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edX, an educational non-profit founded by Harvard and MIT, has reportedly enrolled over 25 million learners in every country in the world, according to the company.
The non-profit partners with more than 90 of the world's top universities, non-profits, NGOs, and corporations to remove barriers to education and make skill-building more accessible.
Below, find the six courses that the company says are the most popular on the site as of September 2020 — though, edX founder and CEO Anant Agarwal told Business Insider they're pretty much always in the top 10.
These increasingly in-demand skill sets include computer science, which has taken on new importance and urgency as US weekly jobless claims remain high.
Agarwal also says that the pandemic caused the biggest relative interest increase in healthcare courses and personal happiness as well as religion courses such as those on Christianity and Buddhism, though these latter topics are not part of the most popular list — for now, anyway.
Currently, edX offers about 3,000 courses which, unsurprisingly for a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider, are technically free, but require a low $50-$100 fee for the "verified certificate" version of the class that includes one upon completion, as well as graded homework during the course and unlimited course access.
You can find a demo version of an edX course here, but popular courses typically take anywhere from six to 14 weeks to complete and are often self-paced.
They include weekly modules with pre-recorded videos that you may watch on a schedule or at your own pace, supplemental readings, quizzes or other assessments, homework, and student discussion forums where you can interact as much or as little as you like.
These are the six courses with the highest enrollment numbers on edX.