Here are the thirty most popular new Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) starting in December, based on Class Central learners’ activity.

You can find the entire catalog of  15,000 free online courses offered by ~1000 universities around the world, on Class Central’s subject page.

Brilliant, Passionate You
University of Michigan via Coursera
This course is an interdisciplinary look at how we can make each day the best day of our lives by examining the question, “How can you be your most brilliant, passionate self?” You will be joined on this journey by our animated host, Lewis!

Agile Leadership: Introduction to Change
University of Colorado System via Coursera
By the end of this course, you will build an understanding of key agile leadership concepts. You will begin building a toolbox that will give you an ability to evaluate and create a baseline for yourself as an agile leader. You will access your team’s readiness for change.

Data Analysis and Visualization
University at Buffalo via Coursera
By the end of this course, learners are provided a high-level overview of data analysis and visualization tools, and are prepared to discuss best practices and develop an ensuing action plan that addresses key discoveries.

English and Academic Preparation – Pre-Collegiate
Rice University via Coursera
The English and Academic Preparation – Pre-Collegiate course is for students with a (minimum) high-intermediate level of English. It is designed to help international students develop the academic skills necessary for success in undergraduate studies at an American university while strengthening their English proficiency.

So You Want To Be A Surgeon?
The University of Hong Kong via edX
Aspiring healthcare leaders: Reach for the future. Learn from world-class surgical experts from 15 subspecialties of HKU Medicine!

Arctic Change & the Nexus of Governance, Economics & Culture
University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera
In this course, you will learn how the changing Arctic environment is tied to the growing economic and strategic importance of the North. After setting the stage through a review of the peoples of the Arctic and how they are dealing with change, Arctic governance, economies national defense, attention turns to marine use of the Arctic, oil and gas exploration, mining, fisheries and tourism. The course ends with a survey of recent Arctic events.

Applied Analytics and Data for Decision Making
University at Buffalo via Coursera
By the end of this course, learners are prepared to identify and test the best solutions for improving performance and integrating concepts from operational excellence methodologies for optimum data-driven decision making.

Leadership and Diversity in Mining
University of Queensland via edX
Do you strive to become a leader in the mining industry? What opportunities and challenges do you think you are likely to encounter? In this course explore the role of leadership capabilities within the mining sector, with an emphasis on incorporating diversity, leading technical teams, and developing techniques to foster an inclusive and progressive culture.

Precalculus: Relations and Functions
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
This course helps to build the foundational material to use mathematics as a tool to model, understand, and interpret the world around us. This is done through studying functions, their properties, and applications to data analysis.

Basic Recommender Systems
EIT Digital via Coursera
This course introduces you to the leading approaches in recommender systems. The techniques described touch both collaborative and content-based approaches and include the most important algorithms used to provide recommendations. You’ll learn how they work, how to use and how to evaluate them, pointing out benefits and limits of different recommender system alternatives.

Operational Context and Data
University at Buffalo via Coursera
By the end of this course, learners are empowered to implement data-driven process improvement objectives at their organization. The course covers: the business case for IoT (Internet of Things), the strategic importance of aligning operations and performance goals, best practices for collecting data, and facilitating a process mapping activity to visualize and analyze a process’s flow of materials and information.

Data – What It Is, What We Can Do With It
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
This course introduces students to data and statistics. By the end of the course, students should be able to interpret descriptive statistics, causal analyses and visualizations to draw meaningful insights.

Long-term Financial Management
University System of Maryland via edX
Learn what it takes to hold a company’s financial future in your hands, as you learn how financial managers respond to the long-term financial needs of a corporation and the roles of capital markets.

Corporate Finance Essentials II
IESE Business School via Coursera
This course picks up where Corporate Finance Essentials left, addressing other corporate finance issues not addressed in the previous course, such as market efficiency, bonds, stocks, capital structure, and dividend policy.

Real-Time Mission-Critical Systems Design
University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera
Upon completion of this course the learner will know the difference between systems you can bet your life on (mission critical) and those which provide predictable response and quality of service (reliable). This will be achieved not only by study of design methods and patterns for mission critical systems, but also through implementation of soft real-time systems and comparison to hard real-time.

Blockchain Scalability and its Foundations in Distributed Systems
The University of Sydney via Coursera
Blockchain promises to disrupt industries once it will be efficient at large scale. In this course, you will learn how to make blockchain scale. You will learn about the foundational problem of distributed computing, consensus, that is key to create block securely. By illustrating limitations of mainstream blockchains, this course will indicate how to improve the technology in terms of security and efficiency.

The Arctic as a System
University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera
In this course you will first learn about the Arctic as a geographic region, the peoples the Arctic, and the long history of Arctic settlement and exploration. Attention then turns to key features of the Arctic environment – its climate and weather, features of the ocean, sea ice, lands and the Greenland Ice Sheet, and some of the rapid changes being observed.

Applied Public History: Places, People, Stories
University of London International Programmes via Coursera
This course introduces learners to applied public history: understanding and interpreting the past today, and engaging diverse communities in the practice of making and sharing histories. The course draws on project case studies, expert insights and diverse perspectives to model exciting approaches to researching and sharing the history of places and people.

Community Awareness: Police Brutality in the U.S.
University of Michigan via Coursera
In this Teach-Out, you will learn about the history of police violence in America, become aware of laws and policies that prevent accountability, understand the demands of protesters, and gain the knowledge and tools to fight for change locally.

Rapid Prototyping of Embedded Interface Designs
University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera
This course is focused on rapid prototyping of devices and systems and the related methods, practices, and principles that will help ensure your embedded interface designs are what your users both need and want. The class includes an introduction to rapid prototyping, prototyping device and system user interfaces, prototyping devices, and design considerations and perspectives for devices.

Invitation to The Tale of Genji: The Foundational Elements of Japanese Culture
Waseda University via edX
Explore the world’s oldest novel written in the eleventh century and develop the perspective to understand Japanese classical literature and the foundation of Japanese culture.

Getting Started with Data Visualization in R
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
Data visualization is a critical skill for anyone that routinely using quantitative data in his or her work – which is to say that data visualization is a tool that almost every worker needs today.

ERPO: A Civil Approach to Gun Violence Prevention Teach-Out
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
Evidence shows that 1 life is saved for every 10-20 Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) issued. ERPOs are legally issued civil orders that allow people on the front lines to ask a court to prevent a person at imminent risk of harm to themselves or others from purchasing or possessing firearms during a critical period of risk. As of October 2020, ERPO laws have been enacted by nineteen states and the District of Columbia and while some aspects differ by state, the general process for applying and issuing ERPOs are quite similar.

Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis and Applications
University of New South Wales via Coursera
This course covers the fundamental nature of remote sensing and the platforms and sensor types used. It also provides an in-depth treatment of the computational algorithms employed in image understanding, ranging from the earliest historically important techniques to more recent approaches based on deep learning.

How Technology is Shaping Democracy and the 2020 Election
Stanford University via Coursera
Democracy can only thrive with the participation of well-informed citizens. The 2020 U.S. presidential election will be historic for many reasons and all parties are leveraging the power of technology to both influence and mobilize voters. More than ever, digital tools and platforms are shaping the opinions and behaviors of voters who will determine the future of the governance of the United States.

Lymphoedema: Monitoring & Intervention After Breast Cancer
Macquarie University via Coursera
Lymphoedema following breast cancer treatment is a poorly understood and under-researched condition which can significantly impact physical and psychological function, reduce quality of life and result in substantial cost burdens to both patients and the healthcare system.

Advanced Data Visualization with R
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
Learners come into this course with a foundation using R to make many basic kinds of visualization, primarily with the ggplot2 package. Accordingly, this course focuses on expanding the learners’ inventory of data visualization options. Drawing on additional packages to supplement ggplot2, learners will made more variants of traditional figures, as well as venture into spatial data. The course ends make interactive and animated figures.

Fundamentals of Modern Russian-designed NPPs with VVER-1200
National Research Nuclear University MEPhI via Coursera
The goal of the course is to present the pressurized water reactor (VVER) technology and the modern design of the Russian Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) – Generation III+ NPP with VVER-1200 reactor. The course describes the features of NPPs with VVER-1200 reactor. In particular, the attention is paid to safety issues and design features. This course is intended for trainees who have already completed the basic education program.

Microwave engineering and antennas
Eindhoven University of Technology via Coursera
This unique Master-level course provides you with in-depth know-how of microwave engineering and antennas. The course combines both passive and active microwave circuits as well as antenna systems.

Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
University of Virginia via Coursera
In this course, developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, and delivered by Professor of Business Administration Raj Venkatesan, you will explore three key forces that enable AI in marketing – Algorithms, Networks, and Data – and gain a deeper understanding of how businesses in a wide variety of industries can get the most out of this exciting technology.

Operational Foundations of Mining
Curtin University via edX
This course provides learners with an overview of the technical operating components of a mining system that moves valuable material from ore, as it resides in the ground, to a beneficiated product that is saleable at various points along the value chain.