Free On-line Courses

There are many great courses available on-line for free for the motivated student.   Two good options are LinkedIn Learning and Coursera

FYI: Coursera courses are available without a fee, although Coursera will offer a specialization or certification for a fee. You can take individual courses FREE. When you click on Enroll, it will prompt you to enroll for a fee (and includes certificate) or enroll for free. The FREE option is often shown as “Audit” and sometimes this is in very small print and difficult to locate, but it is there. The free option will give you access to all the course materials except for some quizzes and projects.

LinkedIn Learning courses are available for no charge by using your JMU eID, and it includes all learning materials for the courses.  such as code files, data sets, and example files.

General Interest

• Still in school?  Check out Coursera’s Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects
• New to the professional workforce?  Check out Courera’s Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work Specialization
• Good for students and professionals:  Coursera’s Work Smarter, Not Harder: Time Management for Personal & Professional Productivity

Productivity Skills  from LinkedIn Learning

• PowerPoint Essential Training (Office 365/Microsoft 365)
• Word Essential Training (Office 365/Microsoft 365)

Statistics and Econometrics  (some of these courses are also listed on the software pages)

1. PYTHON and Finance:  A good way to learn a new software is to watch and code at the same time.  Want to learn Python and Finance?  Check out the Coursera course Introduction to Portfolio Construction with Python.  The Python videos (called “Labs”) are very good.  You can watch and code along with the instructor. It is the first course in a series of four courses that make up a specialization.  You can enroll in any of the courses for free. For some courses, this is an AUDIT option.
2. R and Econometrics:  Want to get prepared to take Econometrics Econ 385?  Try Coursera’s Linear Regression and Modeling. It is taught with R. Not as in depth as JMU’s Econ 385 course but  good preparation.
3. R and Statistics:  Want to improve your statistics knowledge? the stuff that comes before econometrics?  Check out Coursera’s Inferential Statistics
4. Math Behind Moneyball from Coursera; great applications of many statistical concepts
5. EXCEL:  Want to learn more about spreadsheets?  Try Coursera’s Introduction to Spreadsheets and Models