11 Great Online Learning Platforms to Build New Skills: 2022 Edition

Online learning is a great option to keep you occupied while feeling more productive and purposeful. It helps you polish your skills and add more qualifications to your resume. You just need an excellent online learning platform to find the courses of your choices and develop your skills.

Online learning platforms are integrated online services that offer various learners, trainers, and students educational support. These platforms help people with information and other resources improve education delivery and management. Whether you want to master programming, sharpen your math skills, or develop your artistic prowess, the listed online learning platforms come with a plethora of courses from various experts, professionals, and subject matter experts.

Many e-learning companies offer learning platforms with courses on different subjects and in different fields. Individuals can easily subscribe to these platforms, go through the courses offered, and get certifications. Online learning platforms are filled with different types of educational content including, training videos, lectures from experts, personal experiences of successful people, and much more.

Best Online Learning Platforms

Here is the list of a few best online learning platforms that you can use to gain more knowledge and learn more skills.

1. Appy Pie Academy
2. Udemy
3. LinkedIn Learning
4. Coursera
5. Codeacademy
6. EDX
7. SkillShare
8. Pluralsight
9. MasterClass
10. Udacity
11. FutureLearn

1. Appy Pie Academy

Appy Pie Academy is one of the best free online learning platforms. The platform comes with a huge variety of online learning courses on designing, technology, marketing, website and app development, search engine optimization, office productivity management, app monetization, and much more. These courses help learners to gain knowledge and add more skills to their resume.

Pros

• All courses are free
• Well-defined course modules
• Best for both beginners and advanced learners
• Highly interactive and simplified video tutorials

Cons

• Courses certifications don’t have any approved validity professionally
• Some courses not in the detailed form
• Few courses are for the basic levels

2. Udemy

This is one of the most flexible online learning platforms for students, professionals, kids, etc. The platform allows everyone to create online courses and has thousands of subject matter experts, instructors, and students creating online courses. This course creation helps people acquire more skills. The platform offers a variety of online learning material including documents, text, PDF, video content, and much more.

Pros

• Offers self-paced video courses for better learning
• No highly technical skills required
• The platform app is compatible with both Android and iOS
• No set-up cost for instructors

Cons

• Limited interaction for both instructors and students
• High competition for instructors when it comes to course creation
• No personal branding for instructors
• Need to market on your own to make your courses visible
• Control over prices
• Control over branding

3. LinkedIn Learning

This is one of the best online educational platforms that you can choose if looking for professional courses. The platform comes with multiple useful courses based on technology, business, web development, software programming, and other creative fields. It offers specific premium service for LinkedIn users. The best part about this platform is that it offers over 16000 courses in 7 different languages. It helps candidates invest in their professional development.

Pros

• Offers a one-month free trial
• Gives offline learning access
• Recognizable in B2B community
• Provides certification upon courses completion
• Allows the candidates to evaluate their progress using quizzes

Cons

• Ambiguous course quality
• Registering as an instructor can be challenging

4. Coursera

This is one of the most popular free online learning platforms for schools, kids, students, etc. It comes with 23 million users worldwide. The platform provides high-quality online learning courses and allows the students to get certifications from renowned institutions. The platform offers various specialized courses, individual courses, on-demand video lectures, community discussion forums, homework exercises, peer-reviewed assignments, and much more. The platform offers various attractive subscription packages for all of its paid courses.

Pros

• A wide range of learning activities and options
• Provides the students with different types of degrees and certificates in the form of rewards
• Offers instructors interactions
• Comes with high-quality educational tools

Cons

• In partner institutions, instructors are limited to educators
• Course creation options are not very much flexible for instructors

5. Codeacademy

This is a great platform for people who want to learn how to code. The platform helps you master various coding languages in just a few days. With various useful courses available on this learning platform, you can gain a good knowledge of Python, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and much more. Moreover, you can also learn to create your apps and websites with the advanced programming learned from these courses. You can either go for its 180 hours of free content or try its free Pro membership for one week. The Pro membership of this platform allows you to access real-world practice and the special members-only content.

Pros

• Offers various free plans where you can enjoy free courses
• The courses are interactive and beginners-friendly
• Offers useful courses in 14 different programming languages
• Provides a supportive community with advisors, graduates, coaches, etc. to help students clear their doubts.

Cons

• Provides no detailed information for the instructor
• No accredited courses or paths. Just your certificate is proof that you have completed a specific course.

6. EDX

The platform comes with multiple courses from various recognized universities. The major partners of the platform include MIT, Berkley, Harvard, IBM, and many other organizations that provide micro degrees and professional certificates. The courses on this platform are majorly based on science, business, technology, and other academic fields.

Pros

• Offers self-paced courses
• Provides accredited certificates after the course completion
• 14-days refund policy
• Access to all courses except graded assignments at one time
• The majority of courses are self-paced that you can begin at anytime

Cons

• Limited topics for courses
• No specific structure for courses

7. SkillShare

This is a great learning platform online that has 4 million students and offers more than 24000 courses all in four different categories. These categories include technology, business, creative arts, and lifestyle. Most lessons of these courses last from 20 to 60 minutes and include educational videos, class projects, etc. to help students learn better. The platform is free to join. After a 14-days trial, it starts charging monthly fees for all the courses.

Pros

• Encourages student by providing multiple community and forums for discussions
• Offers many courses for the same price
• Allows students to share feedback on supportive discussion forums

Cons

• Content is limited to four categories
• Provides no certifications of completion, rewards, or any formal recognition

8. Pluralsight

The platform offers a wide range of technology-focused courses for business teams, individuals, educators, and students. These courses are based on subjects like IT, software development, data security, and much more. The best part about this educational platform is that it supports you in the preparation of your certification exams in different fields by offering practice exams.

Pros

• Rich training material
• Offline access to courses
• Mobile download options available
• Courses in different languages
• Allows you to start a discussion forum
• Courses are added daily

Cons

• More focused on the IT sector
• Courses are difficult to understand for beginners
• A few courses are outdated

9. MasterClass

This is an excellent online learning platform that provides talk-style classes. The courses on this platform are video-based and include workbooks, lectures, and class discussions. As the platform comes with a monthly subscription plan, you can take as many classes as you want depending on your requirement. Although the plan offers monthly plans, students need to sign up for a year at a time.

Pros

• Provides amazing video quality
• Offers affordable plans
• Unlimited sessions available on monthly subscription

Cons

• One-year subscription is necessary for students

10. Udacity

This is another online learning platform that offers courses in almost all in-demand fields. The platform comes with a variety of courses on cloud computing, programming, web development, and data science. It is one of the best online learning platforms for students who want to be technically skilled. Each course on the platform comes with hands-on practice, career coaches, real instructors, and individual code reviews to address your needs.

Pros

• Offers one-on-one technical monitoring by experts
• Allows to post and access personalized reviews
• Provides top-quality content
• Easy-to-use platform
• Offers more than 200 free courses

Cons

• Expensive learning platform
• Solitary learning approach
• Courses for limited topics
• Not all courses are available in multiple languages

11. FutureLearn

This is one of the best online learning platforms that provide online classes on various subjects including history, medical, healthcare, business, art, media, and much more. The basic plan of the platform gives you free access to your preferred course for 14 days. However, a yearly subscription allows you to take any course, tests, or certifications at your pace.

Pros

• Mentions the weeks and hours spent learning
• Offers 14-days free plan
• Allows to upgrade the course anytime

Cons

• Allows to appear for the test only after upgrading the course

Conclusion

Quality is a critical parameter to keep in mind when choosing an online learning platform. Some platforms tend to keep their prices high, but quality seems to be an issue with them. Make sure the platform you choose is engaging, branded, and most importantly an interactive piece of media.

Find the features that suit your needs and go for the course you want to learn. Good Luck!