12 Most Popular Online Courses

The 12 Most Popular Free Online Courses For Professionals

Want to brush up your expertise and gain an edge in your working life? Learning new skills by taking online courses doesn't cost you anything but time.

Based on data from online courses education platform Coursera, they are list of the 12 most popular, free online courses for working professionals.

Here is the list of free online university courses, ranked by popularity:

1. Wesleyan University’s “Social Psychology“

Coursera’s most popular online course offers an introduction to classic and contemporary social psychology, covering topics such as decision making, persuasion, group behavior, personal attraction, and factors that promote health and well-being.

Starts on July 14

2. University of Maryland’s “Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems“

This online learning courses is an introduction to the design and implementation of applications for handheld systems, such as smartphones and tablets, running the Android platform. It is part of a larger sequence of specialization courses called  Cloud Computing with Android.With the drastic increment of mobile smartphones sales in recent years, Android apps and iPhone apps is expected the most important technology and gold mine in the technology and digital world.

Starts on  September 26

3. Duke University’s “Think Again: How to Reason and Argue“

This course will teach you how to reason well. You will learn how to understand and assess arguments by other people and how to construct persuasive arguments of your own. This free online courses suitable for salesperson and marketing personnel who needs to meet with client and close the deals.

Starts on August 25

4. Duke University’s “A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior“

In this online course, you will learn why we don’t always behave rationally, and how we might overcome our shortcomings. You’ll also learn about cases where our irrationalities work in our favor, and how we can harness these human tendencies to make better decisions.

Start date To Be Advised

5. University of Toronto’s “Learn to Program: The Fundamentals“

This free online courses introduces the fundamental building blocks of programming and teaches you how to write fun and useful programs using the Python language. Programming is the essential skill in this technology dependence world. Such additional skill provides individual with competitive advantage in working life.

Start date To Be Advised

6. Stanford University’s “Startup Engineering“

This online course will help you bridge the gap between academic computer science and production software engineering. It’s a fast-paced introduction to key tools and techniques, featuring guest appearances by senior engineers from successful startups and large-scale academic projects.

Start date To Be Advised

7. Yale University’s “Financial Markets“

You’ll gain an understanding of the theory of finance and its relation to the history, strengths, and imperfections of banking, insurance, securities, futures, and other derivatives markets, as well as the future of these institutions over the next century.

Start date To Be Advised

8. The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School’s “An Introduction to Financial Accounting“

This online course will improve your fluency in financial accounting. You will learn how to read, understand, and analyze most of the information provided by companies in their financial statements. With this skills, you will know companies financial condition and make decision accordingly suitable to company financial ability.

Starts on September 5

9. University of Washington’s “Introduction to Public Speaking“

In this class, you will study the principles of public speaking and critically examine your own and others’ speeches through interactive practice. By the end, you’ll understand the process of writing, practicing, and presenting a clear and engaging speech.

Start date To Be Advised

10. University of Michigan’s “Introduction to Finance“

This course primarily focuses on the fundamental principles of valuation and how to apply the concepts of the time value of money and risk to understand the major determinants of value creation.

Starts on October 6

11. The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School’s “An Introduction to Marketing“

This online learning courses will teach the fundamentals of marketing by getting to the root of customer decision making. It will focus on branding strategies, customer centricity, and new market entry. This online courses suitable to new start up companies personnel or managers who intend to know more about marketing.

Start date To Be Advised

12. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s “Data Analysis“

Through this applied statistics online course, you will learn about the most effective data analysis methods to solve problems and achieve insight. You will cover some of the most popular and widely used statistical methods like linear regression, principal components analysis and cross-validation.

Start date To Be Advised

Buy books online from online bookstore

Buy books online gain popularity in the recent years. Many online bookstores sprout like mushroom after rain. The online bookstores exist with different range of size, its targeted customers and their unique features. Old style people have concept that make them prefer traditional way of buying things – brick and mortal shop enables them to see the product with their own eye directly, touch it and feel it before make a purchase decision. However, books have no risk like clothes and shoes which have different size and color and different esthetic views when wears on different people. All books are produce from factory and wrapped as like you get from conventional bookshop when delivered to doorstep. Hence, this group of people are gradually accept the way of buy books online from online bookstore.

There are many advantages of buy books online from online bookstores. Below list down most of the reasons why many people buy books online from popular online bookstore. 

Faster, convenience and simple – With the existence of Internet, the convenience and simple become the common reason why people purchase goods online. Through online bookstore, you are no need to go bookshop to search for the book, everything come be done within few clicks – faster, convenience and simple. Nowadays, many people are lacking of time to go out to bookshop to buy book especially home mummy who need to take care their children.

Online bookstore are time restriction free online bookstore which is accessible 24 hours 1 day and 365 days a year. When you are free, you can visit it. It is unbeatable by bookshop that has fixed operation hours of 8 hours or 10 hours. If you are an officer that always busy, work late and bring back job for work at weekend, you simply have no time to shopping and access to bookshop. Buy books online can be done even at the midnight 3 am through online bookstores.

The conventional bookshop may not have the book you look for and it is not convenience from one bookshop to another bookshop to search for the required book. If the bookshop does sell the book, it might have chances of out of stock. It can be waste of time and energy. Conventional bookshop also have limited choices for books since the spaces to display the books are limited unlike online bookstore which database is unlimited for the choices of books.

For some location, bookshop may be far from reach. The journey to the bookshop may takes over hours. Online bookstore considers environmental friendly because you are no need to drive the car for one hour. It translated to saving of diesel or petrol which pollutes the environment. If this scenario applies to all people in New York, it definitely brings big impact to the environment. Buy books online is the first choice for people who stay far away from city area.

Price comparison - Chinese do have saying that compare the good in 3 shops before you purchase. This means in order to get cheaper price, always compare it in different shops.  Online bookstore provide the convenience for book price comparison within few finger clicks away. In conventional bookshop you need to drive or walk long distance from one bookshop to another bookshop to compare the prices and it takes time to look for the book you want to purchase. Online bookstore help you save the time and energy in addition to transport fee, let you comfortable sit in the home do all the necessary to buy books online and deliver to your doorstep..

Besides the price comparison, popular online bookstore always provide huge discount from time to time. There are coupons published online for consumer to use the coupon to purchase the book in discounted price. It also comes with great deals for book of the days for customer to buy books online.

There are few reasons why online bookstore able to sell books in comparative cheap price. The main reason come in mind is that no actual shot space needed to rent for the book display. Shop lots especially at the shopping mall, city area and crowded place always very expensive and the cost are diverted to consumer reflected in book price. In some project, there are no manpower needed to take care of the online bookstores, cutting cost of manpower like salesperson, manager and merchandiser.

Since online bookstore are accessible to the international market, it is common the popular online bookstores apply small profit but rapid turnover strategy. Let imagine the quantity of people access to Internet worldwide now. It is up to few billion people now accessible to Internet. How about the conventional bookshop in New York for example? The most of the people there is 30 million spread over wide geographical land area. Does it still profitable to sell cheap but sell to international in high volume?  

Reviews of the book – Reviews of the books can affect our decision to purchase a book. Online bookstore provide the benefits and advantages of book reviews. You can view the comments, feedback and book reviews posted by other customers. Conventional bookshop allows you to read through its contents but you will never know how good the content is until you complete to read the last page of the book. The book reviews of customers also always the most authentic and reliable.

Online bookstore provide the functionality of sell your old books. Through online bookstores, you can sell all your books that lying there at book rack and no more in use. It will save up spaces for new books in your book rack at the same time resources sharing instead of wasting the old books lying there for no purpose. Online bookstores also provide options for you to buy either new books or old books. Old books always price in at a lot cheaper. It allows poor people especially poor student and people from third world country accessible to those books which are usually expensive in price.

Undergraduate degree

4 Benefits of Completing Your Undergraduate Degree

There are a lot of challenges in this reality society. This happen especially in the job market. With the advance in the technology world that close the gap between location forming global village, talents flow to everywhere that provide higher remunerate for their services. A degree certificate becomes ultimately important to everybody for their better future.

When you enter job market and attend first interview after graduate, the first requirement for company to employ is your certificate. A degree certificate becomes a stepping stone to access to desired company, and the key to your future success. Since you have no past experience for interviewer to judge you, degree certificate and its grade become the only thing interviewer access you.

Below list down 5 benefits for obtain a degree certificate that may motivate you to complete your education:

1.            Higher employment opportunity

The research study revealed that degree certificate graduates have better employment opportunity to the job market with shorter time to get their job. Even if they are laid off during market down, they will have able to find another job easier than their peer who does not complete undergraduate degree.

2.            Better confidence

The research also revealed that degree certificate graduates are more confidence and well equipped with capability to facing tough challenges when the time comes. They are confidence to demonstrate themselves and communicate to other people and satisfy to whatever they have done, finding the value of the job nature.

3.            Better job offer

When someone graduates with a bachelor degree certificate, he wills quality for more job opportunities from different sectors, and multinational company MNC in the job market. He can requests for better return from their job scope and better prospects within the organization.

      4. New network of friends

The connections you make when you are study for undergraduate degree can have significant impacts on your lives and future. In the future, your undergraduate degree friend might help you to access to other big company or may be help you in your business venture or other career path. All the friends can be connected via Facebook,  Linked-In, and other social networks. It can also enrich your life and expand the knowledge horizon when each other meet together and share their individual experience and knowledge.

Since these all benefits are for the reasons of building better life and future for individual and family, we should take it as an obligation to complete undergraduate degree to promise a better life for the future. Although it may be tough and pressure at the time of exam, the campus life is enjoying and full of memories.