Top websites to learn whatever skill you'd like for free, well mostly!

With everything going online, e-learning has definitely guiding beacon for many professionals who are looking for a leg up in their hierarchical ascendency. After using dozens of websites that offer free/free trial courses, we recommended these few for their scale, their offerings and their overall experience.

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#1 Skillshare –

This website has been in the limelight of late and has roped in thought leaders chiming in with their expert opinions about their respective skills. There was Seth Godin with entrepreneurship and marketing, Guy Kawasaki teaching you scalability and growth, Famous designer Aaron Draplin teaching you how to make better commercial logos, legendary Grammy-nominated producer Young Guru teaching DJ+mixing, and many other renowned professionals teaching you all the tricks of their trade for free (for 30 days). One of the advantages that Skillshare has over its competition is its brilliant app that’s seamless and integrates well with your current progress. Which means that you can be in-transit or between errands and watch a course play out on the mobile device of your choosing. It’s got more than 17,000 classes so put your free month to good use and you can click here to get an additional month off (total of two months) - http://skl.sh/dslr-letters

#2 EdX – EdX is probably the largest collection of courses that has been created over 10 years of dedicated hard work and collaborations with some of the biggest universities in the world. With courses from Harvard, Stanford and other Ivy League schools, EdX enables any and every one a chance at great education and pick up vital skills. There are so many great courses to learn from and you can have it all for absolutely nothing. The way that they can offer you these courses is by electing to have a certification program that costs a sum of money, i.e. you can choose to take all the classes for free but you can also pay for a certification program that is provided by these Ivy league schools to the students. Even if you’re not a techie, you should check out some of their logical thinking and code structure classes, they’re really good.

#3 Lynda.com – Acquired by LinkedIn a few years ago, Lynda.com is one of the first pioneers of digital education and learning. Having taken their classes five years ago, I would definitely recommend you to check out their website. With a vast collection of courses, the e-learning platform is focused on a singular style of teaching, pacing and illustration. Unlike other websites that offer courses, Lynda offers a uniquely similar style of teaching which makes you feel more comfortable and structured when you’re watching and learning. One of the biggest problems in e-learning is the retention rate which can fall into the low 20%s for most online platforms. Lynda offers some great courses that are taught by diverse teachers and have files, homework and progress charts that make you feel like you’re in a real classroom. Lynda’s recommended more for their digital marketing, entrepreneurship, finance related classes.

#4 CodeAcademy – This site has some great resources to learn coding for free, where even non-programmers can pick-up basic skills such as website design, app wire-framing and coding management. This is a great skill to have in 2017 as everything is more tech-forward and you need to speak the language of coders to be able to deliver results. If you want to create a more balanced environment in your startup, recommend your non-coders to visit this site and even your coders to diversify their learning.