UPenn offers 5 online courses that teach you how to lead a happier and more fulfilled life, and they're free for anyone to audit

• The University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school and one of the oldest higher learning institutions in the US, offers a series of five courses about positive psychology on Coursera. Anyone can take it and it's free to audit.
• Foundations of Positive Psychology aims to equip you with both theoretical knowledge and practical tools to live a happier and more fulfilled life.
• Now that social distancing and shelter-at-home policies are in place across the country due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, taking an online course is a good opportunity to pass time, learn something new, or advance your career.

Positive psychology, or the study of what makes life worth living, is much more than fluffy talk about human happiness. There are real and actionable takeaways from the field of positive psychology that can improve the way you think about and approach your personal and professional lives — and here to guide you through it is the man whom many consider to be the founder and leading authority on the topic.

Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Positive Psychology Center, leads a specialization on e-learning platform Coursera called Foundations of Positive Psychology.

Along with other leading instructors in the field such as Angela Duckworth, the author of the bestseller "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance," he helps deliver an Ivy League education from the lecture halls of one of the nation's oldest universities to anywhere you have an internet connection and a phone or laptop.

The educational series about the fascinating subject of positive psychology is one of many free wellness and well-being courses you can take on Coursera right now, amongst the even broader collection of courses in the arts and humanities, science, business, health, languages, and social sciences.

Course details: what to expect and how long they'll take

The specialization is made up of five courses, which cover the history of positive psychology as a study, its practical applications, and more. Course materials include videos, readings, exercises, and quizzes.

The first four courses take about 15 to 20 hours each to complete, while the fifth course, a final project where you'll bring together all your learnings and identify opportunities in your daily life to increase your wellbeing, takes about 12 hours.

In total, Coursera estimates it'll take four months for you to complete the Positive Psychology Specialization, assuming you spend about seven hours a week working on it. To help you stay generally on track, Coursera suggests deadlines for each lesson in the course. Of course, you can take longer or shorter to finish them, depending on your learning style and schedule. Because the specialization is all online and entirely flexible, you won't feel unnecessary stress or pressure to take the courses when you don't want to.

How to take the specialization

Paid option: If you want to gain full access to the specialization — meaning features like practice quizzes and graded assignments — and also receive official course certificates for each course you complete, the cost is $79 a month. But, before you commit to paying, you'll first get a free seven-day trial to see if the specialization is something you're actually interested in pursuing.

Free option: You can still view the course materials for free if you don't want to pay or aren't interested in receiving official verification of completion. When you audit each individual course, you'll get access to readings and videos, but not graded assignments.

Sign up below to start the Positive Psychology specialization.

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