25 Best Online Courses You Can Take Free From Harvard In 2020

May 31st, 2019   |   Updated on April 8th, 2023

Harvard offers a variety of open learning opportunities, including online courses and modules. At Harvard Extension School, free and open learning is hardly a new concept. Explore Harvard Free Online courses below:

1. Introduction To Digital Humanities

Develop skills in digital research and visualization techniques across subjects and fields within the humanities.

• Duration: 7 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 2-4 hours per week
• Subject: Humanities
• Course Language: English
• Difficulty: Introductory
• Credit: Verified Certificate

What You’ll Learn

• What the term “digital humanities” means in different disciplines.
• How common digital tools work and examples of projects using them.
• How various file types can be used to create, gather, and organize data.
• How to use command-line functions to analyze text.
• How to use free tools to create visual text analysis.

2. CS50 for Lawyers

• Duration: 10 weeks long
• Time Commitment: 3-6 hours per week
• Subject: Computer Science
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory
• Credit:  Verified Certificate

What You’ll Learn

• Challenges at the Intersection of Law and Technology
• Computational Thinking
• Programming Languages
• Algorithms, Data Structures
• Cryptography
• Cybersecurity

3. Data Science: Machine Learning

• Duration: 8 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 2-4 hours per week
• Subject: Computer Science
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory
• Credit: Verified Certificate

What You’ll Learn

• The basics of machine learning
• How to perform cross-validation to avoid overtraining
• Several popular machine learning algorithms
• How to build a recommendation system
• What is regularization and why it is useful

4. Using Python for Research

• Duration: 5 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 4-8 hours per week
• Subject: Computer Science
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Credit: Verified Certificate

What You’ll Learn

• Python 3 programming basics (a review)
• Python tools (e.g., NumPy and SciPy modules) for research applications
• How to apply Python research tools in practical settings

5. Entrepreneurship In Emerging Economies

• Duration: 6 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 3-5 hours per week
• Subject: Business
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• An awareness of the opportunities for entrepreneurship in fast-growing emerging markets
• An understanding of a conceptual framework for evaluating such opportunities
• An appreciation of the types of problems that lend themselves to entrepreneurial solutions

6. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python

• Duration: 7 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 10-30 hours per week
• Subject: Computer Science
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory
• Credit: Verified Certificate

What You’ll Learn

• Graph search algorithms
• Reinforcement learning
• Machine learning
• Artificial intelligence principles
• How to design intelligent systems
• How to use AI in Python programs

7. The Architectural Imagination

• Duration: 10 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 3-5 hours per week
• Subject: Art & Design
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory
• Credit: Verified Certificate

What You’ll Learn

• How to read, analyze, and understand different forms of architectural representation
• Social and historical contexts behind major works of architecture
• Basic principles to produce your own architectural drawings and models
• Pertinent content for academic study or a professional career as an architect

8. Poetry in America: Modernism

• Duration: 8 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 3-5 hours per week
• Subject: Humanities
• Course Language: English
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• Best practices for reading, analyzing, and discussing poems and other texts
• An understanding of American Modernism (ca. 1910-1945) in its historical, social, cultural, and artistic contexts
• Strategies for identifying formal and thematic features that make the diverse array of American Modernist poems “Modern”

9. Fundamentals of Neuroscience, Part 1: The Electrical Properties Of The Neuron

• Duration: 5 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 3-5 hours per week
• Subject: Science
• Collection: Fundamentals of Neuroscience
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• Fundamentals of bioelectricity
• The importance of resting potential
• The properties of passive membranes
• Action potentials, their currents, and their role in the nervous system
• How you can do neuroscience in your home

10. CS50’s Mobile App Development with React Native

• Duration: 13 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 6-9 hours per week
• Subject: Computer Science
• Course Language: English
• Difficulty: Intermediate

What You’ll Learn

• JavaScript
• ES6
• React, JSX
• Components, Props, State, Style
• Components, Views, User Input
• Debugging
• Data
• Navigation
• Expo Components
• Redux
• Performance
• Shipping, Testing

11. CS50’s Web Programming With Python And JavaScript

• Duration: 12 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 6-9 hours per week
• Subject: Programming
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Collection: Fundamentals of Neuroscience
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Intermediate

What You’ll Learn

• Git
• HTML, CSS
• Flask
• SQL
• APIs
• JavaScript

12. Practical Improvement Science in Health Care: A Roadmap for Getting Results 

• Duration: 7 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 2-5 hours per week
• Subject: Business and Management
• Course Language: English
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• Why improvement science is valuable in health, and health care, and daily life.
• Why understanding a system is critical to improving a process.
• The value of conducting iterative tests of change.
• How an improvement project evolves into reliable, standard work.
• How to design and execute a personal improvement project, including an aim, measures, and tests of change.
• How interprofessional teams come together to do successful improvement work.

13. CS50’s Introduction To Game Development

• Duration: 12 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 6-9 hours per week
• Subject: Programming
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Intermediate

What You’ll Learn

• Principles of 2D and 3D graphics, animation, sound, and collision detection
• Unity and LÖVE 2D
• Lua, C#
• Basics of game design and development

14.  PredictionX: Omens, Oracles & Prophecies

• Duration: 1 weeks long
• Time Commitment: 3-5 hours per week
• Subject: Humanities
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory
• Credit:  Verified Certificate

What You’ll Learn

• A variety of methods from across cultures and history for divining the future
• A common framework that describes human attempts to predict the future

15. Leaders Of Learning

• Duration: 10 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 2-4 hours per week
• Subject: Education & Teaching
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• How to define your personal theory of learning
• What leadership looks like in different learning environments
• How an organization’s structure reflects its theories of learning
• How physical and digital design shape learning
• How neuroscience will affect the future of learning

16. Mechanical Ventilation for COVID-19

• Duration: 1 weeks long
• Time Commitment: 2-5 hours per week
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

This course will help prepare licensed non-ICU hospital clinicians to support critical care respiratory therapists, physicians, and nurses in caring for a patient who is receiving mechanical ventilation. Given the increasing number of patients contracting COVID-19 and developing pneumonia, the medical system is, and will continue to be, in dire need of licensed medical professionals who can support the care for these patients.

Continuing Education

Medical professionals who complete the course and pass a brief quiz can claim up to three continuing education credit hours. Eligible learners can claim three _AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ (physicians), nursing CEU credits, or a certificate of attendance for allied health professionals and other learners.

17. Data Science: R Basics

• Duration: 8 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 1-2 hours per week
• Subject: Data Science
• Collection: Professional Certificate in Data Science
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• Basic R syntax
• Foundational R programming concepts such as data types, vectors arithmetic, and indexing
• How to perform operations in R including sorting, data wrangling using dplyr, and making plots

18. Improving Your Business Through a Culture of Health

• Duration: 9 weeks long
• Time Commitment: 1-3 hours per week
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory
• Credit:  Verified Certificate

What You’ll Learn

While the United States is one of the world’s wealthiest nations, it is far from the healthiest. Our nation’s burden of disease affects businesses every day, from sick employees and families reducing productivity and increasing costs, to product recalls and failures, to environmental scandals such as toxic chemical emissions harming communities and reputations.

Named Runner Up for Best Online Program of 2018 by ProEd, this HarvardX course is presented by leading faculty from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Business School and will provide businesses with strategies, tactics, and tools to gain a competitive advantage by implementing a Culture of Health to address these issues and stay ahead. Embracing a Culture of Health can improve your employees’ well-being as well as the health of your consumers, your communities, and the environment. A Culture of Health can help you to reduce costs, increase revenues and profits, and enhance your company’s reputation.

19. Contract Law: From Trust To Promise To Contract

• Duration: 8 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 3-6 hours per week
• Subject: Social Science
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Intermediate

What You’ll Learn

• A theoretical background of contracts, trust, and promise
• How to form contracts through valid offer and acceptance
• Limits to enforcing contracts
• Issues excusing contractual performance
• Available remedies for contractual breaches
• Third parties’ ability to enforce contracts

20. Justice

• Duration: 12 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 3-6 hours per week
• Subject: Humanities
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• The fundamentals of political philosophy
• An understanding of social justice and criminal justice, and the roles they play in the modern justice system
• A deeper sense of the philosophy that underlies modern issues such as affirmative action, same-sex marriage, and equality
• The ability to better articulate and evaluate philosophical arguments and ask philosophical questions

21. Nonprofit Financial Stewardship Webinar: Introduction To Accounting And Financial Statements

• Subject: Business
• Platform: Executive Education
• Difficulty: Introductory

Course Description

• The Introduction to Nonprofit Accounting and Financial Statements webinar series is designed to introduce basic
• nonprofit accounting concepts and financial statements to individuals who have had little or no experience with finance or accounting.

22. Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs

• Duration: 6 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 2-4 hours per week
• Subject: Health & Medicine
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• Core concepts in community health as part of primary health systems
• Key components in the design and optimization of community health worker programs as exemplified through country case studies
• How to advocate for community health worker programs with key stakeholders
• The evidence demonstrating the impact and returns of community health workers
• How to build coalitions to support government-led programs
• How to break down silos and reduce duplicative efforts in the wider community health ecosystem

23. Launching Breakthrough Technologies

• Duration: 6 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 3-5 hours per week
• Subject: Business
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

A systematic approach to the technology commercialization process

• How to match customer needs with promising technologies
• How to access technologies for commercialization and generate new use scenarios
• How to evaluate the readiness of a technology based on market and team readiness
• How to align business plans and operating models to markets and technology
• How to rate and rank ideas based on feedback from customers and experts

24. Fundamentals of Clinical Trials

• Duration: 4 weeks long
• Time Commitment: 4-6 hours per week
• Course Language: English
• Platform: edX

What You’ll Learn

This course will provide an introduction to the scientific, statistical, and ethical aspects of clinical trials research. Topics include the design, implementation, and analysis of trials, including first-in-human studies (dose-finding, safety, proof of concept, and Phase I), Phase II, Phase III, and Phase IV studies. All aspects of the development of a study protocol will be addressed, including criteria for the selection of participants, treatments, and endpoints, randomization procedures, sample size determination, data analysis, and study interpretation. The ethical issues that arise at each phase of therapy development will be explored.

This course contains 12 modules. The modules will be released Monday of each week, with the exception of some holiday weeks. Most students should plan to spend 4 – 6 hours on each module. Students will have until February 14, 2014 to earn a HarvardX certificate.

25. The Health Effects Of Climate Change

• Duration: 7 Weeks
• Time Commitment: 3-5 hours per week
• Subject: Health & Medicine
• Credit: Verified Certificate
• Platform: edX
• Difficulty: Introductory

What You’ll Learn

• Climate change’s impacts on nutrition, migration, and infectious diseases
• The research methods used in this field
• Strategies to mitigate and adapt to the health impacts of climate change
• How changes in Earth’s atmosphere affect health outcomes
• How to assess the various ways of addressing the health effects of global warming
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