What I can suggest after 100+ certifications from Coursera and EdX

Among all the opportunities I can think of, when talking about high-quality courses, there are MOOCs (I already wrote here: MOOC: the cheap (or even free!) yet powerful and stimulating way to learn). Close friends of mine know my fiery passion about these courses and, a few days ago, one of these friends asked me to review the courses I followed, to see if there are courses I can suggest (in other words, if some courses are worth spending your most limited and valuable resource: time). So I took a look and I “discovered” that I actually got more than 100 certifications (completed courses with passing grades after quizzes/peer-reviews/exams) from the 2 most know platforms for high-quality MOOCs: Coursera and EdX.
NOTE: I’m not considering other sources, but obviously I followed a lot of other courses on several other platforms, including the well-known Udemy, but I focused on Coursera and EdX since they provide courses under the direct control of univerisities and companies involved in those platforms. I did not include other courses, followed without enrolling, so the list is actually much much longer.
To give you a quick idea of topics and “sources” (companies and universities that have provided the courses), these are the numbers of courses I followed so far (until 03.2023):

Full list at the end of this post. As you can see, some courses are on very specific topics, like Data Science or Neuroscience (e.g.: “Introduction to Neurohacking In R” or “Using GPUs to Scale and Speed-up Deep Learning“). But there a bunch of courses I really found useful and interesting for anyone, regardless of their occupation/hobbies/everything. Keep reading to know which ones and why.

Courses everyone should follow

These are the basic courses I strongly suggest for a healthy and conscious (at a bare minimum level) life.

• The Science of Well-Being: on the most famous courses on Coursera, provided by Yale University. Specially focused on misconceptions about happiness (job, money, love, body), it talks about savoring and gratitude, expectation, hedonic adaptation, biases, exercise and sleep. You can read more here in my post La scienza dello stare bene
• Biohacking Your Brain’s Health: this course provided by Emory University covers all the best practices related to Nutrition, Exercise, Meditation, Sleep. I wrote about it here: Improve and take care of your brain!
• Weight Management: Beyond Balancing Calories: another course by Emory University, focused on nutrition, dispelling the myths and providing practical advice, if you are interested you can see my article Weight management: no quick useless hacks, but the real hard science into practice!
• Mindfulness and Well-being: Foundations: a course by Rice University on concepts and practices that deepen the understanding of the mind/body connection, benefits, resilience, emotions. Specially if you never tried mindful meditation, this is a start course so you can give yourself a try. I strongly recommend to learn more about mindfulness, it will improve your everyday life.
• Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age: in this one, the University of Michigan explains Statistics, Law of Large Numbers, Correlation, Experiments, Prediction, Cognitive Biases, Choosing and Deciding, Logic and Dialectical Reasoning. If you are completely new to these topics, please make sure to understand them, if you really want understand the world you’re living in!

Courses for everyone interested in personal growth

• Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects: this course by Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski is really the one I wanted to learn in school before studying anything else. It explains (with examples) information chunks, illusions of learning, memory techniques, dealing with procrastination, and best practices shown by research to be most effective in helping you master tough subjects. Absolutely recommended.
• Finding Purpose and Meaning In Life: Living for What Matters Most: a course by the University of Michigan that reminded me of the amazing book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. This is basically about self-transcending purpose, personal approaches and skills to self-change and become and stay connected to your purpose. I suggest this one before rushing headlong into time management of your days and details of project management of any kind in your life.
• The Science of Success: What Researchers Know that You Should Know: again from the University of Michigan, it may sound obvious, but you may gain new insights and perspective on Beliefs, Self-Motivation, Expertise, finishing with some practical advice on Action Plan.
• Psychological First Aid: in this course (intended for a large audience of non-professionals), the Johns Hopkins University explain their RAPID model to listen reflectively, triaging psychological/ behavioral crisis reactions from more severe, potentially incapacitating, crisis reactions, mitigate acute distress and dysfunction, recognize when to facilitate access to further mental health support – and of course how to practice self-care (just to remind: it’s not egoistic thinking ourselves first, to be in a good shape before effectively helping others). Highly suggested to everyone working and living with other human beings.
• Introduction to Philosophy: a really interesting course where University of Edinburgh illustrates topics like Morality, Knowledge, Ethics, Obey the rule, Brain vs Computer. It’s not intended as a boring list of quotes by ancient philosophers, but rather something to help you (re)think high-level concept that have a real impact in our way of living.
• Philosophy, Science and Religion: Religion and Science: yet another one by University of Edinburgh, talking a lot about science, religion and the origins of the universe, buddhism and science, evolution and design, sin, suffering and salvation: evolution’s thorny issues, human uniqueness in science, theology and ethics. I really enjoyed the course, I wrote about it here: Religion and Science: much more than old ethics and trivial arguments.
• Intelligence Tools for the Digital Age: last but not the least in this section, a course that I can say it’s like an “expansion” of the last course in the previous section (“Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age”), but this one by the IE Business School goes much further in providing tools to understand and investigate complex situations: Intelligence Analyst’s Mindset, analysis with micro and macro actors, including practical examples. Obviously this course is not complete ad advanced like the ones I had when I was a military officer (e.g.: military intelligence operator and NATO intelligence), but this one is a really good way to start.

Courses for everyone wants to understand more

• The Arts and Science of Relationships: Understanding Human Needs: University of Toronto easily explain in a nutshell communication, relationships (of any kind) and self.
• Social Psychology: provided by Wesleyan University, this course is about Social perceptions, Self-Presentation and Persuasion, Obedience, Conformity, and Deindividuation, Group Behavior. Topics that I love to understand social mechanisms and that must be known to build a strong defence against manipulation.
• Creative Thinking: Techniques and Tools for Success: Imperial College of London talks about basics on principles of creativity, tools, thinking styles, morphological analysis and all the main concepts widely used by teams and individuals (suggested even if you think you don’t “need” creativity at all).
• Teamwork Skills: Communicating Effectively in Groups: University of Colorado Boulder teachs about Group Development & Decision Making, Conflict, Difference, & Diversity, Comms and tech. Suggested wether you are the last employee or a manager.
• Managing the Company of the Future Disaster Preparedness: this course by University of London is about traditional management and innovation, decision making, exploring from hierarchy to collective wisdom, motivations, employee’s PoV, changing nature of work.
• Foundations of Project Management: first course of the Google Project Management specialization, I suggest you to follow it if you’re completely new on the topic, to be able to describe project management skills, roles, and responsibilities across a variety of industries, explain the project management life cycle and compare different program management methodologies , define organizational structure and organizational culture and explain how it impacts project management.
• Statistical Thinking for Data Science and Analytics: provided by the University of Columbia, it’s a course I suggest to understand basics of statistics, even if you’re not interested in data science: it will help you to better understand data, that are foundation of our world.
• What is Data Science?: same as above, this introductory course by IBM will help you to understand a fundamental topic that you can’t ignore if you want to know at least the surface of the world of data we’re living in.
• Excel Fundamentals for Data Analysis: the first course of the “Excel Skills for Data Analytics and Visualization” specialization by Macquarie University, a must if you have to do with any kind of data (at a basic level, not as a data scientist), but like a pro. Excel tools and functions to clean and prepare data for analysis, Named Ranges and Tables to automate your analysis., Understand the different types of data in Excel and use appropriate functions to work with them., Use logical and lookup functions to transform, link and categorise data.
• Cyberwar, Surveillance and Security: I couldn’t mention at least one course on security. This course by University of Adelaide is intended for non-professionals to understand the hot topics and also to give you a basic understanding on cyber operations and private or state-sponsored survellaince, to become more aware on you data and device.

Probably I’ll edit these lists in the future, but so far I think you have enough to study, so… happy learning! 🙂