50 Online Courses for the New Year: What Will You Learn in 2019?

With each new year is a chance to start fresh. Whether you believe in new year resolutions, now’s the time try new habits, explore new ideas, and set new goals and aspirations.

One way to push on these fronts is to learn something new. You might even develop skills and knowledge that can help with your career.

Learn with online courses to achieve results

Online courses are a great way to learn from because:

• Most present information in a way that’s easy to absorb
• You get to learn from acclaimed instructors who hail from top institutions
• They’re designed to help you develop skills and knowledge that you can use

These courses are modeled after traditional classes, but are far more innovative, bringing in technology to keep learners engaged. They’re also flexible, so if you come upon a course that turns out to be a snoozefest or one that’s too difficult, there’s nothing preventing you from finding a new course.

One last note: most courses let you take parts of them for free, so you can learn from them even if they list a price. You only pay if you want a chance to earn a certificate or if you want to access content that’s behind a paywall.

So what will you learn?

As we round the corner into 2019, there’s no shortage of things to learn from online courses.

In the past year, we steadily added new online courses. Today, you’ll find 15,000+ courses in our catalog. 

Put into perspective, you’d need to spend 90 years to finish them all if you made taking courses a full-time job. You won’t be bored either. These courses span thousands of different topics, so you’ll never run out of new material. They also cover a gamut of rigor and difficulty, from gentle intros to highly specialized courses aimed at post-grads.

All of this means you’re free to explore and learn whatever you want to your heart’s content!

Take the first step

If you already have something in mind you’d like to learn, try plugging it into the search bar above. You can also browse for courses by subject.

Don’t know what you want to learn yet? Don’t know where to start looking? Fret not. We’ve put together a curated list of courses that anyone can enjoy. You’ll find those in the next section of this article.

Finally, if you like a course, don’t forget to hit the “heart” button, which adds a course to your list of saved courses. You can always refer back to this list once you’re done browsing.

Our Picks

The courses we’ve chosen below cover a broad range of interests. Most are either at the introductory level or start with the basics and quickly ramp up. None have prerequisites, meaning you don’t need past knowledge to take them. Have a course you’d like to suggest? Shoot us a message via our contact page with the subject “CourseRec”.

Arts & Humanities

1. Hollywood: History, Industry, Art from University of Pennsylvania, PennX
2. Modern Art & Ideas from The Museum of Modern Art, Caltech
3. The Writing Process from Berkeley, UC BerkeleyX, BerkeleyX
4. The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture from The Smithsonian Institution, SmithsonianX
5. Masterpieces of World Literature from Harvard University, HarvardX
6. Ancient Masterpieces of World Literature from Harvard University, HarvardX
7. A Global History of Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MITx

Business & Economics

1. The Iterative Innovation Process from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MITx
2. Financial Markets from Yale University
3. Design Thinking for Innovation from University of Virginia
4. Foundations of Positive Psychology from University of Pennsylvania
5. Game Theory from Stanford University, The University of British Columbia
6. Effective Business Writing from Berkeley, UC BerkeleyX, BerkeleyX
7. Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence from Case Western Reserve University

Foreign Languages

1. Learn Mandarin Chinese from Shanghai Jiao Tong University
2. Learn Basic Spanish Vocabulary from University of California, Davis
3. Online Japanese Beginner Course (All 12 lessons) from Udemy

Health & Wellbeing

1. The Science of Well-Being from Yale University
2. Introduction to Psychology from University of Toronto
3. Stanford Introduction to Food and Health from Stanford University
4. Child Nutrition and Cooking from Stanford University
5. Exercise Prescription for the Prevention and Treatment of Disease from Trinity College Dublin
6. Science of Exercise from University of Colorado Boulder
7. De-Mystifying Mindfulness from Universiteit Leiden
8. How to Save a Life: CPR, AED and First Aid from The Disque Foundation
9. CPR, AED and First Aid Certification Course from Udemy
10. The Science of Happiness from Berkeley, BerkeleyX
11. Food for Thought from McGillX

Personal Development

1. Career Success from University of California, Irvine
2. Becoming a Successful Job Hunter from LinkedIn Learning
3. Dynamic Public Speaking from University of Washington

Programming

1. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Programming from Udemy
2. Beginning Python from Treehouse

Science & Engineering

1. Super-Earths and Life from Harvard University, HarvardX
2. Antarctica: From Geology to Human History from Victoria University of Wellington, VictoriaX
3. Structural Materials: Selection and Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MITx
4. Electric Cars: Introduction from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), DelftX
5. Animal Behaviour from The University of Melbourne
6. Animal Behaviour and Welfare from The University of Edinburgh
7. The Truth About Cats and Dogs from The University of Edinburgh
8. The Science of Gastronomy from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
9. Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science (part 1) from Harvard University, HarvardX
10. Discovering Science: Chemical Products from University of Leeds
11. Introduction to Algae from University of California San Diego

Social Sciences

1. Justice from Harvard University, HarvardX
2. Social Learning for Social Impact from McGill
3. The Science and Politics of the GMO from Cornell University, CornellX
4. Forests and Livelihoods in Developing Countries from University of British Columbia
5. The Challenges of Global Poverty from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MITx
6. Introduction to Sustainability from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign