The COVID-19 crisis has led to the increased popularity of massive open online course (MOOC). Many MOOC providers, such as Coursera, edX, LinkedIn Learning and Udemy, showed massive growth in enrolment.
I have also started learning on these MOOC platforms since the pandemic outbreak. In the beginning, I learnt on edX, which offers up to 90% discount on verified certificates only. So, I later switched from edX to Coursera, which allows learners to apply full financial aid for verified certificates.
There are two ways to get paid Coursera course certificate for free.
Learning continually. There’s always ‘one more thing’ to learn.
Steve Jobs
A. Financial Aid
Most popular courses on Coursera offer financial aid. Here is the step-by-step guide to applying Coursera financial aid:
- Open the course home page for the course you want to apply for financial aid with a computer.
- Click Financial aid available next to Enroll for Free.
- Click Continue to the application.
- Tick Shares accurate information on their application and Commit finishing their Coursera courses. Type I agree to the terms above in the box provided. Click Continue.
- Fill in the background information, including Educational Background, Annual Income, Employment Status and How much you can afford to pay.
- Answer the following two questions. Fill in the questionnaire. Click Submit Application.
Suggested Answer:
- How can the course benefit your career/study? Promotion, pay rise, change job
- Why you need to apply for Financial Aid? Unemployed, fresh graduate with no saving, family burden
- Assure you are going to complete the course and uphold academic integrity.
My Answer:
I am working in a marketing role at a tech firm and I believe that data analytics would be really helpful to my career. Nowadays data analytics is a hot topic and could apply to many fields, including marketing. With data analytics, I can help my company to predict consumer behaviour, back up my decision making and determine the return on investment of my company’s marketing efforts. I believe that data analytics is playing an important role and will be more and more important in marketing, especially digital marketing, which is a major part of my job responsibility.
However, I could not afford to pay for the course because my family financially depends on me and I cannot invest money in myself. Also, as a fresh graduate, I do not have a lot of savings in my account. With the current pandemic, the unemployment rate is getting higher and I need to keep more cash on hand to prepare for any unpredicted situations. At the same time, I need to keep equip myself in order to secure a job in the job market.
I am a responsible student. I would finish the course on schedule and do all assignments by myself with a high standard. I had previously completed the FinTech: Finance Industry Transformation and Regulation Specialization on time and received good grades. This can prove that I do take online courses seriously.
Suggested Answer:
- How this course relates to your current/future career?
- Give examples on the topic that you are most interested in/can benefit you the most.
- How can the certificate increase your competitiveness in the job market?
My Answer:
I am interested in obtaining the IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate and this course is included in this professional certificate. This course is the course that I am most interested in. In this digital era, everyone needs to have some knowledge of programming, and Python is the most popular and one of the most widely used programming language. Unfortunately, I have not got a chance to learn Python yet and I think that this course will be a good start.
Python can be helpful to marketers, especially in digital marketing. Python can help me get more insights from data, make better-informed data-driven decisions, automate routine activities, and increase the return of investment from marketing campaigns.
I can confidently say that working knowledge of Python can definitely increase my competitiveness in the job market. After completing this course, I think I am going to know if I have the potential to become a data analyst.
I applied for financial aid for the IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate. Since there were 9 courses in the Professional Certificate, I had to submit financial aid application for each course. 15 days after I had submitted my applications, I received separate emails letting me know that all applications were approved. Then I was automatically enrolled in all 9 courses at once.
The only problem is the approved courses need to be completed within 180 days. As a full-time employee, I can only use my limited after-work hours to learn. I have to remind myself to keep learning so I can catch the deadline.
How to increase the chance of receiving Coursera financial aid?
- Apply with a school email address
- Answer the question honestly, sincerely and exceed word limits
- Have successfully completed other Coursera course before/have a good record in Coursera
B. Free Trial
If you do not bother to submit financial aid application, you can start a 7-day free trial to get full access to a Coursera course. You can receive the digital certificate for free if you can complete the whole course within this free trial period!
Completing a course in one week is entirely possible. I spent around one week completing the first course of the IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate “Introduction to Data Analytics” and another week on the second course “Excel Basics for Data Analytics”.
However, your financial aid application will be cancelled if you start a free trial while the application is being reviewed.
Happy learning!