48 Free Online Courses You Can Take Right Now!

List of Free Online Business and Management Courses

1. Introduction to Business Ownership

Anyone planning to start a business can take this course! You will learn the basics about business ownership such as setting the capital, where to get financing, the legal forms and licences you may need, taxes, and marketing.

In this short series you’ll learn the basics about things such as how much money you’ll need to start your business, where you can potentially get financing, what legal form you want your business to take, the necessary licenses and permits, what you should know about taxes, and how to get started marketing your business.

Go to Free Course

More Reading: 13 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than $100

2. Introduction to Project Management

Using various examples and case studies, the student will learn basic project management concepts and techniques, communication tools and tactics, the international standards of project management, and identifying success factors.

Project management is an essential skill-set for many careers and in many contexts in our lives. Introduction to Project Management is an ideal starting point if you need to manage projects at work or at home, while not necessarily being a formally trained project manager. It is also suitable if you are considering undertaking a project in the near future and are seeking to learn and apply essential project management knowledge and skills.

To deliver a project successfully, it’s important to start by clearly identifying what the project is, and what its outcomes will be. In the course, we will show you practical ways to explore and understand your goals from the outset of your project, and to consider all the factors that may affect its execution. Step by step you will learn how to plan, scope, schedule, cost and manage your project from beginning to end. Since every project relies on the people who are delivering it, the course also enables you to explore how you can effectively communicate, manage people and employ leadership skills to successfully deliver your own project.

In Introduction to Project Management, you will learn practical ways to use project management skills, whether your project is large or small. Join us to explore how you can benefit from using project management techniques in your own projects.

Go to Free Course

3. Evidence-Based Practice in Management

This course aims to train students to think critically and analytically and, using the latest academic thinking, help them make ethical decisions to confront potential business challenges.

This business and management course introduces students to an evidence-based management (EBM) framework that shows how maturity across six key domains is linked to improved leadership competency. The key domains are:

• Framing the problem (Ask);
• Gathering evidence (Acquire);
• Evaluating evidence (Appraise);
• Synthesizing findings (Aggregate);
• Implementation (Apply)
• Evaluating the outcomes (Assess).

Graduate business education has come under fire in recent years for not adequately preparing students for the challenge of managing in a complex, information-rich, and rapidly changing commercial environment. This was clearly demonstrated during the global financial crisis which exposed the inability of graduates from leading business schools to adapt what they had learnt to this new reality.

Evidence-based practice in management is a response to this situation. This business course focuses on exposing students to the latest academic thinking, while also equipping students to be critical and analytical thinkers that challenge established beliefs, and utilize the best available evidence to inform ethical decision making. Learn the EBM framework, how to analyze research, use critical thinking and more to make better business decisions.

The knowledge and skills developed in this course will prepare students to confront future business challenges. These business and management capabilities are critical for emerging leaders, established managers, and entrepreneurs.

Go to Free Course

4. How to Hire a Virtual Assistant

Hiring a virtual assistant seems to be an indispensable part of being a small business owner in the modern world. This course will guide a first-timer through the process of hiring a virtual assistant and the ins and outs of working with one.

The Course Structure

The course is broken up into 8 video PowerPoint segments that follow a trusted process I have used to much success in my own business. You’ll be able to get through the modules quite quickly, but there is some homework involved, including:

• Tracking how you’re currently spending your time
• Finding which tasks you can get off your plate
• Crafting and posting an attention-getting job description
• Narrowing down your applicant pool
• Testing and interviewing the most promising candidates

If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed or burned out with your work, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It just takes a short investment in time to learn the basics of hiring a VA, and some additional time to train them on your process, but the long-term benefits are huge.

This course is more geared toward hiring a virtual team member for ongoing business support, rather than for a one-off project; though much of the content will be applicable to both scenarios.

The Deliverables:

By the end of the course you’ll have the confidence and skills to go out into the wild and hire your first virtual assistant.

Prepare for a new era of business growth and productivity!

Go to Free Course

More Reading: Free List of Fashion Wholesalers and Manufacturers

5. Business Communication

Crucial to your success as a future business owner or professional in your chosen field, effective communication is the core of this course. Students will be taught proper written communication, conducting meetings, documentation, etc. This course is part of the Soft Skills Specialization of Rochester Institute of Technology.

In this course, there will be a strong focus on business writing, active listening, and communicating your ideas effectively to a particular target audience. We will discuss the impact of assumptions or bias that people may bring to workplace interactions. Learners will apply their knowledge by critiquing real-world business scenarios from the workplace.

Topics will also include:

• Best practices for written communication
• Conducting effective meetings
• Documentation and follow-up techniques
• Best practices for face-to-face, digital, and mediated communication

This course may be audited free of charge. Learners also have the opportunity to earn a verified certificate of completion. Exclusive learning opportunities such as live events hosted by subject matter experts will be available for verified learners.

Go to Free Course

6. Build Profitable Shopify Drop Shipping Business In 90 Days

If you’re looking into starting a drop shipping business, you must absolutely take this course. You will learn how to build an e-commerce website, find in-demand products, proven Facebook strategies, and more from successful entrepreneurs.

Go to Free Course

More Reading:

• Australian Retailers That Offer Drop Shipping
• International Retailers Who Dropship to Australia
• Where to Buy Wholesale Vibrators to Sell at a Profit

7. Introduction to Data Analytics for Managers

This course focuses on using data, including “big data” in analysing and improving a business’s performance. The learner will be able to use and practice on actual advanced tools for applying data science.

Through a combination of lectures, business case studies, and hands-on learning this course provides an introduction to data analytics techniques and their application in business.

The case studies explored will illustrate how companies are leveraging different sources of data, including “big data,” with different analytical techniques, to improve performance. You will receive hands-on learning through a free web-based graphical development environment that will allow you to practice using some of these tools themselves. You will also gain an understanding of the many possibilities for applying data science in business, and will be able to consider additional learning opportunities to gain further depth.

This course is an excellent resource for managers who see the opportunity to use data analytics in business but do not have the skills and background to engage with data analytics themselves.

Go to Free Course

8. Preparing to Manage Human Resources

Want to learn how to manage your employees and motivate them to work? This course by the University of Minnesota will provide you with a 4-week lecture and exercise on how to handle your workers especially for those who have just entered the Human Resource Management arena!  One way or another, all employees are managed. But approaches to managing employees varying from employee-to-employee, job-to-job, manager-to-manager, organization-to-organization, and country-to-country. This course provides a foundation for developing your own approach to skillfully managing employees by illustrating alternative human resource management (HRM) strategies, introducing the importance of the legal context, and thinking about what motivates employees.

This will then give you the factual and conceptual basis for developing specific, critical HRM skills in subsequent courses on hiring employees, managing performance, and rewarding employees. Don’t know anything about HRM? That’s OK! Leave this course with a new-found understanding of the range of options available for managing employees, a grasp of what makes workers tick, and the readiness to develop your own HRM skills.

Go to Free Course

9. How to Build a Startup

If you want to build your Startup business and don’t know where to start, then this course is for you! This one month course will teach you how to develop and test ideas by gathering a massive amount of customer and marketplace feedback which is crucial to the Startup business.

In an introduction to the basics of the famous Customer Development Process, Steve Blank provides insight into the key steps needed to build a successful startup.

The main idea in this course is learning how to rapidly develop and test ideas by gathering massive amounts of customer and marketplace feedback. Many startups fail by not validating their ideas early on with real-life customers. In order to mitigate that, students will learn how to get out of the building and search for the real pain points and unmet needs of customers. Only with these can the entrepreneur find a proper solution and establish a suitable business model.

Building a startup is not simply building an execution plan for a business model that the entrepreneur thinks will work, but rather, a search for the actual business model itself.

Go to Free Course

10.  Statement of Attainment in Administration Skills for Team Leaders

Learn how to digitally design and develop documents and spreadsheets and become the go-to person in the office for organising workplace meetings, business travel and conference arrangements.

The course is 11 hours per week for 16 weeks and the training is fully subsidised by the NSW Government.

Find Our More

11.  Statement of Attainment in Business Administration Skills

Develop some basic skills for a role in business administration.  You will learn how to manage staff diaries and appointments, create presentations for the workplace and design and produce digital documents.

Find Out More

Next Page:  Free Online Marketing Courses