Students and professionals looking to upskill are in luck this month of April, as Harvard University is offering 144 free courses.
The courses span a wide range of topics, from data science, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and web development to global health, mental health, mathematics, education, stem cell medicine, and business.
Some cater to more personal interests, including music, religion, cooking, and the life and works of William Shakespeare.
Anyone interested just needs to visit the Harvard University website to sign up.
Some of the courses have not been opened, so just take note of the starting date.
All of them are self-paced—learners can study them at their own time and leisure—but students will only have a limited time to complete them after the sign-up.
DETAILS ABOUT 21 of HARVARD UNIVERSITY'S FREE ONLINE COURSES
Learners have the option to get a cerficate of completion for a fee that ranges from $119 to $299 or PHP7,165 to PHP18,000.
Building personal resilience: managing anxiety and mental health
This will tackle "scientifically-proven skills" that can improve resilience and mental health and "five core skills" to help manage emotional stress.
It will also help improve the ability to deal with stressful scenarios.
Duration: 6 weeks
Time needed per week: 1 to 2 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $119 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
CS50's computer science for business
This will teach "computational thinking, programming languages, Internet technologies, web development, technology stacks, and cloud computing."
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $299 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
CS50: Introduction to Computer Science
This benefits both computer science majors and non-majors alike, whether or not they have prior programming experience.
It covers "abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering, and web development."
Duration: 5 weeks
Time needed per week: 10 to 20 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $219 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
CS50's Introduction to Cybersecurity
Tthis will teach hacking, cracking, social engineering, phishing attacks, passcodes, passwords, SSO, brute-force attacks, dictionary attacks, biometrics, multi-factor authentication, and password managers.
Duration: 5 weeks
Time needed per week: 2 to 6 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Access the course through this link.
CS50's Introduction to 2D Game Development
This will teach the principles of 2D and 3D graphics, animation, sound, and collision detection as well as the basics of game design and development.
It will also explore the design of childhood games such as Super Mario Bros., Pong, Flappy Bird, Breakout, Match 3, Legend of Zelda, Angry Birds, Pokémon, 3D Helicopter Game, Dreadhalls, and Portal.
Duration: 12 weeks
Time needed per week: 6 to 9 hours
Level of difficulty: Intermediate
Pay $209 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
CS50's introduction to artificial intelligence with Python
This will teach "graph search algorithms, machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI) principles, designing intelligent systems, and using AI in Python programs."
Duration: 12 weeks
Time needed per week: 6 to 9 hours
Level of difficulty: Intermediate
Pay $299 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
CS50's introduction to programming with Scratch
This is an introduction to programming using Scratch, "a visual programming language via which aspiring programmers can write code by dragging and dropping graphical blocks (that resemble puzzle pieces) instead of typing out text."
Duration: 3 weeks
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $299 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
CS50's Web Programming with Python and JavaScript
This course will teach "HTML, CSS, Git, Python, Django, SQL, Models, Migrations, and JavaScript."
Duration: 12 weeks
Time needed per week: 6 to 9 hours
Level of difficulty: Intermediate
Pay $219 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
DATA ANALYSIS FOR LIFE SCIENCES
This focuses on data analysis and interpretation.
It introduces key mathematical concepts like distance and dimensionality reduction using "Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), multi-dimensional scaling, and principal component analysis (PCA)."
It also covers basic machine learning methods such as clustering and prediction algorithms, including K-means, hierarchical clustering, and k-nearest neighbors, along with concepts like training and test sets.
Duration: 4 weeks
Time needed per week: 2 to 4 hours
Level of difficulty: Intermediate
Pay $219 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Data Science: Building Machine Learning Models
This will teach popular machine learning algorithms, principal component analysis, and regularization by building a movie recommendation system.
Duration: 8 weeks
Time needed per week: 2 to 4 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Access the course through this link.
Data Science: Building Machine Learning Models Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python
This will give the learners "hands-on experience" on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, graph search algorithms, and more.
It's useful for those who are practicing Python coding for "modeling, statistics, and storytelling."
Requirement: Minimum baseline of programming knowledge (preferably in Python) and statistics.
Duration: 8 weeks
Time needed per week: 3 to 4 hours
Level of difficulty: Intermediate
Pay $299 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Data science: R basics
This is the first in Harvard's Professional Certificate Program in Data Science.
It will teach Basic R syntax and foundational R programming concepts such as data types, vectors arithmetic, and indexing.
Time needed per week: 1 to 2 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $219 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Early Childhood Development: Global Strategies for Interventions
This is for those interested in global health and teacher development.
It tackles programs around the world supporting early childhood development—why they succeeded and why some failed.
It also "examines best practices in child and family policies, advocacy, financing, and pathways to scale—showing you how to generate an innovative, scalable intervention strategy that supports early childhood development."
Time needed per week: 1 to 3 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $149 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Entrepreneurship in emerging economies
This business and management course will discuss opportunities for entrepreneurship in fast-growing emerging markets and conceptual frameworks for evaluating such opprtunities.
Duration: 3 weeks
Time needed per week: 3 to 5 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $249 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles
This will help learners discover new ways to approach complex organizational systems.
Duration: 4 weeks
Time needed per week: 2 to 3 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $209 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Managing Happiness
This course will introduce "cutting-edge survey tools, the best research, and trends in social science, positive psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy to help learners unlock the strategies to create a more purposeful life, full of long-lasting enjoyment and satisfaction."
Time needed per week: 2 to 3 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $219 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Remote Work Revolution for Everyone
This is based on Professor Tsedal Neeley’s book, Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere.
It will teach key elements of remote work; strategies to improve productivity, communication, and collaboration; the right digital tools to increase productivity and access to team members.
Duration: 3 weeks
Time needed per week: 2 to 3 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $149 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking
This will teach variety of rhetorical devices in writing and speaking, argument and rhetorical technique, writing a persuasive opinion editorial and short speech, identifying logical fallacies in arguments, and many others.
Its newest edition also discusses persuasive speech in social media and the impact of Generative AI on the practice of rhetoric.
Duration: 8 weeks
Time needed per week: 2 to 3 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $209 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Strengthening community health worker programs
This course introduces the fundamentals of community health worker programs and how to build and strengthen large-scale systems to improve access to quality healthcare.
It covers key design principles, common management challenges, and lessons from global health experts and practitioners.
Case studies from countries like Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Liberia will also be discussed.
Time needed per week: 2 to 4 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $119 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Duration: 5 weeks
Time needed per week: 2 to 4 hours
Level of difficulty: Introductory
Pay $149 for verified certificate.
Access the course through this link.
Using Python for Research
This will get the learners to practice new Python skills with various case studies.
Time needed per week: 4 to 8 hours
Level of difficulty: Intermediate
Pay $249 for verified certificate.
MORE FREE COURSES offered by HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The courses were arranged alphabetically.