Free Social Science Courses & Certifications

The Remembering Empire online course is about the collective memory of the empire. It talks about the memories of French settlers in Algeria and their view of Algerian colonial history. In this program, you will learn about these settlers’ history, the subsequent eight-year-long Algerian War of Independence, and the French settlers’ mass exit in 1962. The curriculum focuses on the mass migration’s cultural impact and aims to arrive at how France shaped Algeria’s colonial history. 

The UK Government’s Arts and Humanities Research Council has funded the Remembering Empire certification. It is a five-week online course in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities. You will be learning through videos, short readings, discussions, and quizzes through an interactive and comprehensive journey. 

Dr. Fiona Barclay of the University of Stirling, Scotland, will deliver the Remembering Empire program. You do not need any prior knowledge to join this course. Moreover, this in-depth curriculum will help you seek career prospects in cultural industries, charities, and amongst memory activists, museums, etc. 

Have you ever wondered what made Star Trek a cult classic? How it began as an unsuccessful network series and transformed into a whole universe of feature films, fan conventions, television series, and memorabilia? If yes, then choose edX’s Star Trek: Inspiring Culture and Technology III programme. Here, you’ll take an in-depth look into why this globally popular series resonates with millions. Offered by The Smithsonian Institution, this is a five-week introductory training in ‘History’. 

The immersive Star Trek: Inspiring Culture and Technology III certification syllabus will employ object exploration, critical analysis, Star Trek’s clips, experts’ viewpoints, and debate sessions with fans. Additionally, you will also examine how this series’ motion films and live-action tv shows impacted audiences worldwide. The curriculum will also explain how this cult movie tackled various controversial subjects, including gender, sexuality, race, and ethics.

The Star Trek: Inspiring Culture and Technology III online course provides free auditing and an optional certificate (paid). The curriculum schedule is self-paced, has English transcripts, and requires just one to three hours of study every week. 

The Tabernacle in Word & Image: An Italian Jewish Manuscript Revealed certification course is an estimated 5 weeks online course. This programme can be studied through the online platform edX. The syllabus comprises five video lectures in number and are short that explore Mantua, Malkiel Ashkenazi’s Tavnit ha-mishkan manuscripts.

The Tabernacle in Word & Image: An Italian Jewish Manuscript Revealed training course has no pre-requirement of knowing Jewish or intellectual history. This short history programme also introduces a free, and fascinating Italian Jewish text concerning the collection portrayed at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Guetta explains through this programme by studying the manuscripts which state how Jews intellectually lived their lives.

2 different tracks are offered by Edx, one of which is the audit track which offers limited but free access whereas the other one is the verified track which gives unlimited access to the course materials.

There are a lot of rumours, disputed claims, and scientifically fraught decisions surrounding the act of parenting. Every day, some research or the other comes up with a new claim and changes how we look at parenting while adding to the confusion by making contradictory statements. The University of California, San Diego, has created The Science of Parenting online course to dispel this confusion. 

The Science of Parenting training looks directly at science and trains candidates to critically approach parenting. It covers various topics like diet, sleeping, discipline and impulse control that are central to the lives of parents. The course explores how science makes claims from correlational data that often may be far from reality. 

The short-term course on The Science of Parenting by edX is five weeks long. During the training, you will acquire critical thinking and decision-making skills and learn how to avoid errors and make sensible decisions. You can enrol in this programme for free and audit it for a limited period. The learners can also choose to purchase the verified certificate by paying the fee. 

The ‘Strategic Communication for Sustainable Development’ online certification program is developed for the students to enhance their knowledge and skills of communication improvised with professional strategies for development. This multidisciplinary certification program is provided by the Swayam educational platform initiated by the government of India and the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). The course classes are held online aided by experiential learning methodologies that include video lectures, and other interactive and experimental training for four weeks.

The students of this program are guided by Prof.Aradhna Malik from the management studies department at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. The candidates of this course are evaluated through internal assessments, assignments, and the final examination. 

The ‘Strategic Communication for Sustainable Development’ certification course equips the students with the course certificate and course credits after successful completion of the course. This is an undergraduate and postgraduate level course for the students and is approved by the All India Council for Technical Education(AICTE).

The media is a powerful tool for promoting social justice. The Activism and Citizen Journalism through Media programme will provide valuable information and guidance to individuals for using media to create awareness for social causes. Individuals will learn how to practise ethical and safe media practices.

Activism and Citizen Journalism through Media by edX will provide in-depth information on how to identify a newsworthy story and how to create and assess the impact it creates. It will also guide you on how to zero-in on appropriate platforms to publicise a story. This is a short-term course with a duration of four weeks.

Activism and Citizen Journalism through Media is an introductory course in Communication and requires no prerequisites to join. It is the result of a collaboration between edX and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wit University), Johannesburg. The educators consist of an experienced panel of faculty from Wits. The course also offers a verified certificate for students who successfully complete the course.

The course in Modern Indian Art from the Colonial Period to the Present by Swayam delves into the socio-political, aesthetic, and cultural factors that have shaped the history of Indian art movements. Beginning from the colonial period, it traces the evolution of Indian art forms as a function of external and internal factors, such as shifts in patronage from kings to the erstwhile colonial rulers. 

The Modern Indian Art from the Colonial Period to the Present course is designed to look at vital moments in Indian history and correlate them with changing art styles. It also highlights how the art style changed from nationalistic to individualistic. The candidates will get to study the significant Indian artists, their works of art, and how they influenced the movement.

The Course in Modern Indian Art from the Colonial Period to the Present encourages art appreciation amongst the candidates and teaches them how to critique art forms. It is a 4-week long programme, offered by the expert faculty from Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. 

The Introduction to History of Architecture in India program will help you understand architectural works as material expressions of societies, polities, and aspirations of a region. The course also provides a broad perspective on India's five thousand years of rich architectural history.

Moreover, the Introduction to History of Architecture in India course by Swayam is available at the UG level. In just four weeks, you will have acquired knowledge of the various cultural, artisanal, technological, and philosophical processes of every period and place of architecture in India. 

Core topics covered in the Introduction to History of Architecture in India syllabus include Cave & Wooden architecture, Islamic architecture, Sultanate architecture, Medieval temples, Mughals and Rajputs, Neoclassical architecture, and more. 

As such, you will study the complete history of architecture in India, starting from the Bronze Age through the Vedic Culture period, early Buddhist period, early modernity in architecture, and colonial buildings. Finally, the Introduction to History of Architecture in India online course will culminate on the architecture from the Republic of India.

Modern Sculpture: An Introduction to Art History certification by the University of York, and FutureLearn helps the candidates jump onto learning the art history while exploring public sculpture. Learning modern sculpture becomes quite easy as candidates will be developing their visual capabilities.

With the Modern Sculpture: An Introduction to Art History certification syllabus, candidates can explore the conceptual, material, and theoretical questions that have risen around 20th-century sculptures like parks, galleries squares, museums and city centres that one finds everywhere. Being a creative art, and Media course, this programme is able to help candidates to start off a conversion regarding purchasing artworks by initiating arts-related conversation.

Modern Sculpture: An Introduction to Art History is run over a period of 4 weeks that is responsible for making the candidates aware of the contemporary sculpture’s epicentre like Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Henry Moore Institute so that these sculptures can be explored visually.  

Examine how football evolved from the old era to today’s modern-day with the 4 weeks English Football: a Social History online course. This short certification course is outlined by the joint efforts of De Montfort University, the University of Leicester, and FutureLearn. With this course, people will be able to understand the evolving nature of English football with a special interest in Leicester City Football Club and the World Cup.

Both the universities have partnered with Leicester City Football Club to develop the English Football: a Social History certification syllabus that gives us detailed information on how the Premier League; the World Cup, and LCFC transformed into Premier League Champions.

This English Football: a Social History training course comes under the History course of Futurelearn that gives a unique insight of both history and sociology of this fantastic sports football, and portrays the whole inside story of how a premier league club is formed and plays football.

The World Bank states that Africa’s working-age population is likely to increase by almost 70% by 2035. However, to achieve sustainable development, industrialisation is crucial to create jobs. While rapid manufacturing has been beneficial for east Asian countries, will it be useful for Africa? Industrial Policy in the 21st Century: The Challenge for Africa online course explores this and many other questions related to Africa’s industrialisation policy requirements. 

The Industrial Policy in the 21st Century: The Challenge for Africa course surveys various ways to promote economic growth in Africa. The prime focus will be on ‘industries without smokestacks’, an industrial policy that encourages industry growth and economic development in Africa, foregoing the manufacturing policies. 

Industrial Policy in the 21st Century: The Challenge for Africa is a four-week online course. However, you can learn at your own speed. With a weekly effort of two to four hours, you will be able to complete the course on time. The educator for this course is John Page, a representative of the SDG Academy.  The self-paced course is free to join and access it for a limited duration. To get the certificate and unlimited access to the programme, they learners will need to pay the prescribed fee. 

Amid the rise of fake, misleading, and polarising news, and the deplorable state of mainstream media, the need of the hour is to produce trustworthy journalism. And that is just what the Journalism for Social Change certification course aims to do. You will learn about solution-based journalism, which is the practice of giving equal weightage to a problem and its solution.

By the end of the Journalism for Social Change training by edX, you will learn how to use journalism and the media as a tool to implement positive social change. You will also become an effective change agent yourself. You will study outstanding examples of solution-based journalism, focusing mostly on vulnerable children, and other issues that affect all other vulnerable and marginalised peoples.  

Your research and report during the Journalism for Social Change online course will be published over the semester, and will, in turn, have an immediate and direct impact. It can be anything - women’s rights, immigration, child exploitation, criminal justice, or poverty. This four-week programme is brought to you by the University of California, Berkeley.

The Global ethics: an introductory course developed by the open university and offered by the platform of future learn is a course created under the guidance of four philosophers to help learners frame their opinions about the global challenges.

Through this course, the learners will become familiar with the key ethical theories surrounding global challenges and the implementation of philosophy for addressing them. This will make learners think about major global problems and help them develop their views about them. 

They would be able to analyze the problems like migration, climate change, widespread poverty, and global inequality and the course will help them present their unbiased thought and views on them. Frequent tests, quizzes, and assignments make learning more effective and efficient. At the end, of the course, a certification is awarded to the learners after qualifying a test, to help them demonstrate their dedication towards continuous learning and unending personal growth.