8 Best Business Courses Online From Top Universities And Business Executives

One thing that a lot of us realized during the pandemic is that we can still be productive even when we are working or studying remotely. With the extended lockdown, many used it to look for opportunities to grow. Hence, online courses have grown in popularity as you can now take an online class for just about anything, from basic cooking to content marketing. 

If you want to take online courses to help you advance your career, there are also a lot of business courses online. On Coursera, you can take an online business course taught by instructors from top universities and business executives. With just a few hours each week, your learning schedule is completely flexible. Once you complete the course, you also earn a professional certificate that you can use for your future applications. Here are some of the best business courses on Coursera, which you may also try for seven days for free.

Coursera Coursera Photo: coursera.org

With over 140 hours of education, hundreds of practice-based assessments and highly interactive content, this program will help you simulate real-world project management scenarios. It is exclusively developed and taught by Google employees with decades of experience in program and project management. It is one of Coursera’s numerous business online courses with a certificate. 

The Google Project Management course will provide you with an immersive understanding of the practices and skills needed to succeed in an entry-level project management role. It will teach you the foundations of Agile project management, focus on implementing Scrum events, building Scrum artifacts and understanding Scrum roles. With this program, you will learn how to create effective project documentation and artifacts throughout the various phases of a project, as well as practice strategic communication, problem-solving and stakeholder management through real-world scenarios.

Enroll in the course today for just $39/month.

Wharton’s Business and Financial Modeling Specialization is designed to help you make informed business and financial decisions. It is taught by Wharton’s best professors including Statistics professor Richard Waterman and Accounting professor Richard Lambert, to name a few.

As one of the best business courses to take, it will introduce you to spreadsheet models, modeling techniques and common applications for investment analysis, company valuation, forecasting  and more. The Specialization course is meant to get you ready to use your own data to describe realities, build scenarios and predict performance. In this course, you will learn to create your own quantitative models, understand the measurement and management of risk, harness the power of spreadsheets to map and predict data and structure your decision-making for optimum results. 

Enroll in the course today for just $79/month.

This specialization explores several aspects of the new digital marketing environment, including topics such as digital marketing analytics, search engine optimization, social media marketing and even 3D Printing. It offers everything you need to master strategic marketing concepts and tools to address brand communication in a digital world. The course is offered by The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and includes instructors like Mike Yao, Professor of Digital Media, Kevin Hartman, Head of Analytics at Google, Aric Rindfleisch, Professor of Marketing and Vischal Sachdev, Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Illinois MakerLab. 

With this course, you will gain an understanding of the motivations behind data collection and analysis methods used by marketing professionals, learn to evaluate and choose appropriate web analytics tools and techniques, understand frameworks and approaches to measuring consumers’ digital actions and earn familiarity with the unique measurement opportunities and challenges presented by New Media.

Enroll in the course today for just $79/month.

austin-distel-tLZhFRLj6nY-unsplash Online courses on digital marketing equip you with the skills needed to work with new media. Photo: Austin Distel//Unsplash

Wharton’s Entrepreneurship Specialization covers the conception, design, organization and management of new enterprises. It is a five-course series that is designed to take you from opportunity identification through launch, growth, financing and profitability and taught by Wharton’s top professors in management and entrepreneurship. With this course, you’ll develop an entrepreneurial mindset and hone the skills you need to develop a new enterprise with potential for growth and funding or to identify and pursue opportunities for growth within an existing organization.

Enroll in the course today for just $79/month.

This course is offered by the University of California, Davis and is taught by Sonia Simone, the Chief Content Officer at Rainmaker Digital, LLC. In this course, you will learn the core strategies content marketers use to acquire and retain customers profitably. You will also learn how to develop, organize and implement a content marketing strategy, analyze and measure the effectiveness of content marketing, write compelling copy, use a strategic framework when writing and build your professional brand and authority through content marketing. This course will teach you how to put the ideas presented to you into action and build your personal brand through content marketing.

Purchase the course today for just $49.

jo-szczepanska-5aiRb5f464A-unsplash Learn the skills you need to apply for your career. Photo: Jo Szczepanska//Unsplash

This specialization takes a critical look at digital advertising tactics for small businesses. Through it, students will learn how to generate and launch ad campaigns on small budgets with limited-to-no design skills. These courses include Search (Google Ads), Social Media (Facebook, Instagram  and Twitter) and Native Advertising (Taboola). Those who are able to complete the Search course will also receive a Google Ads Search Certification. The specialization is offered by the University of Colorado, Boulder and will be taught by Chris Vargo, Assistant Professor in the College of Media, Communication and Information and Harsha Gangadharbatla, Associate Professor in Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design. 

Through the course, you will get an in-depth understanding of the major advertising platforms, interpret ad performance metrics for most popular advertising types and develop measurement plans and execute tailored digital advertising campaigns on Google Ads (Search), Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Taboola.

Enroll in the course today for just $49/month.

In this course, you will have the skills you need to apply to introductory-level roles in project management. The first in a series of six courses, you’ll discover foundational project management terminology and gain a deeper understanding of the role and responsibilities of a project manager. Throughout the program, you’ll learn from current Google project managers, who will provide you with multi-dimensional education that will help you build your skills for on-the-job application. 

By the end of this course, you will be able to describe project management skills, roles and responsibilities across a variety of industries, define organizational structure and organizational culture and explain the project management life cycle and compare different program management methodologies.

Enroll in the course today for just $39/month.

In this course offered by Yale, you’ll get an overview of the ideas, methods and institutions that permit human society to manage risks and foster enterprise with an emphasis on financially savvy leadership skills. The course gives you a description of practices today and analysis of prospects for the future, an introduction to risk management and behavioral finance principles to understand the real-world functioning of securities, insurance and banking industries.

Taught by Robert Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, the main goal of this course is to use such industries effectively and towards a better society.

Purchase the course today for just $49.