Take the weekend to start a new course, and set a new path for your career.

Learning and gaining relevant skills can boost your self-confidence, provide job security, and even help to advance your career.  Not everyone has the time or financial stability to attend a traditional school, graduate or undergraduate, but fortunately, there are online courses available through Coursera that will help you gain new skills in your free time or in the comfort of your own home. Check these out!

These are free courses, but if you’d like to get a certificate and use that to advance your career, impress your boss or co-workers, and increase your sphere of influence on LinkedIn, you’ll need to get the Certificate of Completion/Achievement. Each certificate of completion is given after a satisfactory grade was achieved during the course. Courses vary in price from $49 per course to $295 per specialization, depending. To get a satisfactory grade, you’ll have to do the homework, participate in the group assignments, and pass the tests. We wish you good luck with all your learning. Knowledge matters. Education is important, even more so for girls.

 

 

This course is for you if you are interested in researching a new career and acquiring the skills necessary to succeed in it. You will be asked to reflect on your experiences and critically evaluate what you currently know, what you need to acquire, and how to go about getting it. You will then identify groups and individuals that can serve and support you in exploring a new career. During this course, you will identify the elements of a well-structured career plan and evaluate career options by individual fit to determine how to effectively engage your network in your career journey.

Introduction to Public Relations 

What is Public Relations? What does a Public Relations practitioner do and what is the role of Public Relations in a technologically-connected global landscape? What is the nature of the Public Relations process and how to develop Public Relations strategies and tactics?

 

 

Self Awareness and the Effective Leader

Part of being an effective leader is learning how to play to your strengths and overcome characteristics that don’t lend to good leadership practices. During the course, you will examine your own strengths and learn ways to use them in a leadership role. Learn to manage stress and solve problems creatively. Throughout the course, you will also build a tool kit of useful techniques that you can begin using right away in your engineering career.

 

 

Social Media Marketing Specialization

In today’s marketplace, organizations need effective, profitable social marketing strategies. In this Specialization, you’ll learn to match markets to social strategies to profitably grow your business. You’ll use social media tools and platforms to design, manage, and optimize social campaigns to promote growth and position your brand in the global digital marketplace, and you’ll develop targeted content to spark dialogue with various social communities. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll create and evaluate a comprehensive social marketing strategy.

 

The Impact of Technology

Created by:  EIT Digital
In this course you will learn how to use theories and methods to make predictions of the potential impact of new technology – in general, as well as for a specific application. This will prepare you for the changes that we are facing in society, and also help you take advantage of transformations which are driven by technology.

 

 

Influencing People

Created by:  University of Michigan
This course will improve your ability to influence people in situations where you cannot use formal authority. You will learn about effective ways to build, develop, and sustain a power base in your organization. You will also learn influence tactics that enable you to be more persuasive and influential in working with your superiors, peers, and even subordinates. In addition, you will learn how to build and maintain high-quality relationships to further maximize your informal power and ability to influence others. Importantly, you will distinguish between influence and manipulation and learn how to protect yourself from the unwanted influence of others.

 

 

How to Write a Resume (Project-Centered Course)

Created by:  The State University of New York
In this project-centered course*, you will craft an essential cornerstone of the modern-day job or internship search: the resume. You’ll review resume best practices and explore current trends with guidance from a professional career counselor and recruiter, and you’ll exchange structured feedback with your peers as you work to polish your own resume. When you complete the course, you’ll have an eye-catching resume that lets your professional strengths shine.

 

 

Presentation Skills: Speechwriting, Slides and Delivery Specialization

Created by:  National Research Tomsk State University
Presentations are the most popular way of communication. This Specialization has 4 courses and covers fundamentals of three major presentation skills: 1) Storytelling— the art of crafting an interesting, convincing and evidence-based script of your presentation, 2) Slide design — a merge of graphical and information design to make clean and clear slides that help you deliver your ideas 3) Delivery — the art of interacting with the audience during presentation and a tough Q&A. The 4th and final course of the Specialization is the Capstone project, where you will prepare a presentation «from scratch» with a topic that matters to you and then deliver it to your peers.

 

 

Text: Ashley Magers, TBM4W, Coursera
Images: Coursera, Andrew Neel
Image and Text Editing: TBM4W