While you are stuck at home during the coronavirus lockdown, with no commute to work and no social engagements, you may realize that you have extra time at hand. Why not use that time to upskill yourself by either brushing up on a skill that will help with your career or simply learn something that has always interested you.

Whether you want to learn to code, photoshop, read up on Hindu scriptures, understand Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile, or learn about any other conceivable subject, there is an online course that you can undertake. What’s more, most of them are free.

Here’s a list of learning platforms that can help you upskill yourself while sitting at home.

Udemy

Yale and Harvard

Shine Learning

Rosetta Stone

edX

Coursera

Udacity

Simplilearn

Several yellow cases of Rosetta Stone language education software bundles for sale. You can also take their online courses. Shutterstock

Udemy Shutterstock

Coursera Shutterstock

Learn cyber security on Simplilearn Shutterstock

Harvard is offering free courses on religion, so you can study Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism or Chistianity through their respective scriptures over 4 weeks Shutterstock

Learn law on Shine Learning Shutterstock

Edx Shutterstock

Learn data science on the Udacity Nanodegree programmes Shutterstock

Shine Learning is India’s largest professional courses and career skills portal. It offers over 500 online courses in banking and finance, IT, law, management, human resources, personal development etc. Some of the most popular courses are on supply chain management, Six Sigma, GST practitioner, among others. Shine Learning uses an algorithm that recommends courses to its users after analyzing their resume and application history.

Everyone dreams of studying at Yale or Harvard but not everyone actually manages to land there. Yale and Harvard realize that offer online courses (a large number of them free) to help students across the globe, because it’s never too late to start learning. Harvard is offering free courses on religion, so you can study Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism or Chistianity through their respective scriptures over 4 weeks. There’s also a 3-week course on Beethoven’s 9th symphony and another on Mozart. Of course, there are several courses on computer science.

The online courses offered by Yale have lectures that were recorded in the Yale College classroom and are available in video, audio and text transcript formats. Most courses are on Humanities.

Udemy offers over 100,000 online video courses on topics such as business, design, photography, marketing, IT and software and personal development. Most courses are paid for but they have a free 30-day, money-back guarantee. Right now they are offering major discounts on their most popular courses.

Simplilearn is the world’s leading certification training provider. It provides online training in disciplines where technology and best practices are changing rapidly and hence upskilling is important. These include cyber security, cloud computing, project management, digital marketing, and data science among others.

Udacity is a global learning platform that specializes in subjects that provide skills which tech companies want. Udacity Nanodegree programmes provide credentials earned through a series of online courses and projects in an array of subjects from self-driving cars and AI to data science and digital marketing. The courses are paid though they are offering some free trials right now.

If you want to learn a new language you could check out Rosetta Stone that offers online courses in a series of languages from Mandarin to Spanish. They have a 3-day free trial and courses emphasise on pronunciation.

Coursera is an online learning platform that offers massive open online courses (MOOC), specializations, and even degrees in a variety of subjects, such as engineering, data science, machine learning, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, and others. Some of the best global universities including Ivy Leagues such as Harvard and Yale offer courses on Coursera. While most courses are free, for a fee you can get certification in certain courses as well.

You can access over 2500 courses on everything from coding to world literature from more than 140 institutions including University of Toronto, Harvard, MIT and Stanford. There is even a course on epidemics, offered by Hong Kong University which features a supplementary module on Covid-19.