Online learning platforms are a kind of digital university or educational institution that comprises multiple kinds of courses, professional work training, skillful knowledge, and experience-based learning. These learning platforms are particularly designed for career building and professional development, which can be easily accessed while sitting at home and attending virtual classes with the help of your mobile phone, laptop, or any electronic device.

Many of you would have thought that online platforms could not fulfill all the needs and requirements of effective learning like physical learning platforms and courses do, but it is not like that! They highly maintain the standards of physical learning platforms by fulfilling all the requirements of effective learning techniques, including: hiring high qualified teachers(on contracts or full time) by conducting screening tests and interviews, and also from worldwide best universities or different educational institutions, maintenance of healthy relationship between student and teacher, understanding the mental capacity of each student, applying educational psychology in learning and teaching processes, assigning different assignments and tasks to assess the feedback and gaining abilities of students, reviewing the progress of students and also provide certificates to their students, which are really useful in practical world.

There is a long list of online learning websites offering quality skills and courses on the internet, from which we will choose the top 5 platforms and discuss their features and benefits. Here is a list of the top 5 online learning platforms:

1. Coursera
2. Udemy
3. edX
4. Skillshare
5. LinkedIn Learning

1. Coursera:

Coursera Plus is the top-ranked website, having incredibly positive reviews from 77% of its learners. They are offering more than 7,000 world-class courses, degrees, diplomas, and projects from more than 170 leading companies and universities, which also provide certification at completion of the course that is highly guaranteed for immediate jobs.

Features of Coursera:

Coursera has broader varieties for every kind of technical, non-technical, and technological category of subjects, which include: language learning, social sciences, arts and humanities, data science, business, health, personal development, information technology, physical science and engineering, math and logic, and computer science.

• It is offering thousands of courses, projects, guided projects, diplomas, professional certificates, degrees, specializations, graduate and university certificates in almost every subject in 25+ languages, with durations ranging from less than 2 hours to 1-4 years.2
• It has also provided learners with the privilege of choosing subtitles for lectures in 63 languages.
• It also provides levels of learning, categorizing them into beginner, intermediate, advanced, and mixed.
• It also offers numerous skills such as leadership and management, communication, problem solving, marketing, innovation, computer programming tools, and many more.
• It takes less than 10 hours of study per week.
• It also provides free courses for eligible students.

These are few important features of this platform which have many benefits as follows

Benefits of Coursera in Professional Development:

Coursera, being a versatile platform that provides degrees and courses in every field and subject, is beneficial for anyone who wants to study online but cannot attend physical classes. Providing ranges of durations and levels for different programs makes it best for students, as they can choose programs according to their facilities and capacity to learn.

Providing some languages for programs that are spoken around the world and giving a choice for subtitles in 63 languages makes students learn their desired course easily in a language they are familiar with.

Provision of practical skills along with theory knowledge, especially skills like management and leadership, communication skills, and problem solving, makes a person capable of working in a field and professional environment, which aids in boosting confidence and self_esteem, and career building. Flexible timing of lectures helps students learn and consume things better.

Free courses support those students who are highly deserving of their desired programs but cannot afford them, and indeed, Coursera is the best online learning platform for such talented people.

These are the important features and their benefits of Coursera Plus.

2.Udemy:

Udemy is a worldwide online learning platform containing a wide range of courses in different categories (e.g., Development, Business, Finance & Accounting, IT & Software, Office Productivity, Personal Development, Lifestyle, Marketing, Design, Photography & Video, Health & Fitness, Music, and Teaching & Academics).

Features of Udemy:

• The biggest aim of Udemy is to improve lives through learning, and to fulfill that purpose, they are using artificial intelligence for their learners, teachers, and organizations.

• There are more than 200,000 courses on Udemy, comprising millions of hours of content for every level (basic to advanced).

• There are more than 70,000 instructors on this platform who mobilize their expertise through this platform.

• It is also available in a mobile app version with amazing features like learning reminders, offline viewing, Chromecast, AirPlay, and multitasking with picture-in picture and podcast-style audio.
• It is also certified by Great Place to Work and Glassdoor.
• This learning platform always stays up-to-date with new technologies and innovations, which makes it a top-notch online learning platform for professional development.

Benefits of Udemy in Professional Development:

Being certified by Great Place to Work and Glassdoor, Udemy owns the validation of its best services in e-learning that benefit learners and organizations from all over the world. It supports students in various fields of career building and provides the best platform for skilled and highly-trained teachers.

Along with providing an amazing platform to learners, it is also creating a high rate of employment by hiring skilled and highly-trained teachers, resulting in reducing unemployment around the globe.

The availability of a mobile application version with features like learning reminders, multitasking, and offline viewing makes the user experience better and easier to stay reminded of lesson learning time, and one can even view lessons with a poor or inactive internet connection without losing study time. And most prominently, working with the help of AI and staying up-to-date with new innovations in technology, it proves itself to be the best and modernized version of the learning platform for this generation.

3.edX:

edX is a US-based engineering services company that is perfectly designed for skill-based programs for professional career development, and it offers over 4,000 online courses and certificates. This platform also offers various categories of degrees, like social sciences, language, computer programming, data analysis, economics, etc.

Features of edX:

• edX mainly focuses on boot camps (short-term skillful trainings that provide hands on experience for working in the professional field). These bootcamps include skills in cybersecurity, coding, artificial intelligence, and more. These trainings have full time and part-time options, with night and weekend classes.
• It grants university-backed certificates in duration ranging 12, 18 or 24 weeks.
• Further, it provides access to career coaching and job referrals from a network of more than 250 hiring managers.
• edX collaborates with world-class universities and institutes, including the University of Queensland, Boston University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Google Platform for free courses, and so on.
• Opportunities to choose courses from 400+ programs in the subjects of software engineering, computer science, and leadership and make yourself skilled with professional certification.

Benefits of edX in Professional Development:

edX, an e-learning platform, provides too many free courses, which aid in learning for those who cannot afford them. Having approach to the world’s top-notch universities grants students a lot of exposure. This platform mostly provides practical skills and boot camps that actually help the learners understand more about the professional world than theory. The prices of courses on edX

are also affordable, which makes it feasible for students to avail the programs at topnotch universities.

4.Skillshare:

Skillshare is an amazingly designed online learning platform for talented people who want exposure to test their creativity, learn new things, and grow. This website comprises courses related to business, creativity, technology, and lifestyle. It consists of 25K+ classes, 600K+ members, and 8K+ teachers.

Features of Skillshare:

• Skillshare provides thousands of fascinating courses on photography, music, graphic design, UX/UI design, marketing, arts and crafts, content creation, film making, and many more different variations of skills.
• Classes are categorized into levels, from beginner to pro.
• It also has a mobile version of the website.
• Classes are conducted by skilled tutors and media industry icons, too.
• Innovative idea-based projects are assigned to enhance students’ learning and grow their creativity.

Benefits of Skillshare in Professional Development:

Platforms like Skillshare are useful for crafting healthy and pleasant bonds with society, community building, and spreading love through the unavoidable beauty of art, craft, designing, painting, photography, music, and absolutely yummy food.

Learning from skilled tutors and, especially, from media industry icons creates a sense of inspiration and self-confidence in learners. Furthermore, project-based learning constructs team building, improves communication skills, creates cooperative behavior with each other, and enhances understanding, empathy, and emotional awareness between individuals. Mobile version also allows learning anywhere and whenever you want freely.

5.LinkedIn Learning:

At last, we are going to discuss our last but not least online learning platform, LinkedIn Learning! As we all know, LinkedIn is a job- and client-hunting platform for digital service seekers and providers, but there is also an online educational platform in the LinkedIn family, and that is going to be our last online learning platform among our top 5 e-learning platforms. This platform comprises many courses led by experts who are delivering various online classes for youth’s effective career development.

These experts are experienced in their fields with real-life experiences and are learning from their mistakes and improvements.

Features of LinkedIn Learning:

• LinkedIn offers over 16,000 courses on a variety of subjects such as technology, business, personal development, professional development, community building, career advice, generative AI, data analysis, expert’s advice for successful interviews, mastering interview questions, learning teamwork, job hunting, and a lot of other courses.
• LinkedIn Learning offers learning paths, which are actually series of various courses related to some specific field, so one can have expertise in some particular field.
• LinkedIn Learning provides its learners a flexible time depending on learners’ own pace and demands.
•  LinkedIn Learning is connected to the LinkedIn platform, which uploads all the course completion and certification of LinkedIn Learning to the professional LinkedIn profile automatically and makes the profile optimize itself.
• LinkedIn Learning is available in multiple languages, which makes learning easier for many users around the world.
• This platform also offers tests in many areas of your specialized field to understand your weaknesses and progress, so it could provide you with courses for improvement in your skills.
• The mobile application of LinkedIn Learning is really one of the most useful features for this busy generation full of hassle.

Benefits of LinkedIn Learning in Professional Development:

As LinkedIn Learning is also a part of the professional platform LinkedIn, it creates opportunities, paves the path for its users with authentic knowledge of professional skills, and also privileges them with their own professional certificates.

Along with technological skills, LinkedIn Learning provides its learners with effective communication skills, team management, character building, harmonizing relationships, mutual understanding, etc., which helps them develop their professional skills and makes them self-confident, too.

After getting to know about these top 5 online learning platforms for professional development and their features and benefits, I am just wondered about the fact that I had never known about these amazing platforms full of skillful knowledge, professionalism, and fun courses that can captivate anyone and compels them to learn about such amazing things while just sitting at home in their comfort zone. It would definitely be such a wonderful experience for an introvert like me!

There may be cons to e-learning as people cannot socialize like they do in physical learning and cannot even work together in real life, which can affect their social development, but there are still many pros to these platforms, such as the fact that you can imagine studying at the world’s best university while sitting anywhere around the world with flexible timing of your own choice. Isn’t it amazing? Adding to that, you learn through interesting activities like quizzes, mind games, assignments, etc. Other than this, online learning platforms are also more affordable than the traditional ones, and one can also socialize with people through the internet. So, definitely, it is a wonderful experience learning through online platforms!