A month ago, we invited you to Class Central’s very first public study group to take together the course Mountains 101 from the University of Alberta taught by David Hik and Zac Robinson. It’s been a great experience and we are very happy to have met so many of you in the study group. 

Learning is a social activity. This is what we have learnt so far in our internal study groups at Class Central. This was also our experience in our public study group. So, we feel encouraged to announce three upcoming study groups in three different areas of study (tech, business, humanitarian/psychology) to promote learning and learners around the globe. The invite is open to everyone from all backgrounds to join our study groups.

All three study groups start on June 16th. Full schedule will be available in the coming days here: https://www.classcentral.com/study-groups

Weekly Live Sessions

One of the instructors of the Mountains 101 course, David Hik, reached out to us as soon as we announced the study group and has been generously helping out students in the study group forums and also hosting a weekly live session. The weekly live sessions were a great way to connect with learners around the world and  learn more about the subject.

Based on this experience, we decided to hold a weekly live session for each of our study groups in the future. Although we might not be lucky to have an instructor like David involved in the study group, it can be a great opportunity to meet the other classmates around the globe. 

We will do our best to have a guest speaker when possible. This is still an ongoing experiment, so please forgive any inconveniences.

Class Central Study Groups

The idea of the study group is simple:

1. We choose a course which is free or free-to-audit. 
2. We create a course schedule, to make progress together.
3. We discuss the course and support each other on a dedicated discussion forum. When possible we also try to meet weekly.

The start date for all upcoming study groups is Wednesday, June 16th. Depending on the course the study group will last 4 to 6 weeks. The study group community will live in our forum here. If you are interested in joining one of the study groups, please sign up here.

Now, let me introduce you to the three courses we can choose between. 

A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment

A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment from the Indian School of Business is an extremely popular course with over 400,000 enrolments and one of Class Central’s Best Online Courses of All Time.

The instructor Raj Raghunathan, Professor of Business at UT Austin, will participate in some of our live sessions. The course is currently part of Coursera’s free certificate offerings until the end of June, so you may be eligible to earn a free certificate.

Group Coordinator: @manoel

To enroll in the course, Click Here.

Introduction to Redis Data Structures

Introduction to Redis Data Structures by Alvin Richards and Kyle Banker at the Redis University is a six-week course for developers new to Redis, an open source database, and offers a free certificate on successful completion of the course. 

Redis Labs (creators of Redis) has been generous enough to create a special session for Class Central’s study group to coincide with our schedule. Instructions for signing up will be available soon. 

The course was recommended by our colleague @vishnu who took the course a few months ago. Vishnu joined Class Central last year as a Senior Software Engineer with stints at WalmartLabs, Ola, GO-JEK, ClearTrip and Haladoc. You can read his in-depth review here.

Group Coordinator: @vishnu

To enroll in the course, Click Here.

Excel Fundamentals for Data Analysis

Excel Fundamentals for Data Analysis was the course that launched Class Central’s study group, when four Class Central team members (who live in different countries) formed a remote study group and took a course together.

The course, from Macquarie University, is taught by Prashan S. M. Karunaratne and Nicky Bull. The 5-week course is available for intermediate level on the Coursera platform and has an estimated workload of 3 hours per week (15 hours material value). The course is free-to-audit, but certificate and graded assignments are behind a paywall.

Group Coordinator: @heba

To enroll in the course, Click Here.

Join us

If one of the courses caught your interest, join our study group and sign up here. We look forward to meeting you there. If you cannot make it to one of the study groups, let us know in the comments what topics you would like to see in future study groups.

If you would like to help coordinate future study groups, drop us a note at [email protected]. You don’t have to be an expert in the topic, just someone who wants to learn or is interested in the topic.

Bottom left: Barbara Oakley, instructor of the hugely popular Learning How To Learn and its sequel Mindshift. Top left is Orlando Trejo who teaches the Spanish version of Mindshift. Top row, fourth column: David Hik, one of the co-instructor of Mountains 101.