Coursera will offer more than 140 courses from North American and Latin American universities until the end of July. Also, until June 12 it will offer free access to its guided projects.
Quarantine measures taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have given MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course, massive online courses available to everyone) a new golden era.
Read also: Education and Technology in Latin America
Around the world, many people are taking advantage of the available time at home to develop new skills. In India, for example, EdTech-focused companies have reported the highest spikes in registered users and the highest engagement by students.
Since March, most sites focused on massive online courses (MOOCs) have also seen a significant increase in their traffic. Many of these MOOC-focused pages have entered the list of the 1000 most visited websites in the world. Based on data obtained by the Alexa and SimilarWeb ranking, Class Central highlighted the increase in traffic from the following MOOCs platforms:
| Ranking on April 30¹ | Sessions (in millions) ² | |
| Coursera | 287 (+157) | 45 (↑ 67%) |
| edX | 663 (+510) | 19.2 (↑ 52%) |
| FutureLearn | 3,009 (+3189) | 6.15 (↑ 116%) |
| Class Central | 4,693 (+12,488) | 4.4 (↑ 406%) |
| Federica | 285,183 (+495,214) | 0.18 (↑ 200%) |
| MiriadaX | 45,692 (+33,412) | 0.73 (↑ 52%) |
| Swayam | 10,556 (+959) | 3.2 (↓ 27%) |
2. Figures for the sessions in March and the percentage change since February. Based on data from SimilarWeb.
These data demonstrate that many people had not lacked the discipline to update themselves and acquire new skills. What they had lacked was time.
How useful is it to take a MOOC to get a better job?
For many employers, MOOCs are of no particular value, as they consider that anyone who has paid for a course receives a certificate without having to demonstrate their knowledge.
MOOCs certificates sometimes have no curricular value. However, some employers value students’ efforts to acquire new skills, as well as showing the ability they have to manage their time and set goals.
Learn more about MOOCs or massive online courses in this video.
Free courses with a certificate on Coursera
Coursera offers certified courses with topics as varied as professional development to Artificial Intelligence.
Coursera, one of the pioneering platforms in MOOCs and one of the main providers of these types of courses, announced from the end of March that it would offer more than 100 free online courses in response to COVID-19 until the end of May. However, the company recently announced that it would extend the duration of these free, certified courses until the end of July.
Many of these courses offered on the platform come from Latin American partners and are available in Spanish.
These are some of the free courses with a certificate in Spanish that you can find on Coursera. Have you taken any of them? Tell us what you thought!
- Introduction to object-oriented programming in Java (Universidad de Los Andes)
- Well-being, equity and human rights (Universidad de Los Andes)
- Design of projects to promote well-being
- Robotics
- To Program! An Introduction to Programming (University of Edinburgh)
- How?! Chemistry in my house? (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
- Act against chronic pain (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
- Work to be happy (Austral University)
- Undertaking entrepreneurship (University of Barcelona)
- General care and procedures in newborn care (Universidad de Chile)
- Jazz improvisation (Berklee College of Music)
- Introduction to Guitar (Berklee College of Music)
- Statistics and probability (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
- Systemic Thought (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
- Wound care in the hospital setting (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
- The Ethical Conflict Solution (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
- 1.- The Calculation – Linear Model (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
- 2.- The Calculation – Quadratic Model (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
- 3.- The Calculation – Cubic Model (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
- 4.- The Calculation – Other Models (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
- Foundations of writing (Tecnológico de Monterrey (
- The accelerated development of innovative products for emerging markets (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
- Digital skills. Office automation tools (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint) (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
- How to speak well in public (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
- PlanU: choose the best career and university for you (Universidad de Los Andes)
What about the guided projects?
If you know English, take advantage of the guided projects that Coursera will offer for free temporarily. Check all that are available on this Class Central list.