Wondering which online learning platform to go for, which worth your time & effort?
Well… congratulations firstly, since you are at the best platform right now for your this particular query. Here I have accumulated some of the best online learning platforms for you… Have a look at the Best Online Learning Platforms 2020.
Now Gain New Skills or Level-Up Your Career in No Time!!
Now before taking you towards the list of online learning platforms, I think its sort of essential to furnish you people with a quick idea on what online learning platforms actually are…
So,
What is an Online Learning Platform?
An online learning platform is actually an information system, providing a safe learning environment, where students can take online courses.
These online learning platforms are often referred as ‘online course marketplaces’. This is mainly because the platforms provide learners with opportunity to search for and then pay for online courses directly.
Note: While some of the online learning platforms are used to feature online courses that you can create, most are educational-based, strictly offering university-level education.
OK…so this was about online learning platforms… Now without any further ado, quickly jumping onto the list of best online learning platforms 2020….
List of Best Online Learning Platforms 2020
The below discussed list of online learning platforms include some of the best free online learning platforms also, along with paid ones…
Udemy – One of the Best Online Learning Platforms for Students
Price
For Students
Varies & is priced per course
For Instructors:
- No starting fee. But very high commission on sales of upto 75%
- 50% per course sale, when students come through organic search on Udemy
- 75% commission, when students come via their paid user acquisition channel
- 97% on course sales, when you make sell via your own links. Udemy app keeps a 3% administration fee.
Udemy is indubitably one of the most popular online learning platforms India on the web. This educational platform has more than around 40 million students, 50 thousand instructors and subject matter experts, creating online courses.
With Udemy, course creation can be made possible for everyone, with the possibility of acquiring new skills. Udemy do offers a wide range of online learning materials, including: Documents, PDF, text, PowerPoint, and video content among-st numerous others.
Udemy is always open for instructors. One can join whenever he/she wants and can start teaching online. However, that do takes a huge piece of pie from the overall revenue. Moreover, the platform do has control over pricing and discounting the course.
Pros:
- The platform is geared towards self-paced learning and video courses.
- There is absolutely no setup cost. (for instructors)
- No requirement of highly technical knowledge
- Udemy app is available for both iOS and Android
Cons:
- Quite limited interaction with students. (both for instructors and students)
- No possibility for personal branding. (for instructors)
- High competition between course creators. (for instructors), since the app is such popular.
- No data ownership or control over branding. The app keeps user data, and emails, and does not share these information with their instructors.
- Instructors visibility depends onto their own respective marketing. The platform only promotes courses, which are popular.
SkillShare – Best Online Learning Platforms 2020 for Creatives
Pricing:
Students: 14-day free trial is provided to students, However, after that pricing is $15 per month for access in all the courses.
Instructors: Free to join. However, certain class guidelines are there, which instructors are required to follow.
Who is it for?
Students: Suitable for students interested in the creative arts, business, technology and lifestyle classes.
Instructors: Good for those who are in the creative or innovative field and keep desires of making a side income. Instructors can make good money through Skillshare’s royalty system and their referral program.
**Skillshare pay instructors, depending onto the minutes watched from their course and the premium referrals.
Skillshare is another one of the finest online learning platforms for students, having density of more than 4 million students and up to 24,000 lessons in various disciplines.
Skillshare courses are superb. They are not accredited by any institution and yes, they do not offer any certificate of completion.
It would definitely not be wrong to refer Skillshare as one of the finest platforms to learn new skills and expand knowledge.
Skillshare course lessons last from 20 to 60 minutes and are made out of a series of small videos, and a student community, encouraging interactions via discussion forums.
Skillshare classes are divided into 4 categories:
Creative Arts: Deals with graphic design to fine art, music production and cooking
Technology: includes: web design, data science and e-commerce
Lifestyle: Deals with stuff like teaching, gaming, languages and wellness
Business: Accounting, finance & Project Management
Skillshare learning platform has two versions: FREE & PREMIUM.
Premium membership version provides one with unlimited access to all classes in library. One can participate in LIVE SESSIONS and WORKSHOPS taught by top teachers. Moreover, all the classes in the library are available for download, enabling students to continue learning on-the-go, even when they don’t have access to Internet.
Whole-sum, Skillshare offers excellent value for money.
Nonetheless, the best part, one get a 2-month free trial to try out the platform before deciding whether its appropriate for you or not.
Pros:
- Platform do offers a supportive discussion forum, where students exchange feedback
- Furnish students will ability to take numerous courses for the same price.
Cons:
- Furnished class content is limited to only four categories
- No certificate of completion or any other formal recognition is provided
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LinkedIn Learning (Lynda)
Pricing
LinkedIn Learning comes with two subscription plan for students:
- Monthly: €29.49 (plus taxes)
- Annually: €299,88 (plus taxes)
Who is it for?
Students: Most suitable for professionals and businesses, looking to train their employees
Instructors: Apart from individual learners, universities, business team and government organizations can make of this online learning platform for educational and learning purpose.
LinkedIn Learning (which was formerly known as Lynda.com) is an educational platform, which do offer professional courses on business, technologies & creative fields in the form of video lessons.
One thing which make LinkedIn one of the best online learning platforms 2020 is that it do offers thousands of high-quality courses for all levels, from beginners to advanced. The offered courses include software programming, web development, Economics and Business Management.
LinkedIn learning has a single monthly subscription fee, giving access to all the content on the platform. Moreover, the platform provide students with option to download any course for offline viewing, which I personally find highly convenient.
LinkedIn Learning is not accredited, however, most of the courses offer a Certificate of Completion, which one can add later to the LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn Learning offers 1-month free trial. Within this period you can decide whether to go for this education platform or not.
Pros:
- Its highly recognizable and valued in B2B community
- Comes with a one-month free trial
- Offers certification upon course completion
- Furnish personalized course recommendations for users
- Allows one to access his/her progress using
- Provides with access to several other premium career features
- Offers offline learning access for learning on the go
Cons:
- The quality of the offered courses is ambiguous. One need to conduct some research into them before enrolling of course
- Joining as an instructor is absolutely challenging
Udacity
Price
Udacity offer students around 200 courses completely free of charge.
One can register in and start learning.
However, when it comes to actual prices, things take a leap of course, when its about Udacity.
A Udacity’s Nanodegree course costs $200 per month. This last anywhere from 6 to 12 months. This clearly means that the price of a Nanodegree on Udacity could go upto $2400.
This is pretty high.
Udacity (widely known as Nanodegree Programs) is actually a skills and project based learning program, consisting of a series of courses on topics like Aritficial Intelligence, Mobile Programming, Coding, Robotics, Business, and Data Science.
Most of the Udacity online learning program completes in 3-6 months.
Udacity do offers one-on-one technical mentorship to all the Nanodegree students.
Udacity ensures one about job, upon the completion of one of its Nanodegree programs.
Though Udactiy is not an accredited university, however, skills they teach are relevant of course. When its about e-learning platforms comparison, Udacity is steep on pricing.
The average cost for a Nanodegree program is between $1200 and $2400. Nonetheless, one can get a discount, if he/she pays for several months upfront.
One of the finest things about Udacity, which proven it one of the best online learning platforms 2019 last year is its offered Executive programs for business leaders. These business leaders are basically those who wanna learn about some complex concepts such as Artificial Intelligence and all, to implement those in their respective companies within a short span of time.
So, about Udacity, it would of course not be wrong to say that it’s not of the online learning platforms for schools or online learning platforms for students.
Pros:
- Simplistic Design (no unnecessary information)
- Courses of good quality (even the free ones)
- A few distinct features to choose from
Cons:
- A huge leap in prices
- Lack of customer support
- Lack of community
EdX & Open edX
Price
Absolutely FREE to join. However, there might be an additional costs on procuring a server and system support and in getting expert help from Open-edX’s service providers or freelancers. The prices of these service providers and freelancers usually varies, according to your project’s requirements and budget.
Who is it for?
Students: EdX is for all the age people who are looking to learn a subject or new skills. EdX comprises a highly diverse library of courses.
Instructors (Open-edX): Its absolutely great for businesses who can afford a team or can outsource the development and maintenance of the platform in their own respective servers.
EdX.org and Open-edX are the two sides of the same coin.
On one hand, where EdX is the online learning platform where students find online courses from several universities, Open-EdX is an open-source content management system.
Both these platforms were created by a team of scientists from Harvard University and MIT, with the aim of providing online-university level education across the globe.
Today both EdX and Open-EdX are one of the top online learning platforms for students and best free online learning platforms for instructors.
EdX comprises more than around 8,000 online courses from 100 highly prestigious universities and businesses, which are currently offering higher education in several disciplines.
The offered courses mainly specializes in the sciences – engineering, computer science, data science, humanities, math, business and management.
Pros:
- Both are free and open-source (both instructors)
- Comprises an app, compatible with both iOS and Android
- Features online classes are extremely interactive, enabling students to easily chip in.
Cons:
- Discussion forum seems a bit outdated and difficult to navigate
- Requires technical knowledge for instructors.
- Comes with the additional costs of a self-hosted server and its respective maintenance. (for instructors)
FutureLearn
Price
When it’s about learning courses and all, you can do it all free, without risk. Even there is no requirement of handing over your any credit card details and all.
However, if you’re likely to have a certificate to show off, then in that situation you’re require to pay for a course “upgrade”. This provides you with accessibility to the course tests, so that you can prove your knowledge and a forma certificate.
This moreover also provides you with long-term access to the course materials.
Note: For people studying for free, this is withdrawn shortly after the end of each course.
These upgrades vary in cost, relying onto the course length. Nonetheless, typically price ranges from $39-87.
FutureLearn is a Digital education platform founded in December 2012.
Referred as one of the best online learning platforms 2020, FutureLearn is jointly owned by The Open University and SEEK Ltd. It’s a massive Open Online Course Learning Platform, including 175 UK and international partners.
The platform furnish various tiers of classes in all kinds of subjects (say, art and media, business, healthcare, history, IT and computer science, humanities and personal skills).
You might have noticed people referring FutureLearn as one of the best free online learning platforms.
Well that’s not completely true!!
The platform is not completely free.
You are provided with free access to a course for duration of 14 days. However, after that you need to “upgrade” the class to access any tests and get a certificate.
FutureLearn – online learning platform features an unlimited yearly subscription, providing students with flexibility to take any course at their own pace and tests and certificates as well.
Usually courses offered at FutureLearn are hosted by universities, businesses or other organizations across globe.
Pros:
- You can go for courses for free, without making any payment
- Clean and fuss-free website
- Good quality courses, from highly prestigious institutions
- There are chances to gain credit towards formal qualifications
Cons:
- No mobile app
- Weak on software and online marketing courses.
- Not much from US colleges
OK… so here ends up all about the Best Online Learning Platforms 2020.
Now whenever its about best online learning platforms 2020, I have noticed one more topic emerging a lot… ie., e-learning platforms comparison.
Yes, there are people who refer this sort of comparison before going for a particular online learning platform. So, I thought to provide you with some e-learning platforms comparisons.
So, here we go…
E-Learning Platforms Comparison
Here you will find one or two e-learning platforms comparisons… this I think will make you more clear on which platform to go for…
FutureLearn vs. Udemy
This is one of the most common comparison, whenever its about comparing online learning platforms…
Ok… so the main difference between the two is that Udemy offer courses which anyone can create. They are absolutely not the courses accredited by institutions, as such of the courses offered by FutureLearn.
Moreover, learning is cheaper on FutureLearn than that of Udemy and several other online learning platforms India and globe.
More comparisons I will be updating in future.
Ok… so blog here ends up finally!!
Hopefully you enjoyed reading the blog and are now clearer about the top online learning platforms India and world.
Same sort of blog will be updating in future… So, yeah… stay tuned…
And yes, if having any query with this blog and any suggestions for me, kindly drop that in the comment box below…
Any suggestions from your side would be absolutely appreciable…
Thanks