Update July 26th: Coursera has extended the offer till the end of 2020



At the end of March, the world’s largest MOOC provider Coursera announced that they are offering 100 free online courses in response to Covid-19 till the end of May. But recently Coursera expanded both the number of courses as well as the length of the offer till the end of July. The new courses added are from Coursera’s Latin American university partners.

Now this has further been extended till the end of this year.

As we noted, the coronavirus pandemic has increased interest in online education and bought MOOCs back in the spotlight. Class Central itself has seen a huge surge in traffic.

In the last 30 days, Class Central received more traffic than we did in 2019. These users were also more engaged. One number in particular stands out to me – clicks to the provider (Go To Class button clicks on our course pages). They increased significantly, 4.4m vs 2.5m. pic.twitter.com/UGvcaBcEFj — Dhawal Shah (@dhawalhshah) April 20, 2020

The ongoing situation has also driven MOOC providers to launch a number of initiatives. For learners, this means new opportunities. We are keeping track of these in three lists that we’re continuously updating:

Now, out of the ~140 courses announced by Coursera, many were already free but didn’t offer a certificate. I discovered using Class Central data that 115 previously had paid certificates, but these are now free. The entire list (subject to change without notice) can be found below.

In fact, I had previously discovered 1400+ courses that are completely free on Coursera. Many have certificates that you need to pay for, but access to all the course material, including graded assignments, is free. If you’re new to online education, have a look at our suggestions on how to learn online effectively.

Also, I asked Coursera why some people weren’t seeing the discount. After clicking on Go To Class on Class Central, when you arrive to the course page on Coursera, wait for the promotional banner to appear at the top, and only then click on Enroll for Free. If you don’t see the banner, please refresh. The gif below shows the steps to follow:

If you were already auditing a course listed here and would like to re-enroll to get the free certificate, here’s how: 1. Log into Coursera. 2. Go to My Courses. 3. Click on the three-dots icon on the top-right of the course card. 4. Click on Unenroll. Then, follow the steps in the gif above to re-enroll with a free certificate.

None of the courses belong to a Coursera Specialization. This offer is only valid until the end of 2020. Once you checkout, you will have 180 days to earn a certificate.

These courses come from ~50 universities including Penn, Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, Caltech, Duke, and Imperial College London. Courses from companies like Google and Amazon are also included.

Eight courses from Class Central’s best online courses of all time ranking are also part of this list. These are the first eight courses in the list below.

Free Spanish Language Certificate Courses

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on March 25th. The course list was updated on May July 26th.