Coursera’s Most Popular Courses Reveal People’s Priorities In 2020
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Were you intending to take up a number of virtual courses but ended up putting that thought on hold? In 2020, you didn’t have much choice but to honor that promise.
As a result of lockdowns across the world, open online course platform Coursera witnessed more than 69 million enrollments to its classes from March, which was a 430-percent rise from the same time last year. There were also some notable takeaways from the sort of courses people became interested in.
The pursuit of positive mental health has become palpable across the globe, with Yale University’s online Science of Well-Being course triumphing as 2020’s most popular course worldwide. “The course has been popular as long as it has been offered,” chief content officer Betty Vandenbosch shared with Fast Company. “But this year, it had a surge in demand with more than 2.5 million enrollments.”
Enrollments from this year indicate a significant shift in priorities. It can be said that healthcare wasn’t a topic many would have poured themselves into in the past, but the coronavirus has changed things. This year, people earnestly equipped themselves with knowledge about COVID-19, and the Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 Contact Tracing class ended up becoming Coursera’s second-most popular lesson in 2020.
As a direct response to the changing job-scape, users took measures to future-proof their professional skills in business, technology, and data science.
Perhaps the most wholesome takeaway is that learners finally found time to appease their personal interests. Among Coursera’s most-enrolled classes across the world were First Step Korean and Introduction to Psychology.
Hoping to upskill too? Check out Coursera’s most popular courses worldwide in the lineup below, and see which classes fascinated learners everywhere with its country-specific lists.
1. The Science of Well-Being by Yale University
2. COVID-19 Contact Tracing by Johns Hopkins University
3. Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) by University of Michigan
4. Machine Learning by Stanford University
5. Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects by McMaster University UC San Diego
6. English for Career Development by University of Pennsylvania
7. Financial Markets by Yale University
8. First Step Korean by Yonsei University
9. Introduction to Psychology by Yale University
10. Write Professional Emails in English by Georgia Institute of Technology
[via Fast Company, cover image via Shutterstock]
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