Top Ten Free Online Courses in CPD With Certificates in 2022

Participation in free online CPD courses ensures that an individual’s academic and practical qualifications do not become outdated; allowing people to constantly improve skills or retrain themselves, regardless of profession, age, or level of education.

If you want to learn more about a specific area of ​​your career or develop customized learning solutions for your organization, free online courses in CPD can help.

What Are CPD Courses?

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) describes training activities that help professionals develop their skills, gain new knowledge, and improve their abilities. CPD is essential for the development of individuals, organizations, and institutions.

CPD-accredited training courses meet strict CPD standards and criteria. Well-structured, practical, and interactive courses on sustainable development and CSR are designed to meet your expectations, ensure the development of your knowledge and skills, and help your career growth.

CPD approval adds significant value to learning activities, ensuring quality and integrity. All participants will receive CPD credits and receive an official CPD certificate of attendance.

Continue to explore the different options of the top free online courses in CPD with certificates.

You Can Check Out: Top Ten Free Online Courses in Special Education With Certificates

Are Online CPD Courses Accredited?

Many CPD short courses and training programs have academic credits and professional accreditation, and they designed courses with researchers and industry experts to meet your needs and ambitions.

Continuous self-development is something that everyone can benefit from by acquiring new skills and practices that can be used in their current position or used for career growth and additional responsibilities.

Completion of training, which has been certified by the CPD Certification Service, shows that the course meets the high standards set by an external organization and allows you to achieve tangible success in your skillset.

Don’t Fail to Read: Top Ten Free Online Courses in Education and Teaching With Certificates

What are the Benefits of Taking Free Online Courses in CPD?

CPD allows learning to become conscious and active, rather than passive and reactive. Basically, CPD is a holistic commitment of professionals to improve personal skills and qualifications throughout their careers.

CPD combines various teaching methodologies, such as training seminars, conferences and events, e-learning programs, best practices, and the exchange of ideas aimed at improving and effective professional development of the individual.

See Also: Top Ten Free Online Courses in Education Management With Certificates

Is It Worth It to Take Online Courses in CPD?

Online CPD courses can often be much more accessible than traditional learning styles, such as classroom courses or 121 coachings.  Expenses and overheads for a student can be reduced, such as business trips, textbooks, and course supplies.  

Therefore, online learning is a great way to learn for those who are trying to complete continuing professional development with a limited budget.  

Unlike traditional courses, e-learning does not have to be completed all at once; it can be broken down into size modules distributed over a period of time.

Read Also: Review of Top 10 E-Learning Platforms

How Do I Choose The Best Free Online Courses in CPD?

Choosing an online course can be difficult.  There are two key things to consider when choosing a CPD course: what will be most useful for your teaching and how much time you want to spend studying.

In terms of time, you need to think about whether you are going to take a series of small courses or one thicker one.  Be pragmatic. Many of you will spend a lot of time planning, tagging, tracking, and meeting online. Some of you will be in training centers, so be kind to yourself and choose something you can do.

To choose which course to take, think about what will be useful for your teaching, what is the focus of your school improvement plan, your learning goals, and last but not least, what course do you really want to take?

Check Also: Top 7 Apps for Comfy Remote Learning

Top Ten Free Online Courses in CPD With Certificates in 2022

Assessment for Learning: Formative Assessment in Science and Maths Teaching

• Platform: FutureLearn
• Institution: National STEM Learning Centre
• Level: Mixed
• Time: 11 weeks
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

This ExpertTrack is co-authored by experienced teachers and leading researchers in the field; Professor Dylan William, Professor Chris Harrison, and Dr. Andrea Maplebeck in partnership with STEM Learning.

To get the most out of your students, you need to fully understand their progress.  The first course in this ExpertTrack is “Introduction to Assessment for Learning”.  This will teach you the basic philosophy of assessment for learning, and you will develop the use of point-related questions to obtain evidence from students.  You will also learn how to plan diagnostic questions to draw students’ understanding.

The second part of this ExpertTrack is learning planning.  You will learn how to plan lessons to determine your students’ thinking and clarify their learning goals.  Then you will learn how to improve your learning outcomes by clearly defining your students ‘thinking, clarifying your learning goals, and improving your students’ understanding.

In the final Learning Feedback course, you will implement formative assessment strategies and develop your own use of feedback.  You will cope with the development of a classroom culture that prepares students to get the most out of your feedback.

REGISTER HERE

2. EPortfolio Self-development Study

• Platform: EMMA
• Institution: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Level: Mixed
• Time: Self-Paced
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

E-portfolios are becoming increasingly popular because of their potential for use in a wide range of contexts, as well as their ability to be used for a variety of individual or organizational purposes.  

E-portfolios offer the opportunity to create and manage an online space of digital artifacts that demonstrate the competencies and abilities gained over a period.  

Thus, e-portfolios can be designed to improve traditional teaching and learning methods, record achievement, recognize prior learning (RPL), and assist people in personal development planning (PDP) or personal career development (CPD), among others.

This MOOC comprises seven lessons.  Lessons are designed as learning resources for self-study and can be conducted selectively according to individual interests, problems, and goals.  Each lesson contains a variety of student-centered activities aimed at obtaining practical results.

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3. Business Model Innovation

• Platform: Coursera
• Institution:  HEC Paris
• Level: Mixed
• Time:   5-12 weeks
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

This course gives you access to the Odyssey 3.14 approach, an innovative platform to help you invent or reinvent business models.  This highly innovative approach was developed by Lawrence Lehmann-Ortega and Ellen Musikas and has proven to be a precious method for start-ups, business leaders, and internal entrepreneurs.  

It offers a practical and highly efficient structure and set of tools for creating, inventing, or rethinking business models in a much more disciplined way. The approach begins with a deep immersion in the 3 pillars of the business model:

• Value proposition (who are our clients and what do we offer them?)
• Value architecture (how we are organized to provide this valuable offer to our customers in a timely manner)
• Profit equation (how the agreement between the first 2 pillars creates a profit)

Then, 14 areas are explored to invent or reinvent the business model. Examples of areas include “reducing total customer costs”, “changing revenue streams”, and “introducing third parties”, “eliminating a step in the value chain and exploring new resources”.  

Illustrated by many examples, these areas stimulate your creativity to carefully study all ‌ways of innovation. Innovation becomes an adventure, an odyssey – hence the name of the approach!

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4. Leadership Through Marketing

• Platform: Coursera
• Institution:  Northwestern University
• Level: Mixed
• Time: 4 weeks
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

In this course, students will learn how to identify new opportunities to create value for expanded consumers, develop strategies that outperform competitors, and develop data science skills to manage more efficiently, allocate resources and confront this very complex environment with confidence.

Students will explore the changes that the digital age has empowered consumers with, and the impact of these changes on how firms create value for consumers and competitive advantage in the process.  We will look at the strategy development process, the role of brands and the successful evolution of brands over time.

In this course, students will also learn the concept of corporate culture and how you, as a leader, can help create a culture that is well suited to the digital age.  We will explore the nature of culture, the values ​​of successful firms, how firms adapt to change, empower individuals and drive growth.

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5. Sit Less, Get Active

• Platform: Coursera
• Institution: University of Edinburgh
• Level: Beginner
• Time: 3 weeks
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

Join this course to learn how to sit less and become more active.  Use this FREE course to learn how to control your own activity and set goals for physical activity.  It provides various examples of how you can increase physical activity in a variety of settings, such as your area, home, or workplace, to give you ideas that best suit your lifestyle.

Are you a medical professional? Take this opportunity to learn how to incorporate physical activity into your daily routine, as well as how to give your patients the opportunity to be more physically active.  If time with the patient is a problem, you can simply “assign” this course to your patient.

This course gives you a unique opportunity to receive weekly reports on the health of physical activity and monthly video reminders on how to increase physical activity in different conditions for 6 months after the initial 3-week course.  So join us on “Sit less, be active”!  travel.

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6. Designing the Future of Work

• Platform: Coursera
• Institution: University of New South Wales
• Level: Beginner
• Time: 4 weeks
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

The course is the result of collaboration between UNSW Sydney Art & Design and AMP Amplify, AMP’s Innovation and Ideas Program.  It brings together leading business thinking and design thinking to help answer these questions and explores design strategies that businesses, employees, and designers can apply to find new opportunities in such a rapidly changing professional landscape.

The course provides you with a unique, authentic, and industry-specific learning opportunity.  You will have access to current theory, industry examples, and expert advice from industry leaders. This course will help you:

• Recognize how the integration of design approaches shapes technologies and business practices, and how these changes bring enormous opportunities and uncertainties to future work
• Analyze the important skills and qualities that designers, employees, and businesses need to be successful in a speculative, technologically advanced future

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7. Strategy and Sustainability

• Platform: Coursera
• Institution: IESE Business School
• Level: Beginner
• Time: 5-12 weeks
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

This course on strategy and sustainable development, based on Rosenberg’s recently published book Strategy and Sustainability, encourages students to filter out the noise and make that choice in a clear and understandable way.  

Professor Rosenberg’s point of view, based on nuances and facts, recognizes the complexity of the issues and strategic choices that businesses must make.  

It combines the work of some of the leading academic thinkers in this field with practical examples from different sectors of business and geography and proposes a structure through which senior management could address this topic, not (simply) to save the planet but to implement them in the short to medium-term and long-term liabilities to shareholders and other stakeholders.

This course promises to be both interesting and thought-provoking, aimed at anyone who wants to better understand a topic that is no longer perceived as a choice, but a necessity for both future managers and business leaders.

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8. Speaking to Inspire: Ceremonial and Motivational Speeches

• Platform: Coursera
• Institution: University of Washington
• Level: Beginner
• Time: 5-12 weeks
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

This course gives you a method of preparing and delivering speeches that inspire and entertain.  By the end of this course, you will be able to compose and deliver moving speeches that praise the core values ​​of the audience through evidence, storytelling, and humor.  

You must be able to write eloquent passages in tones appropriate to your audience and circumstances and speak fluently either from a well-prepared manuscript or from memory.  Students will record speeches, providing and receiving feedback from peers.

You will start by thinking about which general style is best for your speech. Then go through a bunch of stylistic devices.  This is an equation for eloquence. You invest your value in these stylistic devices, and eloquence is manifested on the other hand.  From there, you can learn more about word choice and general tone.

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9. Interdisciplinary Learning: Working Across Disciplines

• Platform: FutureLearn
• Institution: University of Leeds
• Level: Mixed
• Time: Self-paced
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

In this course, you will learn what interdisciplinary learning is, and learn how different disciplines develop their own methodologies and language. You will learn how disciplines create and value different types of knowledge, and discover strategies for working in an interdisciplinary environment.

Part of what you will also be learning is how to make the most of interdisciplinary work and collaborate effectively in your own areas of practice. At each step of the course, you can meet other students, share your ideas and join active discussions in the comments.

They designed this online training for those preparing for a joint honors degree or interdisciplinary degree at the bachelor’s or master’s level. It will also be useful for academic researchers conducting research in new fields, or professionals working on projects with people from different disciplines.

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10. The Online Educator: People and Pedagogy

• Platform: FutureLearn    
• Institution: Open University
• Level: Mixed
• Time: Self-paced      
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian, English, Spanish, Romanian.

This course explores four myths: that learning design is technology and content; that innovation and accessibility are incompatible; that online learning research is an ethical-free zone, and that online teacher identity does not matter.

Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology developed it. The course will help you improve your practice through videos, quizzes, and discussions with colleagues.

This course is suitable for anyone involved in online education or training, including teachers, coaches, course designers, and researchers. While it is helpful to have a current training setup that you can rely on, it is not necessary.

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Conclusion

With the improvement of learning management systems (LMS) and eLearning platforms, online CPD courses have significantly improved their functionality and interactivity in recent years.

Online learning can now include participant-based quizzes, videos, audio, and multimedia, as well as collaboration opportunities for student discussion forums and live webinars.

Free Online Courses in CPD FAQs

References

• mooc-list.com – CPD