Online Social Science Courses & Certifications

With the increased globalisation of trade and commerce, companies are now looking for professionals with firm grasp over the global political scenario. FutureLearn’s International Relations: Politics in Turbulent Times training allows you to excel in the nuances of international politics and political challenges to diplomacy in the 21st century. The University of Kent offers the microcredential course. 

After finishing the International Relations: Politics in Turbulent Times programme, students will know all about the culture wars between conservatives and the liberals, COVID-19 pandemic and its economic ramifications, US-China trade wars, and more. 

The curriculum includes the geopolitical rivalry, neoliberalism, climate change, diffusion of power from 1945 to today, and the boundaries of global governance. Students who have fluency in written and spoken English and have an undergraduate degree in any domain are eligible for the microcredential.

International Relations: Politics in Turbulent Times is a 12-week online certification course. After completion, learners will receive a politics and international relations certification from the University of Kent’s world-leading research centre. The university will also award students with 15 UK credits at the postgraduate level. 

The Strategies and Models for Sustainability Certification course is a subset of the discipline of sustainability science that helps students acquire a deep understanding of the topic. The course will equip students in achieving socially acceptable economic development with the help of both scientific and technological tools.

The Strategies and Models for Sustainability Online Course is a 4 credit course offered by Swayam. The course is taught for a period of 12 weeks by expert professors from Indira Gandhi National Open University. The course will provide a comprehensive and theoretical understanding of the social, economical and ecological aspects of sustainability along with its basic principles and features.

The Strategies and Models for Sustainability Training course provides valuable insights into the working of sustainable development in the rural sphere. The course discusses the existing sustainable development models in India in the form of case studies, allowing them to critically view the functioning of different models and their contribution to nature. The final assessment is made through assignments and an end-term examination.

The Challenge to Sustainable Development Certification Course is a massive open online course that discusses the vital threats to attaining sustainable development. The course will make learners aware of the crucial environmental changes taking place around the world and their potential causes and consequences.

The Challenges to Sustainable Development Online Course is a 4 credit course offered by the Swayam portal. The course is coordinated by Dr. Deeksha Dave; Dr. Y.S.C. Khuman, Assistant Professors at the School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies of the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi.

The Challenges to Sustainable Development Course is particularly apt for people working in the field of sustainable development. The course will help them understand the scope for alternative methods to reduce the socio-cultural and ecological impacts of the conventional models of development.

Education for Sustainable Development Certification will discuss the details of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) which is primarily based on UNESCO’s 17 sustainable development goals. 

Education for Sustainable Development Classes will cover key concepts like what is sustainability, sustainable development, UNESCO sustainable development goals, and education for sustainable development.

In order to address educational challenges and create systems that are inclusive, equitable, and relevant to all, sustainable development requires political will, global and regional collaboration, and active engagement of educational institutions, civil society, youth, the corporate/private sector, and other multilateral agencies.

All students get an Education for Sustainable Development Certification from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) under the Swayam Initiative by the Government of India. 

The course on Designing and Running Randomised Evaluations by MITx is a part of the MicroMasters track. During the course, you will get graduate-level knowledge of randomised controlled trials (RCT), including step-by-step training in how to design and implement an RCT in the field. Using this policy-relevant study, you can boost your ability to draw causal inferences and conduct impact evaluations.

The Designing and Running Randomised Evaluations MicroMasters programme comes under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Data, Economics and Development Policy (DEDP) department. The curriculum uses material from MIT’s JPAL lab, used by social science researchers from all over the world. 

Besides, Designing and Running Randomised Evaluations by edX provides a professional and academic credential to candidates who complete this course. You can use this credential to gain an accelerated and cheaper Master’s degree from MIT or add it as a professional qualification to your CV. Learn from esteemed Nobel Laureates through an intensive approach involving quizzes, lectures, case studies and exams in this course. 

The course Reading Religious Conversion, served by edx aims to make us learn about the functions of religious communities. In this course, we will go through each section every week, starting from an introduction to the world of conversion. Women 's conversion, conversions between religions, what are the myths associated with conversions.

 All these will be covered under a time period of 12 weeks, where each pursuer needs to dedicate their 4-8 hours of every week to advance efficiently and quickly. You can also cap the timings according to your will and flexible time. Any graduate-level student or professional who has a clear knowledge and understanding of historical events can opt-in for this course. And after successful completion of the course, every student will receive an official certificate which will help to increase your job prospects. Certificates provided to the candidates will be signed by the instructors and there will be a logo of the institution.

The Introduction to Language and Linguistics certification course caters to B.Tech and master's students interested in linguistics, as well as PhD scholars seeking a fundamental grasp of the subject. Delving into language and linguistic analysis, participants acquire skills in phonology, morphology, IPA transcription, syntax tree creation, and parsing. 

The Introduction to Language and Linguistics certification by Swayam covers significant topics such as language scripts, linguistic areas, and dialects, making it a well-rounded exploration of linguistics. With industry backing from computational linguistics giants like Google and Microsoft, the course ensures practical relevance for those venturing into technology-driven linguistic applications.

Also Read: Online Linguistics Certification Courses

The Environmental & Resource Economics certification course delves into the relationship between economic activities and environmental sustainability. It explores concepts like national income's impact on welfare, sustainable development, and the consequences of economic growth on environmental degradation. Students learn about regulatory mechanisms for externalities, economic valuation of environmental assets, and optimal resource extraction strategies.

With relevance across industries like manufacturing, oil & gas, and mining, The Environmental & Resource Economics certification by Swayam  equips participants to address environmental challenges effectively. It offers insights into valuing environmental goods and services, navigating uncertainty in policy instruments, and promoting sustainable resource management.

The Applied Econometrics certification course is a 12-week duration programme. The certification course covers an extensive curriculum that covers instrumental variable (IV) estimation and two-stage least squares, simultaneous equations models, and others. The prerequisite for this course is the students must know inferential statistics and basic econometrics. 

This certification course can be pursued by anyone interested in data analysis. The Applied Econometrics certification by NPTEL is supported by banking, analytics, audit firms, and other industries. With the leading experts in the field, the students will gain hands-on training experience in data analysis and can apply it in real-world situations.   

Also Read: Online Economics Courses & Certifications

The Korean Story: Secrets of an Economic Miracle course features South Korea's present status as far as human improvement markers and the SDGs and offers experiences on how different nations can accomplish comparable development stories with organized change and strategy measures.

The Korean Story: Secrets of an Economic Miracle certification course offers modules from driving Korean specialists in financial aspects, governmental issues, instruction, well-being, sexual orientation strengthening, provincial turn of events, and transportation. The prominent idea pioneer in financial aspects and feasible turn of events, Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs, presents an early on module about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), zeroing in on the Korean experience of defining objectives and focusing on accomplishing them.

The Korean Story: Secrets of an Economic Miracle was created and delivered by the KDI School of Public Policy and Management, in association with the SDG Academy. There are 2 ways in which the candidates will be getting enrolled in the course. One is the audit mode, which offers limited access along with the self-paced mode, whereas during the verified mode, the candidates, apart from the self-paced option will get the option to view the course for an unlimited period.

If you want to hear what economists have to say about the challenge that poverty poses, then The Challenges of Global Poverty online course is for you. The questions addressed in this course include: Is extreme poverty no longer a thing? What is life like for people who live on daily wages of less than $1? 

Hopefully, by the end of The Challenges of Global Poverty programme, you will have the answers to the questions listed above, and many more. Students will understand how to make schools work for poor children, how to rid them of diseases, and if microfinance is overrated or invaluable. Candidates will also discover if economic development should be left to the market, NGOs, or if they can seek foreign help. 

The programme illustrates the right place for intervention. You can take this course even without a background in economics and statistics. There are various resources available throughout the training to help candidates learn or revise relevant topics. The Challenges of Global Poverty training is eleven weeks long and a part of the MicroMasters programme in DEPD.

The Foundations of Development Policy online course is a part of MIT’s MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Development Policy (DEDP). And the DEPD MicroMasters is part of the Workforce Recovery Acceleration program. It is an eleven-week course, and candidates can complete it comfortably if they study 12-14 hours per week.

The Foundations of Development Policy program studies the different aspects of human development, including health, education, gender, family, risk, land relations, formal and informal norms, institutions, and public policies. It attempts to answer questions like - What factors affect the decisions that low-income households in developing countries make? What are the constraints within which low-income families have to make do?

The Foundations of Development Policy training also covers the scope for intervening policies implemented by governments, international organizations, and NGOs. You will learn which policies have been implemented, and how successful they have been, if at all. The training also includes weekly assignments wherein you will work with real data.

Besides, you can choose a verified certificate path by paying the required certification fee and avail of a shareable certificate on course completion.

The Tangible Things certification programme by EdX is a humanities course on the functioning of museums, libraries and other historical and scientific collections. You will learn how historians, curators, preservationists and archivists do their jobs. The course aims to discover and study how material objects have helped shape academic disciplines and have challenged or reinforced boundaries between people. 

Offered by Harvard University, the Tangible Things: Discovering History Through Artworks, Artifacts, Scientific Specimens and the Stuff Around You discipline is taught by top Harvard University faculty like Sara Schechner, Ivan Gaskell and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and visiting faculty like Sarah Carter from The School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Harvard University houses some of the fascinating items which will help the students understand the importance and power of learning through tangible things. 

The Tangible Things programme by EdX is an online programme, the course materials of which will be available to the enrolled candidates completely free of cost. But, while taking the course free of cost, the learners will be provided access to the course only for a limited duration. It is a ten-week programme and classes will be held 1-3 hours per week. A certificate of achievement will be available to the candidates upon completion of the course when taking the programme by paying the fee. 

Improving Global Health: Focusing on Quality and Safety program is a 10-week course offered by Harvard University. It is an intermediate study focusing on the measurement and improvement of global healthcare quality. Key concepts covered include approaches, frameworks, the role of communication technology, and public systems of healthcare quality.

With concrete and interactive tools, each session in the Improving Global Health certification syllabus splits into eight learning modules that focus on different healthcare aspects. Students can gain insights from global leaders in the field and interact with the instructor. Based on the study of social science, the curriculum supports self-learning with pre-recorded class videos.

Harvard University, a learning partner of edX, offers the Improving Global Health: Focusing on Quality and Safety online course. Dr. Ashish Jha, an esteemed health and medicine academician, and the Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute instructs this class. Learners can opt for a certificate by paying the necessary fee stated for the certification. They can audit the self-paced programme for a limited duration without paying the course fee. 

The increasing rates of violence and crime are the two main challenges that the Caribbean and Latin American countries face. That’s why there’s a growing need of prioritising citizen security over other agendas. It is essential to have a society educated in social rights and law's nuances to make informed policies. To achieve this effect and impart the necessary knowledge, edX has developed the Leaders in Citizen Security and Justice Management online course, in collaboration with Inter-American Development Bank.

The Leaders in Citizen Security and Justice Management training covers both the theoretical and practical concepts of citizen security and how justice policies are carried out in the South American region. The programme also goes through crime deterrence, social rehabilitation of prisoners, law enforcement, and crime judicialization. It is expected that this law programme will develop awareness within authorities, academics, public officials, journalists, and civil society regarding citizen justice.

The Leaders in Citizen Security and Justice Management certification course was jointly developed by IDB and the consortium of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, FADISMA in Brazil, and the universities of Chile. This 10-week programme is a self-paced one, which requires 3-4 hours of diligent study every week. You can also add a verified certificate if you wish to improve your credentials or look for jobs in the social science field. By enrolling to any one of the tracks namely verified and audit the students may learn the programme. During the audit track, learning is free for a limited time period whereas during the verified track learning is unlimited but paid.

The course CS50's Computer Science for Lawyers certification course the candidate will be provided with an adaptation from Harvard University which introduces the learner with CS50 and computer inbuilt principally for law students and lawyers. The CS50's Computer Science for Lawyers is having vertical discussion and focusing on mastery for high level conceptualization and design discourse relation. In the long run it provides the learner with an extensive knowledge about the legal connotation of technological resolution asked by the potential client. 

Without an interruption candidate will learn a combination of technical requirements and deliberation of case studies to empower the learner to be well informed about technology driven supervision. The CS50's Computer Science for Lawyers training by edX makes students ready to put together technology with legal debates and point of views. This also provides learners with their hands in involvement with python and structured query language through which the candidate can mine data in regard for answering themselves. 

The candidates will learn an understanding of the work developers perform and technological solutions the developers exercise which can make an impression on their clients. The participants of this certification course will get more confident about the factors which will be guiding their final judgement. There are 2 tracks of study, one is the verified track, and the other is the audit track. In the audit track, the candidates will be able to study only for a limited time for free. If they want to extend the time period and get unlimited access then they will have to enrol for the verified track with some fee.

Early Christian Outlook and its Jewish Matrix online course look through the origins of Christianity from Judaism. It tries to answer various complicated questions and ideas to understand the birth of Christianity from within the Jewish Matrix and various other modern religious movements. The course promises unexpected answers to questions related to the messianic ideas, expectations, how early Christian texts influenced Greek-speaking phases and much more. 

Early Christian Outlook and its Jewish Matrix by edX is a Humanities course. As it is an introductory or beginner course, you do not need to fulfil any eligibility criterion to join the training. The programme has been curated by Israel X and will be taught by professor Serge Ruzer. 

Early Christian Outlook and its Jewish Matrix is a 9-week duration course. However, you can complete the syllabus at your convenience. The course uses video lectures, reading material, and a final exam to encourage you to complete it and earn a certificate by paying the fee. You can also join the programme free of cost; but, the access to the course materials will be only for a limited duration. 

The Korean Economic Development Certification Course is a massive open online course that deals with the analysis of the Korean economy. The 100% online with a flexible schedule is available on the Coursera platform. Through the course, learners will be able to study the economic policies of the Korean government and compare them with other developing countries.

The Korean Economic Development Training will be led by Doo Won Lee, a Professor of the School of Economics at Yonsei University. The course will be delivered through expert video lectures, reading materials, and practice exercises to test the progress of learners. After completing all course lessons and the assessments, learners will get The Korean Economic Development Certification by Coursera.

The Anthropology of Current World Issues course by edX empowers candidates to better understand the world around them, by looking at it through an anthropological lens. They will see how this methodology, as a discipline, can shine a new light on current world issues. Learners will also understand how to look at issues like material culture, migration, and indigeneity, from different perspectives.

The University of Queensland’s Anthropology of Current World Issues training programme will also challenge learners to reflect on their perspective when thinking about the aforementioned current world issues. It will encourage them to contemplate how they look at the world and how there are differences and commonalities between people.

With the Anthropology of Current World Issues online certification, participants will follow renowned anthropologists from various parts of the world, meet the people they work with, and explore the current-world problems they are working on, as they find their place in the world.

This extensive programme will help students become skilled professionals in forming anthropological understandings within just nine weeks to absorb today’s pitfalls worldwide. There are two modes for learners to enrol in the course; paid and free modes. The free mode gives the learners only limited access to the course.  

Understanding one of the ancient texts of all times, the Bible from a different comparative perspective, forms the crux of this introductory course on Arts and culture titled The Bible in Light of the Ancient Near East. The online course is provided by edX, an online education provider in partnership with IsraelX, a national consortium of higher education institutions in Israel, and is led by experienced faculty of IsraelX. This certification course has a comprehensive curriculum on the Bible and focuses its studies against the backdrop of the Archeological findings from the ancient Near East.

The course mainly highlights reading the bible from different perspectives and discusses selected biblical genres, themes, and traditions along with the consequences of the discovery of ancient Near Eastern materials in the new age which has changed the way we approach the text. It covers various key concepts such as Biblical flood stories, law literature, wisdom, written prophecies, its creation traditions, and so on. The students can pursue this course in either of the two modes, namely, paid and free. In the free audit version, they will be provided access to the course only for a limited period without a certification whereas in the paid also called the verified track the students will be given unlimited access to the course and a certificate of completion.

The course is structured way that emphasizes the justice system and the effectiveness of law from the psychological perspective. The students will be provided a fictional case so that they gain first-hand experience in crime-solving and learn in-depth about law psychology and the various misconceptions in the domain of crime.

The program will help students to identify the various myths that involve the justice system. The way to identify empirical evidence in a crime scene will also be taught to the registered participants. The Certificate Course on The Psychology of Criminal Justice by edX is structured introductory so that students can learn more easily. Also, during the course, the curriculum includes- suspecting the criminals, the process of trial, the ways of interrogating a criminal also gathering information that will help to solve a crime scene more professionally and judiciously. The candidates will get the option of selecting their path while learning the course. The two paths are the audit track and the verified track. When in the audit track, the access to course materials while in the verified track, the access becomes unlimited.

Humanity & Nature in Chinese Thought course, provided by edX by associating with the University of Hong Kong, is all about making the ethics and behaviour right, issuing guidelines and its importance. Humanity & Nature in Chinese Thought course introduces the candidates to traditional China and its ethical thought and logic. It focuses on the vast difference between the thinking of Westerners and Chinese, its understanding of right and wrong, bad & good.

Humanity & Nature in Chinese Thought describes how there are two directions standing opposite to each other covered under the natural dao model of traditional China. The studies of ethical paths, distinct human guiding organ and Confucian version will also be included in this program.

The map that internally is responsible for the bad or good choices of life and its correlation with nature like a plant, alternate Chinese human based naturalism, a broader sense of normative guidance will be explained in the course in relation to classical Chinese philosophers and Indo European way of thinking.