The Best Online Learning Platforms of 2024

Skillshare creates courses catered to freelancers and entrepreneurs, including how to help you develop creativity or equip you with the creative skills you need to start your own business. The 30,000 course catalog is huge and diverse. You’ll find classes on anything from iPhone photography to personal branding. The videos are high-quality and short enough to keep the student engaged.There’s even a note-taking plugin that allows you to record important information, which is great for those with hearing difficulties. While there’s a lot of positives, the one shortcoming we discovered is a lack of worksheets or written resources.

To help evaluate Skillshare, Amanda Tarlton, Reviewed’s shopping editor, took the “Modern Leadership: Give and Get Honest Feedback at Work” course. Here is her feedback:

“For starters, I like how personable, professional, and inspiring the instructor was. She's the CEO of a major organization so I felt I could trust her expertise—I like that she's someone who has real-world experience in the topic that she was teaching about. She was well-spoken and all of her lessons were easy to follow and understand. She gave plenty of examples of how to apply the knowledge in the workplace, so I felt prepared to implement some of her ideas in my own life. I like that she responded to comments in the Discussion section as well—it's nice to have such an interactive platform.

In terms of user experience, I appreciated that there's a note-taking plugin where you can record important information as you listen to the lectures (which are available in audio, video, and written transcript format). The videos were high-quality and short enough that they were digestible—they didn't drone on and on. I like that I was able to complete the course at my own pace as well so it didn't feel cumbersome or tedious.

There were a few negatives, however. I wish there were more action items, worksheets, or written resources. There's nothing besides the written transcripts in terms of visual aids. I'm a visual learner so these types of files would've been helpful, especially to refer back to after the course was completed. I also think the course was a little short and it would've been nice to have different speakers and lecturers to get a different perspective or a range of opinions and insights.”

If you’re looking for a wide range of courses, look no further than Udemy. You’ll find classes on JavaScript, Microsoft Excel, drawing, and web development. It’s a good option for those looking to change careers or gain new skills. Udemy has 155,000 classes in its catalog, so there’s plenty of content to dive into and explore. As for the course the tester participated in, the instructor was easy to follow and the instructions were broken into short videos that were bite-sized and easily digestible. However, this format was unique to this particular class. That said, the tester disliked the way in which the coursework was organized, as she felt it was disjointed.

Amy Roberts, a contributing editor at Reviewed, took the Udemy course, "How to Write a Resume and Cover Letter." Having written resumes on a professional level in the past, she was curious how this course would be taught. Here’s a summary of her experience:

“Overall, someone who doesn't know how to write a resume or cover letter will end up with better documents than whatever they started with by using this program. The presenter is easy enough to follow and the instructions are broken into bite-sized videos, so you can do it all in about three hours. I could see it working for someone who prefers lecture learning ove reading a book.

The course presentation was made up of short videos and seemed weirdly out of order to me, specifically in terms of how one might approach a resume. Sections 1 through 10 cover the basics, from resume to cover letter to interviewing and how to negotiate salary once you have an offer. Sections 11 through 14 backtrack and focus on the application process and managing your online presence, which seems weirdly out of order.

As for the resume portion of the course, the order was similarly disjointed. The instructor first talked about writing an objective, which was odd because that’s what the cover letter should focus on. When he gets into the meat and potatoes of resume writing, he starts with the skills section before the experience section. Why not take people on the journey of writing a resume from the top down?

The presenter included just one design template suggestion. It’s fine, but it means that most people who take this course are going to have identical-looking resumes. And, if you don’t like that specific style, you’re left to your own devices to find something else.”

Mindvalley is one of the more unique learning platforms out there, as it focuses more on self-improvement and personal development. There’s over 60 courses (they’re called “quests”) to choose from and they’re divided into the following categories: mind, body, soul, career, entrepreneurship, relationships, and parenting. They range from classes like beginners yoga and chakra healing to mastering authentic networking and the power of boldness. We like that Mindvalley is easily accessible through a mobile app and a website with an easy-to-use and intuitive interface, but our tester had mixed feelings about the specific course she took.

To help evaluate this platform, Betsey Goldwasser, a Reviewed photographer, took the “The Mindvalley Yoga Quest.” She occasionally practices yoga in her free time and was interested in trying the class to improve her form. Here’s how she describes her experience:

“The platform has many courses with different options for yogis at all levels. The course consisted of video modules, some short blurbs about the poses you learned, and a discussion section where you can communicate with other students.

The lessons are well organized. They provided written details of what was learned in class, which I haven’t seen with other online yoga and workout classes that I’ve taken. The range of instructors was impressive and many of them seemed to be important in the yoga community. Some of the classes were really rejuvenating and left me feeling relaxed, stretched, and present.

I didn’t love that the classes were not consistent with instructors or format. It felt as though this wasn’t a cohesive program, but a smorgasbord playlist of random yoga classes. The difficulty in classes really ranged and the instructors did not take that into consideration. I didn’t feel like I was learning anything new about yoga.

As someone who does yoga occasionally, I don’t feel like it improved my form. The pace was a little overwhelming, too. Having people try headstands on the first day of the second week was a bit much. There are plenty of free options on YouTube that do the trick.”

If you’re interested in taking university level classes, you’ll want to check out edX. It’s partnered with top schools like Harvard, MIT, University of Oxford, Columbia University, and much more. From architecture and art to engineering and social sciences, edX offers a pretty diverse range of content from its 3,000-course catalog. The interface is easy to navigate and the instructional videos are clear and professionally recorded. However, the amount of advertisements on the site proved to be distracting for the tester.

To help review this platform, Jon Chan, Reviewed’s senior manager of lab operations, took the “IBM Analyzing Data with Excel” class. Here’s what his experience was like:

“The course was very easy to navigate. The text was easy to read and the videos were clear with professionally recorded sound. I also appreciated that each video had an accompanying transcript. The Core Foundations course included a workbook in Excel that synced up with the instructional videos.

My major complaint about edX revolves around the amount of advertising there is in the learning modules. Every time I loaded up a lesson, there would be an ad on the side suggesting I upgrade to the paid service. During lessons, certain slides would remind me that I was not using the paid service so therefore I would not get a certificate.”

Codeacademy is ideal for those interested in designing a website or video game, as most of the 1,000 courses are geared towards learning how to code (hence the name). The platform offers both beginner-friendly and higher education courses. The interface is intuitive and the specific class our tester took found the exercises to be chock-full of details. The course the tester took really guides you through each step of the coding process. While there were many things we liked about this course and platform, the assignments could get repetitive at times.

To evaluate this platform, Jim Ryan, Reviewed’s manager of business intelligence, took “Learn HTML.” As his job involves looking at a lot of code, he wanted to see how an online course would simplify a rather complex task. Here’s what his experience was like:

“This course helped me understand HTML in a way I never thought I could in 9 hours. The user interface was basic but well thought out. The exercise instructions were to the left of the screen and the coding interface screen was right beside it. This was very helpful, as many of the exercises became progressively more detailed with more steps. If you made an error when you tried to run the script, it would highlight the area you made the mistake in to assist you in finding the right area to correct.

The exercises were very detailed but could get slightly tedious with the amount of repetition. However, as the coding got more complex, I appreciated the amount of repetition that I found tedious in the beginning of the course. When you’re doing something over and over again, it really sticks in your brain. Within the space of 9 hours, I was able to turn a jumble of lines into an understandable code.”