Coursera's 23 most popular online courses right now — from public health courses on COVID-19 to the science of happiness

This course is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior. It explores topics like perception, communication, learning, memory, decision-making, persuasion, emotions, and social behavior. Coursework also examines how those mental elements develop in children, how they differ across people, how they're affected by illness and injury, and more.

This Specialization covers the elements of the short story, narrative essay, and memoir formats. Students will learn the techniques of good writers as well as how to constructively analyze peer writing. In a final project, students will draft, rewrite, and complete an origin story in the genre of their choosing.

In this Specialization, students will learn key concepts for investment management. Students will start by developing a global understanding of financial markets, how rational and irrational behaviors impact finance at micro and macro levels, and then focus on how to build and manage a portfolio with a longterm view, among other things.

The courses teach the theory that underlies strong investment decisions, as well as real-world skills you can apply with your advisor when discussing investment proposals, managing personal assets, or a client's investment portfolio.

In a final project, students will create a 5-year investment plan that accounts for an investor's goals and constraints.

This four-course Specialization focuses on the fundamental skills of graphic design: process, historical context, and communication through image-making and typography needed to "make and communicate" in graphic design. Students will apply what they've learned in future interface design, motion graphics, and editorial design.

In a final project, students complete a branding project for a professional portfolio.

This Specialization focuses on the skills needed for a college-level course or professional field, such as how to conduct academic research and express ideas clearly in an academic format. In a final Capstone Project, students will demonstrate what they've learned in an academic research paper on an issue of their choosing.

This career success Specialization combines ten courses on skills meant to improve employability and advancement, like project management, time management, problem-solving, and more.

This course will give students a better understanding of how the body responds to exercise, including a number of significant adjustments required by it to respond to the physical stress of exercise. This includes changes in carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism, causes of muscle soreness and fatigue, and more. Students will also be able to identify behaviors, choices, and environments that impact their health and training.

Students will complete nutrition logs, heart rate monitoring, calculations of total daily caloric expenditure, and body mass index (BMI). They'll also examine the scientific evidence for the health benefits of exercise including the prevention and treatment of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity (weight loss), depression, and dementia.

This Specialization explores the new digital marketing landscape including digital marketing analytics, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and 3D Printing. Students will learn new examples, concepts, and tools for digital creation, distribution, promotion, and pricing products and services.

Once students complete the courses, they will have the opportunity to apply their skills to a real-life capstone project setup in partnership with Grainger. This Specialization is also part of the University of Illinois Masters of Business Administration degree program, the iMBA.

This Specialization is designed for students looking to break into Deep Learning and teaches theory as well as how to see real-life industry application. Over five courses, students learn the foundations of Deep Learning, understand how to build neural networks, and how to lead successful machine learning projects.

All ideas will be practiced in Python and TensorFlow, which will be taught as part of the program. Students will work on case studies from healthcare, autonomous driving, sign language reading, music generation, and natural language processing.

Wharton's Entrepreneurship Specialization offers five courses on conception, design, organization, and management of new businesses. These include guidance from Wharton professors and insight from current Wharton start-up founders and financiers and will take students through launch, growth, financing, and profitability.

This Specialization focuses on developing advanced Excel Skills for Business. Students will practice the skills they learn in workbooks, quizzes, and challenges, and use spreadsheet software in a variety of business contexts.

This Specialization, and its five courses, introduces students to the foundations of positive psychology and its key theories and research. In a final applied learning project, students design and justify small-scale positive interventions to improve specific aspects of their personal wellbeing based on what they learned in each course.

This Specialization, and its five courses, builds on the Python for Everybody course and will introduce fundamental programming concepts including data structures, networked application program interfaces, and databases, using the Python programming language.

In the fifth course, students complete a Capstone Project in which they apply what they've learned to design and create applications for data retrieval, processing, and visualization.

This course is an overview of the ideas, methods, and institutions involved in financial markets, with an emphasis on financially-savvy leadership skills. Students will receive an introduction to risk management and behavioral finance principles to understand securities, insurance, and banking industries in the world.

This Specialization is based on four of the most popular courses at the Wharton School, and is engineered to give students the tools and techniques for defining and achieving success in their lives. Using exercises, self-diagnostic surveys, quizzes, and many case studies, students will learn how to define what they want and the best way to get it.

Unlike business courses that heavily emphasize organizational practices, these four courses focus on personal practices, from communicating effectively to even how to say sorry.

This Specialization offered by Johns Hopkins is intended for those already working or aspiring to work in public health locally, regionally, or nationally. It includes five courses that teach students to use the core epidemiologic tool set to measure the health of populations, assess interventions, collect and analyze data, and investigate outbreaks and epidemics.

This course features insight directly from experts about the theory behind the analysis of COVID-19 and its spread, as well as how to interpret new information using core principles of public health, epidemiology, medicine, health economics, and social science.

Students will be able to watch regular situation reports about the state of the epidemic, provided by the researchers of J-IDEA and its director, Professor Neil Ferguson.

This course is regularly updated with current information about COVID-19, aggregating information issued by the CDC, WHO, and other leading agencies. It covers the basics, as well as personal protective equipment, diagnostics, and other related material. Healthcare professionals can earn CME credit.

IBM's professional certificate includes nine courses that will give beginners job-ready skills and techniques.

The program covers a range of data science topics, including open source tools and libraries, methodologies, Python, databases, SQL, data visualization, data analysis, and machine learning. Students practice in the IBM Cloud using real data science tools and data sets.

Upon completion, students will have completed a portfolio of projects and hands-on assignments. In addition to a professional certificate from Coursera to add to your resume and LinkedIn, you'll also receive a digital badge from IBM recognizing proficiency in Data Science.

Google's IT Support professional certificate includes five courses designed to prepare beginners for an entry-level role in IT support.

Students are introduced to troubleshooting, customer service, networking, operating systems, system administration, and security through video lectures, quizzes, and hands-on labs and widgets.

You can also earn a CompTIA and Google dual credential when you complete the Google certificate and pass the CompTIA A+ certification exams.

This Specialization includes six related courses to improve literacy in business so you can switch careers, start a business or optimize one, or apply to business school. In five courses, students focus on the fundamentals of marketing, accounting, operations, and finance. In a final capstone project, they develop a go-to-market strategy to address a real business challenge.

This course teaches you how to learn using techniques used by experts in art, music, math, science, sports, and other disciplines, as well as best practices shown by research to be the most effective for tough subjects.

Students will come to understand how the brain uses two distinct learning modes, how it processes and packages ("chunks") information, as well as illusions of learning, memory techniques, and effective ways to deal with procrastination.

The Science of Well-Being is an online version of Professor Laurie Santos' Psychology and the Good Life course, which became the most popular class ever taught within Yale University's 317-year history in 2018. The class helps quantitatively increase your own happiness and build more productive habits. You can find out more in our full review here.