solve your Sudoku board. You’ll also learn how to make a multiplayer game of Spades, a quine (a program that prints its own source code), solve logic problems, and most importantly, make web applications.

How You’ll Learn

30 Days of Elixir consists of 30 exercises and is designed to be completed over the course of 30 days, with one exercise completed per day. The exercises are designed to be hands-on learning experiences, through which you will gain practical skills and knowledge.

Fun Facts

• This course has 3K stars on GitHub.
• Tim is a software developer with 20 years of experience. He has a YouTube channel where he posts his coding sessions and programming tutorials.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

The post 8 Best Free Elixir Courses to Take in 2023 appeared first on The Report by Class Central.