How to upskill for FREE! (Data science edition)
- Education is democratized -
It’s become a thing of the past that schools and colleges are the only places where people find knowledge. While it’s important to have a career charted out for you and planned for, it comes at a heavy price when you want to be a part of a credible institution.
But… knowledge is meant to be shared, right? Knowledge is free and accessible to everyone. My recent article revealed how Clare Corthell proved to the world the “Open Source Data Science Master’s” that you can learn at home and for free. Find out more about the reference here:
What if you want to do it on your own and chart out your path. What if you wanted to create your own Master’s? In this article, I’ll share with you some of the many platforms from where I’ve personally done courses and enjoyed learning thoroughly.
There are other platforms but these are renowned and can provide you with the required credit whilst taking your skills to the next level. The platforms discussed in this article are:
- Cognitive Class (dot) AI
- Coursera
- DataCamp
- Kaggle
Cognitive Class
The website aims at addressing the skill shortage in the domains of data science, AI, Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Blockchain. It also consists of a virtual lab environment where the students can practice their new skills for free without having to have a high-end system. The learning paths are made for specific domains of learning and help the students in case they don’t know where to start?
It is cited as the stepping stone for a lot of big data courses as a part of the big data university. Most of the courses are prepared in association with IBM to help students benefit from the industry leaders.
Find out more here:
Coursera
Undoubtedly everyone’s favorite place to learn online, Coursera has been a benchmark in online education with courses that can be completed in weeks to specializations and degrees that can be completed all online and what makes it better is the quizzes and grading system always ensures that you holistically complete the learning in any given course.
Another reason why it is one of the best is for its “Financial Aid” program for almost all the provided courses and specializations which help students who come from all parts of the world to access education for free. The complimentary access to the courses for 6 months comes with the provided certifications that do not expire.
Learners can also audit the course for free and check out almost all the course content and post-audit enrollment for the certificate.
Some good specializations you should check out if you are a data enthusiast are here:
And to check out the entire collection:
DataCamp
Datacamp entered online education recently and has been booming ever since. The platform has a beautifully forged community with students having the access to tutorials, cheatsheets, and other open courses. Other learning paths can be accessed after taking their membership but the treasure trove in the free courses is plenty!
They also have their podcast — DataFramed.
The tutorials are very short and can help learners understand some concepts crisply and clearly; for eg: Time Series Forecasting, Graphics with ggplot2, jupyter notebooks, docstrings in python, etc.
Check out the tutorials here:
https://www.datacamp.com/community/tutorials
Check out their open courses here:
Kaggle
While we all know Kaggle to be the biggest hub for datasets and practically apply your data skills on some real-world data, there is no doubt that it is a competitive learning platform for data enthusiasts. Kaggle offers a decent collection of micro-courses ranging from Python, Machine Learning, Data Visualization, etc. which are code-heavy. So if you enjoy coding and want to learn how to perform these tasks in coding, Kaggle is your place to go.
The courses are free and provide you with certificates which you can cite in your resumes.
I would also recommend you to check out other data science enthusiasts’ code in the challenges put forth in the competitions section of Kaggle to see how the world is solving problems using coding.
Check out the free courses by Kaggle here:
Check out the competitions here:
Some other platforms you can check out are:
- UpGrad Free Learning:
https://www.upgrad.com/free-courses/
2. Udemy Free Courses:
https://www.udemy.com/courses/free/
3. Udacity Free Courses:
Let me know if you have any other platforms to add to this list!
For more such articles, stay tuned with us as we chart out paths on understanding data and coding and demystify other concepts related to Data Science. Please leave a review down in the comments.
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Do connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to share your love for data!
