Looking to gain some new skills? There is no better place to start than the online course offerings available through Michigan Online.

As announced in May 2018, current students, faculty, staff, and alumni from all three U-M campuses can earn a verified certificate free-of-charge for courses developed by U-M faculty and instructional teams and delivered through Michigan Online.

The Office of Academic Innovation partners with schools and colleges across the university to create learning opportunities led by U-M faculty. There are more than 130 courses and Teach-Outs with more offered each month. See the complete catalog: online.umich.edu/catalog

Not sure where to start? Here are some suggestions for IT-related courses.

Related: “Academic Innovation notes strides as U-M hits online enrollment milestone” (The University Record)

Note about registration

To earn a verified certificate for free as part of the U-M community, you must log in and register for courses via Michigan Online. To sign in with your U-M credentials, click “U-M” below the password field and follow the prompts for Weblogin. On course pages, look for the graphic below:

Currently, Michigan Online only lists individual course pages, not series of courses in Specializations. Look for series pages to be added early next year.

User Experience Research and Design Specialization

This six-course specialization will teach you how to take a product from initial concept, through user research, ideation and refinement, formal analysis, prototyping, and user testing. By the end of this series, you’ll learn how to apply these perspectives and methods to create great experiences for your users.

Web Design for Everybody Specialization

This specialization covers how to write syntactically correct HTML5 and CSS3, and how to create interactive web experiences with JavaScript. Mastering this range of technologies will allow you to develop high-quality web sites that work seamlessly on mobile, tablet, and large-screen browsers.

Web Applications for Everybody Specialization

This four-course specialization is a basic introduction to building web applications, and is an excellent starting point for learners who already have a basic understanding of programming, HTML, and CSS. You will be introduced to web and database applications in PHP, SQL for database creation, as well as functionality in JavaScript, jQuery, and JSON.

Python 3 Programming Specialization

This specialization teaches the fundamentals of programming in Python 3. By the end of the specialization, you’ll be writing programs that query internet APIs to extract useful data. And you’ll be able to learn to use new modules and APIs on your own by reading the documentation.

Applied Data Science with Python Specialization

The five courses in this specialization introduce you to data science through the python programming language. You will apply statistical, machine learning, information visualization, text analysis, and social network analysis techniques through popular python toolkits to gain insight into their data.

Data Science Ethics Course

In this course, you will examine the ethical and privacy implications of collecting and managing big data. This course will help you understand who owns data, how we value privacy, how to receive informed consent, and what it means to be fair. Everyone, including data scientists, will benefit from this course. No previous knowledge is needed.