Leading online learning organization edX (www.edx.org) offers free courses from some of the world’s best universities, including Harvard, MIT, Tsinghua, and University of Queensland. Taking an edX course gets you ahead of the curve – with a stamps of approval from MIT, Harvard, Caltech and others that you can place proudly on your CV. We’ve selected some of the top business courses currently available – for free – on edx.org.
#1 Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer? MITx Starts 18 Mar 2014 Get a jump on one of the fundamentals of business with MITx’s Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer? The 25,600 companies started by MIT alumni generate $2 trillion in revenue and have created 3.3 million jobs. If MIT were a country, it would be the 11th largest economy in the world. Become a citizen of this economy: join the entrepreneurial conversation with Bill Aulet, Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at MIT and senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
#2 MITx 3.086x: Innovation and Commercialization Your MBA will no doubt challenge you to innovate. Learn from current, distinguished innovators with MITx’s Innovation and Commercialization as they debunk the concept of innovation as a linear process, from research to development to product in the market. You’ll learn a simple model for understanding innovation as a highly iterative process, requiring the best innovators to cycle repeatedly through Technology, Market and Implementation steps until the pieces come together.
#3 TsinghuaX 80512073x Financial Analysis and Decision Making Tsinghua’s Financial Analysis and Decision Making is a fantastic in-depth look at business financials, covering everything from the basics of financial statements to the conceptual framework of financial information and its relationship to industry and strategy execution, making it essential pre-MBA learning. This course will help you get the jump on learning how businesses create value, how to think with financials in mind, and how to use financial information in business decision-making.
#4 MITx 15.071x: The Analytics Edge Give your MBA application the advantage by taking The Analytics Edge from MITx. This indispensable course uses real world examples of how analytics have significantly improved businesses and industries to teach crucial analytics methods: linear regression, logistic regression, trees, text analytics, clustering, visualization, and optimization. You’ll use the statistical software R to build models and work hands-on with data, and taught to apply analytics to real-world applications by Dimitris Bertsimas, Boeing Professor of Operations Research and Co-Director of the Operations Research Center at MIT with several PhD students of the MIT Operations Research Center.
#5 UQx Think101x The Science of Everyday Thinking Think101x: The Science of Everyday Thinking from the University of Queensland will help you think better as you prep and make your way through your MBA. You’ll get a handle on how people form and change their opinions, expectations, and decisions, and learn to rely on deliberate analytic and logical thinking rather than instinctive or emotional thinking. Your professors are Jason Tangen, a UQ Senior Lecturer in cognition, and Matthew Thompson, a cognitive scientist, Fulbright Scholar, and Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Queensland and Harvard Medical School. This course is especially dynamic, including guest speakers Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in economic science, Elizabeth Loftus, a pioneer in the study of false memories, the MythBusters, and 21 leading thinkers from across the world.
#6 University of TorontoX BE101x: Behavioural Economics in Action How do growing businesses get consumer behavior to work for them? Behavioural Economics in Action from the University of Toronto gives you hands-on experience with the methods of behavioral economics to help you better understand how methods can be harnessed to “nudge” choice. Dilip Soman, Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, leads the course with guests such as Harvard’s Professor Sendhil Mullainathan, Ogilvy Group’s Rory Sutherland, Owain Service of the Behavioural Insights Team and UK Cabinet Office, and NPR Columnist and Author Shankar Vedantam.
#7 GeorgetownX INFX523-01: Globalization’s Winners and Losers: Challenges for Developed and Developing Countries Globalization’s Winners and Losers: Challenges for Developed and Developing Countries examines how the spread of trade, investment, and technology across borders affects firms, workers, and communities in developed and developing countries. It investigates who gains from globalization and who is hurt or disadvantaged by globalization, tackling tough topics such as sweatshop abuses, supply chains, wage inequality, and economic superpowers and declines. The course boasts a phenomenal team of professors, including Theodore H. Moran, who holds the Marcus Wallenberg Chair in International Business and Finance at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.
#8 UTAustinX UT.3.01x: Age of Globalization Globalization creates winners and losers among countries and global corporations, making competition the beating heart of the globalization process. Age of Globalization will enrich your requisite understanding of world systems, teaching you how to how to identify and analyze the global, historical, and cultural systems driving globalization.
#9 MITx 21W.789x: Building Mobile Experiences Business has gone mobile – and your future business needs to be there. During Building Mobile Experiences course you’ll embark on a project-based program that will guide you through creating a mobile application – from generative research to design, usability, implementation and field evaluation – with Frank Bentley, Principal Research Scientist in Mobile Sensing and User Behavior Research at Yahoo Labs in California, and Ed Barrett, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Media Studies and Writing at MIT.
#10 CaltechX Ec1011x: Principles of Economics with Calculus Successful completion of Principles of Economics with Calculus will provide you with an in-depth understanding of basic economics, and will permanently change the way you see the world – an essential step in your business education. This is a real Caltech class: extremely challenging and taught concurrently to Caltech and on-line students.