Top 5 free online courses I am following in the lockdown as a to-be engineer

• July 14, 2020

Looking for free online courses, that may or may not be with certifications? I’d like to help you, especially considering that I google the same thing daily, atleast 5-6 times a day. I have checked random sites, some shady, some not so much, just to find glimpses of free courses online, or atleast trial ones that do not ask for my debit card number, as soon as they get me hooked on their visually well presented course outlines. From all that gibberish, I have been following these courses, which either are completely free or auditable. I truly believe mine could be a helpful guide because this list consists of varying sets of lectures from different branches and fields. But, at the same time, these lessons could be too basic for you, since they have been curated by me to fill up somehow my own empty well of knowledge. If you are not as interested, you can pass it down to your juniors, maybe freshman or sophomore level college graduates, as they are the best subject for my experimental blogging.

What should you look for in online courses

1. Certification

To be honest, while my opinions could be quite different from yours, certification is 70% of the reason why we even look for courses, online or otherwise. Because, at least for me, to learn, I read blogs, fork github repos, ask questions on stack overflow and watch youtube videos. The bare idea of going through the month long lectures to gain knowledge seems a stretch for me. Especially when I am already paying for college. So what is the point of learning if I am not getting a certificate out of it, you may ask. And to that I say, A LOT. And I am not going to bullshit about your learning curve. Far more important than that, there can be a lot other reasons that a free course could be helpful.

• There are courses online whose syllabus can match with any one of the subjects you have this semester. So, if you are thinking that there won’t be any exams right away, as soon as the lockdown lifts, you cannot be more wrong, my friend. Because that is exactly what is going to happen. So you better get on track and probably learn from better professors of better universities.
• You probably have to, with no other choice left, if you are doing a project or an extensive research work. Many of our resources are cut down, due to this pandemic, like the ability to use free software installed in college computers or face to face mentorships with teachers that are expert in your research work. You have to find an alternative way to learn, so that you can progress.
• Change of career and hobbies. Maybe, now that you are away from the group of people where everyone is hustling to become an engineer one day, you have finally found your true passion, or at least you want to try out something different. And no one likes to pay for a failed attempt. So it's better to try out this new interest of yours with free quality online courses, and maybe do extensive coursework later if you get really passionate about this new interest of yours.
2. Trustworthy Sources

I mentioned, even if you are going for free learning, you should still choose the most authentic ones from all the others. Because first of all it boosts your confidence. Many times, I have left some course mid-session just because I didn’t find it up to the mark but at the same time, because the website itself was not well known, I doubted if these lessons are reliable enough or not. Maybe they were, and I could have learnt a great deal if I just carried on. But I couldn’t gather enough confidence to trust an unknown source. Obviously, if you are not as discriminatory as me, you might not have to consider this at all.

3. The content

We don’t want someone reading through slides, the whole lectures, well if we did want that we could have just not bunked our college lectures. It is important to ensure that the lectures are curated as per your needs. And that it progresses linearly so that you can get the most out of it.

Now that we are over that, let’s see the unranked list!

1. Machine learning Crash course with tensorflow API

If you are already experienced in this field, this is not the course for you. This is a beginner’s level course that can help students understand the nuances of machine learning the right way. With that, I must also advise, if any lessons that you follow, say that you can be a Data engineer without the Maths, then they are fooling you. While it is important to know the theory, it is also crucial that there are practical bit sized lessons that can help you get through them and can also let you explore the practical applications of what you are learning. This crash course provides you with exactly that. As for me, it’s not that I haven’t already done ML projects, that I need this course. But because I do not regularly work in this field, but merely when a project or a competition demands, it’s hard for me to go back to such projects without brushing up the basics. And I do not always take notes, so I am following this course with a promise to myself that I will definitely make those notes this time.

Check here!
2. Data Processing and Feature Engineering with MATLAB

I am a simple minded person. I see a new, quality MATLAB course, I click. Unlike the majority of the world, my journey with CNN, and deep learning, did not start with python, but rather with MATLAB, and all of it just from reading their documentation. Later on, when I needed to deploy models on websites and apps, I forced myself to learn python. But, my one and only true love remains the same. I absolutely adore MATLAB. And when I saw this auditable course on Coursera I could not help but follow through. This is the second part of a 4 course series that leads to the ‘Practical Data Science with MATLAB’ Specialization. If you have MATLAB in your course syllabus, in any year of your collegehood, do check this one out. The best part is you can apply for certification later on, even if you have audited the course for now. With the free version, you cannot submit all of the assignments, but it is worth it. I swear. (As if that is a credible course review)

Check here
3. Introduction to Satellite Communications

Another Coursera course? You may ask, am I sure I am not endorsing them shamelessly? And to that I would say, credible sources do not need this kind of marketing(that too from me, purely laughable). I came across this course out of sheer luck. It is based on Coursera’s older version of auditable courses, as you can access almost everything without paying. Also, as I have this subject this final semester of my B.Tech journey, I thought I might as well learn something that is actually related to the degree that I will be getting. There’s only one issue with this course. That it is not in English(nor Hindi), but rather in Italian. And oftentimes I have completed the lessons by only reading the transcript without playing the actual video. But the content is very interesting and it makes me go back to it, every time. So, if you are not scared of learning new languages through unrelated courses online, this is a go to choice.

Check here
4. Get certified in the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing

When I shared my certificate for this course on LinkedIN, I got a lot of responses, ranging from people asking me for the link as they could not believe with their own two eyes(or not) that there is a FREE CERTIFICATION course, that too from GOOGLE. Others joined in and told me that they had done the course too, and now we have become comrades till the end of time. But it is actually true. I came across this one, while I was doing another of the Digital Garage Courses, and needless to say I am gonna do a few more of these, with notes and all.

Check here
5. Artificial Intelligence For Robotics

An advanced level free course for all the Robotics Software Engineer enthusiasts out there. I love most of the Udacity courses. They have experienced teachers, amazing and challenging practice problems and an even better community. They also offer nanodegree courses related to this field, in case you really liked this one. It is one of those long courses, and you’ll get hit with a lot of new but interesting concepts. I have always been interested in ROS but could never find available free content online to give myself that extra push. Apart from this, I am also following a couple other machine learning and app development courses on Udacity. But to be fair, I don’t see myself completing them anytime soon. And will probably remove them from my classroom, sooner or later.

Check here

Conclusion

So, now that I basically told you what level of technical knowledge I am currently at, for engineering noobies, I hope you acquired some faith in me, and for those who have already reached God Level, maybe come back on my blogs, to see if I ever improved and matured from a tech baby to awkward but more informed digital teenager. Happy learning!