The 4 Best Online Learning Platforms in 2020
By: Harry Khan
Tags: Programming, Productivity, Data Science, Buisness, Technology

If you are trying to learn a new skill online it can be difficult to decide which platform is best for you, I have chosen the 4 best platforms that I have used and I will explain why each one is worth a try.

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

Udemy

Udemy has a wide range of courses but I mainly associate it with business skills and online skills. The courses will offer video-based learning, similar to youtube, and the instructor will guide you through course content by narrating or showing visuals.

Through my personal experience, Udemy is best used for learning skills that are not so specialised but are used by many people over many industries. Many of the courses have thousands of reviews so it’s very easy to find courses that other people would recommend so most of the top courses are at a good standard.

Most courses will tell you how long it will take to complete the course, the usual time period they suggest ranges from 1 day — 1 month, so if you’re looking to learn a specific skill in a relatively short period of time this ideal for you.

The price of the courses can vary from $10 to up to $200. I would recommend never paying over $30 because the website always offers deals on pretty much all courses on the website so buying at the highest price is an absolute rip off! When you buy the courses they will usually have a lifetime guarantee which allows you to access the content forever, this is mainly because Udemy offers you the courses individually priced, not through a monthly subscription.

Coursera

Coursera offers you courses provided by some of the biggest universities and businesses in the world. Yale, Google, University of London and IBM just to name a few. They let you earn certificates for completing courses and they offer full degrees all online. You can connect your account with your Linkedin account which is great if you are looking to share your newly gained skills to potential employers. A key selling point for them is that they offer you courses to build skills that employers want.

Courses on Coursera are not designed to be completed within a few hours, they are designed to be completed over months. The courses do have deadlines for submitting quizzes but they do not have any real importance, if you miss the deadlines it will not affect your final grade.

Many of Coursera’s courses are offered for free. If you want to gain a certification for completing a course or you want any of your course work to be graded you will need to pay. If you are looking for the latter then you will be looking at a cost of $29 — $100 a month for a specialized course. Coursera does offer Coursera Plus which allows you to have multiple courses under one subscription, this costs $390 for the year.

Codecademy

Codecademy is a great option if you are looking to learn a new programming language. Their courses offer an interactive platform that lets you learn by actually coding, this is great if you’re not a textbook person.

You can either do courses on specific languages like Python or Javascript, or you can choose a career path to learn. If you choose Data science for example you will need to complete SQL, Python 3, NumPy, pandas, matplotlib, scikit-learn courses.

The great thing about Codecademy is that it is all within the browser, you do not need to download any additional software or have to change some settings on your computer, you can get straight into learning without any hassle.

The cost is currently $31.99 paying monthly or $15.99 a month paying for a yearly subscription, they also offer student discounts.

Youtube

This is a more obvious option but Youtube is an unbelievable source of information purely based on the fact that there will be a video about anything. There are lots of Youtube channels that are created just for offering courses in a specific topic. A quite useful tool on youtube are playlists, some youtube videos will be part of a whole series of tutorials and it will let you use the playlists as a course in itself.

Another positive of using youtube is that it’s free! You might feel the pain of adverts while watching videos but it is worth the annoyance seeing that it doesn’t cost a penny.

The only issue you could have is there are so many videos on the platform that it may be hard to filter the good from the bad. Once clicking on the videos see how many thumbs up’s or downs they have, this could be a quick filter to find the good videos that other users have enjoyed.

Summary

Whichever platform you decide to go with they will all provide a great service and I’m sure you will enjoy your time on all. All of the costly platforms do offer free trials if you do not feel like risking your money.

If you’re looking at a short time frame course that is for a specific skill Udemy is best. If you’re looking for a longer time frame course that gives you more of a university education style service Coursera is for you. If you are trying to learn a new skill in IT Codecademy is the right choice. Youtube will hold information on all topics you will ever need, once you find a few good channels it’s hard to overlook look.