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The 20 Most Popular Online Classes This Year

There is no shortage of skills you can learn in this world. The hard question is determining what skills you should learn.

There are a few different paths you can take to answer that question. You can look at what skills are the most sought-after by organizations. You can look at the skills that’ll most help your career. Or, you can look at the skills professionals are most eager to learn, a signal of their importance to succeeding in business.

This article is centered on that last point. It is a list of the LinkedIn Learning courses professionals viewed the most so far in 2016, a testament to both the need for that skill and the effectiveness of the course:

1. Foundations of Programming: Fundamentals

Course Description: Provides the core knowledge to begin programming in any language, using JavaScript to explore the syntax of a programming language, and shows how to write and execute your first application and understand what's going on under the hood.

2. Excel 2013 Essential Training

Course Description: Teaches you the basics of using Excel 2013 to enter and organize data, use functions and build charts and PivotTables.

3. Communication Tips

Course Description: Become a better manager or leader by honing your communication skills in this series with communication experts Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes.

4. Excel Tips Weekly

Course Description: Get a new productivity-boosting tip every Tuesday from Excel expert Dennis Taylor.

5. Communication Fundamentals

Course Description: Effective communication is more than what you say. Learn to overcome anxiety, improve your listening ability, hone your message and deliver it better.

6. Excel 2016 Essential Training

Course Description: Learn how to enter and organize data, create formulas and functions, build charts and PivotTables and use other powerful Excel 2016 features.

7. New Manager Fundamentals

Course Description: Learn to establish your identity as a leader and connect with your team when you first step into a management position.

8. SQL Essential Training

Course Description: Learn how to use SQL to manage your database records in these simple, straightforward tutorials, which include a quick start guide and detailed instructions for creating tables, defining relationships, manipulating strings and more.

9. Time Management Fundamentals

Course Description: Get time management strategies to stay organized, keep a clear mind and be more productive—in work and life.

10. JavaScript Essential Training

Course Description: Use JavaScript to add new features and a richer, more compelling user interface on web pages.

11. Java Essential Training

Course Description: Explore Java SE, the language used to build mobile apps, desktop and web applications, and more.

12. Project Management Fundamentals

Course Description: Learn project management techniques to effectively manage simple projects and complex enterprise-wide initiatives. This course tackles the basics of project management, from building a project plan to managing resources.

13. Project Management Simplifies

Course Description: Management consultant Chris Croft reveals 12 simple project-management techniques that any manager can use to save time and drive greater value from projects across the organization.

14. HTML Essential Training

Course Description: Learn how to write HTML, the programming language that powers the web.

15. Up and Running with Python

Course Description: Get a quick intro to Python, the popular and highly readable object-oriented language.

16. Excel 2010 Essential Training

Course Description: Excel tutorials that use real-world examples to teach the core features and tools in Excel 2010.

17. Online Marketing Fundamentals

Course Description: Learn today's online marketing techniques and find out how to build a successful online marketing campaign for all digital channels: search, video, social, email and display.

18. Communicating with Confidence

Course Description: Get simple communication tools, strategies and tips to help you communicate with confidence.

19. Hadoop Fundamentals

Course Description: Learn about Hadoop, its file system (HDFS), its processing engine (MapReduce), and its many libraries and programming tools. These Hadoop tutorials show how to set up a dev environment, run MapReduce jobs, build workflows and more!

20. Managing Your Time

Course Description: Quick time-management tips that help everyone from busy executives to new employees get more out of their work day.

Three takeaways from this list

There are several interesting takeaways from this list. They include:

  • Professionals are eager to learn how to code.

In a world where software engineers are getting dozens of InMails a month from recruiters, there is a strong incentive for individuals to learn how to code and a strong desire by organizations to teach their people how to code. And this list reflects that.

Our Foundations of Programming course has been our most viewed course this year, and it's a course a person would take if they wanted to get into coding. Additionally, several other courses on software languages – JavaScript, Python, HTML – are on the list as well, providing further evidence of a strong desire to learn how to code.

  • Professionals want to make sense of big data.

There are four Excel classes alone on this list, along with other data science-related courses, like SQL. This makes sense, considering the overwhelming demand for data scientists, as organizations and people alike are hoping to better understand the massive amount of data they are collecting.

  • Communication is the most desired soft skill.

Three separate communication courses appear on this list, easily making it the soft skill professionals are looking to improve the most. Clearly, employees are looking to both build stronger relationships with their colleagues and turn more of their ideas into realities by communicating better.

*Image by Death to the Stock Photo

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