10 Best edX Certifications and Free Courses to Learn Online in 2024

These are the best edX courses and certifications to learn Python, Data Science, Computer Science, Programming, Frontend Development for FREE, and more in 2024.

javinpaul
Javarevisited
Published in
9 min readJul 19, 2021

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Is edX courses worth it?

Hello guys, if you are looking for the best online courses and certifications to join on edX then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared the best courses from Udemy, Coursera, and Pluralsight and in this article, I am going to share the best edX programming and development courses to join in 2024.

If you don’t know, edX is one of the large e-learning platforms designed by two of the major universities, MIT and Harvard, and founded in 2012 for the purpose of offering online education worldwide in almost every industry from business and marketing to programming and web development.

The best thing about edX is that it offers free online college courses from Harvard and MIT. So, you get a chance to learn from the world’s top university free of cost, isn’t that amazing?

The edX platform also has different types of courses and certificates such as MicroMaster and Professional certificates offered by many organizations such as Microsoft, IBM, and many top universities such as Michigan, MIT, Harvard, Pennsylvania, and more.

Most of the edX content offered by MIT and Harvard is free for learning, which means you can learn for free but you need to pay for certificates. They are very similar to Coursera, which also provide online learning materials from world’s top universities and organization.

Today in this article you will explore some of the best courses and certificates for software developers that can help you boost your career and gain some experience and knowledge from top organizations.

The list includes courses and professional certificates from the world’s top universities like Harvard as well as top tech companies like IBM. It also has courses and certificates to learn in-demand skills like Computer Science, Web Development, Python, Data Science, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning.

10 Best edX Professional Certificates and Courses to learn from Harvard and MIT

Without wasting any more of your time, here are the best online courses and certifications from edX programmers and developers who can join.

1. CS50’s Introduction to Computer Science [FREE]

This course is the famous computer science course in the entire edX platform offered by Harvard University for completely Free and teaches the students how to think algorithmic to solve problems efficiently alongside some programming languages such as Python, C, JavaScript, and more.

This is an entry-level course taught by David J. Malan. You will also learn about key computers science concepts like abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering, and web development.

More than 2,951,637 people have already joined this course which speaks a lot about the popularity of this free edX course. It’s self-paced and completely free and takes around 12 weeks to complete provided you spend 6 to 8 hours each week.

Here is the link to join this course CS50’s Introduction to Computer Science

10 Best edX Certifications and Free Courses to Learn Online

2. CS50’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python [Free]

This is another awesome free course offered by the Harvard University and the best one for learning how to use machine learning and computer vision to solve real-world problems

This course explores the concepts and algorithms which are the foundation of modern artificial intelligence using Python programming language and its various libraries, and its usage on technologies like game-playing engines, handwriting recognition, and machine translation.

You will not only learn how to use them but also about designing and creating neural networks and leverage its power of learning complex problems and many more concepts that are related to artificial intelligence.

Talking about social proof, more than 366,805 students have already joined this popular edX free Artificial Intelligence course. It’s self-paced, online, and completely free. It will take approximately 7 weeks to complete this course at the rate of 7 to 10 hours per week.

Here is the link to join this course Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python

best edX course to learn Python

3. Harvard’s Data Science Certification

This is one of the most popular Data Science Professional Certificate from edX. This comprehensive program is created by Harvard University to guide you from the beginning on how to become a data scientist.

Starting with the basics of the R programming language that is popular among data scientists like Python then moving to some statistical concepts and how to make data visualization using the ggplot2 library inside R language as well as machine learning and how to apply some concepts such as Linear regression.

Along the way, you will also get familiar with essential tools for practicing data scientists such as Unix/Linux, git and GitHub, and RStudio.

By the way, this Professional certificate is not free as it's a combination of courses. It’s a self-paced course and approximately takes around 1.5 years to complete with the rate of 2–3 hours per week.

Here is the link to learn moreHarvard’s Data Science Certification

best edX course to learn Data Science

4. Front-End Web Developer Professional Certificate

This is another best and the massive professional certificate is offered by the W3C institution to teach students the programming language needed to start a career as a Front-end web developer.

In this program you will start by learning the fundamentals of modern HTML5 with some advanced features such as web components and APIs then moving to styling your website using CSS as well as adding some animation using the Javascript and much more.

This is also a self-paced course and takes around 7 months to complete given you work for 5 to 7 hours per week, which is achievable. Again this is not free because it's a professional certificate and contains multiple courses.

Here is the link to join this program Front-End Web Developer Professional Certificate

best edX course to learn Frontend Development

5. Introduction to Python Programming [Professional Certificate]

This is another popular edX professional certificate offered by Georgia Tech for people who want to learn the fundamentals of computer science using Python Programming language, one of the most popular programming languages in the world.

This professional certification course is intended to be for beginners who are willing to start a career as a python developer starting from the fundamentals of python programming such as variables, loops, operators, debugging then moving to some advanced topics such as functions and handling files and data and object-oriented programming.

You will also learn about the core data structures for creating useful programs: strings, lists, dictionaries, and file manipulation. This is also a paid and self-paced course and takes around 5 months to compete with 9 to 10 hours of daily work. Though, you will receive a certificate to showcase in your Resume.

Here is the link to join this certification Introduction to Python Programming

best edX course to learn Python programming

6. Visualizing Data with Python [Free]

The best course designed by the giant company called IBM targeting python developers and teaching them how to use this beautiful programming language Python to visualize their data using some libraries such as matplotlib seaborn and Folium for making interactive maps.

This course is also completely free and more than 50,562 students have already enrolled. It’s also self-paced and takes around 5 weeks to complete with 2 to 4 hours of daily commitment.

Here is the link to join this course — Visualizing Data with Python

best free edX course to learn Data Visualization

7. Analytics: Essential Tools and Methods [MicroMaster Program]

This analytic course is the Georgia Institute of technology is one of the best courses to teach students how to use many programming languages such as python and R.

As part of this course, you will learn how to create some data visualization and understanding the models and methods of analytics and how efficiently to apply them to solve your problems as well as learning statistics and machine learning, and more.

This is a MicroMaster program, hence it's not free, and it's also a bit expensive with $2475 USD for the whole program. But, this is an instructor-led program with assignments and exams that have specific due dates, which means you will have a real class-like learning experience.

Here is the link to learn moreAnalytics: Essential Tools and Methods

best edX course to learn Data Analysis

8. Applied AI Professional Certification by IBM

This comprehensive edX professional certificate course is designed for students who are willing to deep dive into artificial intelligence and neural network with no prior knowledge required.

You will start from scratch and learn the fundamentals of python the create an image classifier using this programming language and OpenCV library for computer vision as well as some concepts in data science.

This is also a self-paced program and takes around 6 months to complete with 3 to 5 hours per week. You can complete early if you can spend more time daily.

Here is the link to join this certification Applied AI Professional Certification

best free edX course to learn AI

9. Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) [FREE]

Another great free edX course to learn the python programming language is programming for everybody offered by the Michigan university taking you from the simple concepts of computer programming then moving to practical lessons on how to use variables conditional execution such as the loops as well as function to create some simple programs and much more.

Here is the link to join this certification Programming for Everybody

best free edX certification to learn Python

10. Deep Learning Professional Certificate by IBM

The best and comprehensive professional certificate to learn deep learning from scratch using the python language and other libraries such as Keras PyTorch and TensorFlow and apply them to real-world problems.

You will create neural networks using these libraries for supervised and unsupervised learning as well as convolutional neural network and much more.

Here is the link to join this course — Deep Learning Professional Certificate by IBM

best edX certificaiton for deep learning

That’s all about the best edX courses and professional certificates for software developers, data scientist, web developer, and anyone who want to start their career in the Information technology field. edX has made e-learning much easier and cheaper than ever before so you can learn the best and comprehensive courses in software development in many industries without leaving your home or spending that much money on colleges.

Other Programming Resources you may like

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you find these best edX online courses and certifications useful then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.

P. S. — If you are looking for the best Udemy courses and certification in 2024 then you can also check out my list of best Udemy courses for Programmers and Software developers. It contains the best Udemy online courses to learn Java Programming, Python, Git, and other essential skills required for Software development.

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javinpaul
Javarevisited

I am Java programmer, blogger, working on Java, J2EE, UNIX, FIX Protocol. I share Java tips on http://javarevisited.blogspot.com and http://java67.com