10 New & Noteworthy Online Courses in April 2020 on Udemy

As you spend more time at home, it might be a good time to brush up on your technical and soft skills through online courses. Here are some new and noteworthy online courses to check out on Udemy featuring the latest tech & soft skills.

Technical skills

1. AWS Certified Developer Associate

The AWS Certified Developer Associate exam is for developers who wish to demonstrate their ability to develop applications native to the AWS cloud. It’s becoming increasingly essential for IT system architects and IT developers to build new cloud-native applications in the AWS ecosystem and have the knowledge to deploy and manage applications, services, and operating systems in the cloud. Building cloud-native applications helps reduce costs while increasing scalability and stability and lowering the operational burden. It allows organizations to move faster when deploying new products and offerings. 

The Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate 2020 course has been updated to cover all the new topics on the AWS Certified Developer Associate DVA-C01 exam in-depth. It’s packed with practical knowledge on how to use AWS inside and out as a developer. It teaches you how to prepare for the AWS exam and how to prepare for the real world.

Instructor Stephane Maarek is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect & Developer, and the author of highly rated and best-selling courses on AWS Lambda, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS EC2. He’s taught over 260,000 students on Udemy.

“It’s one of the best courses available online for AWS Developer certification. I passed the exam with a good score and thanks to Stephane for his amazing work. His energy and approach throughout the course keep you motivated.” – Course review

2. Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin

“The gift of data is the lifeblood of any organization. It’s the set of building blocks from which emergent business capabilities arise. Every decision, from executive strategy to project management to facility maintenance, revolves around accessing the right data in the right format at the right place and time,” writes Udemy instructor Adam Frisbee. Splunk, one of the top 10 hottest growing technical skills on Udemy from 2016–2019, combines data streaming; extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL); artificial intelligence; and business analytics into a single tool. 

A Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin manages various components of Splunk Enterprise on a daily basis, including license management, indexers and search heads, configuration, monitoring, and getting data into Splunk. This certification demonstrates an individual’s ability to support the day-to-day administration and health of a Splunk Enterprise environment. This course and certification are intended primarily for Splunk System and Data Administrators, but also data scientists, analysts, or engineers looking to get the Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin credential.

The Complete Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin Course 2020 is designed to help learners prepare for the most recent certification exam. Instructor Adam Frisbee is a technology leader, educator, and researcher/practitioner, specializing in cloud and DevOps.

“Simple and straightforward, always breaking things down to a digestible level with the right amount of detail.” – Course review

3. Tableau Certified Associate Exam

Tableau, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2019, was already known as a leader in business intelligence solutions. Over 86,000 global companies, including Netflix and Southwest, use Tableau to access, prepare, visualize, and share data across teams — no coding required. Tableau’s popularity as a business intelligence solution soared largely thanks to an interface friendly to non-technical users of all levels. Interactive reports and visualizations allow employees without a data science background to extract worthwhile meaning from data and circulate these findings to relevant stakeholders.  

The Tableau Certified Associate Exam Guide A-Z course covers the essential knowledge and skills to pass the Tableau Certified Associate Exam, including how to connect Tableau to datasets; analyze, blend, join, and calculate data; and visualize data through various types of charts, plots, and maps. 

Instructor Kirill Eremenko is a data science management consultant with over five years of experience in finance, retail, transport, and other industries. He was trained by the best analytics mentors at Deloitte Australia in leveraging big data to drive business strategy, revamp customer experience, and revolutionize existing operational processes.

“Kirill Eremenko is quite possibly one of the best instructors/subject matter experts ever. His upbeat, get-to-the-point approach is fantastic.” – Course review

4. Customer analytics in Python

As a subfield of artificial intelligence, deep learning has been instrumental in some of the most transformational products available today. Self-driving cars, facial recognition, and translation apps are just some examples of consumer-facing offerings based on deep learning techniques that are already available. 

But the applications of deep learning are not reserved for high-tech products alone. In fact, many companies are empowering their marketing and sales teams through deep learning technology. These techniques are used most often when predicting purchase behavior at an individual consumer level.

By using data science and deep learning practices, we can quantitatively analyze purchase intent. In mathematical terms, purchase intent is the probability that a consumer will buy a product or a service. With a mathematical representation of purchase intent and enough data points about our customers, we can create deep learning models that show with near certainty whether a customer will buy our product. 

The Customer Analytics in Python course is where marketing and analytics meet. Using the Python programming language, learners will discover how to segment a customer base with data science libraries including NumPy, SciPy, and scikit-learn. The course also covers using TensorFlow 2.0 to build a deep learning neural network that can predict with near 90%+ accuracy future customer behavior. 

Instructor Iliya Valchanov has taught data science on Udemy since 2017. 365 Careers, the organization where he oversees all data science content, has taught over 700,000 students on Udemy. Read more from Iliya in his blog post How Deep Learning Can Predict If Your Customer Will Buy Again.

“When it comes to marketing analytics and Python, this is hands down one of the best courses on either subject. The topics are relevant and instantly useful for any marketer or business analyst. They are also quick to answer questions and give succinct, knowledgeable answers. If I could give it more than five stars I would.” – Course review

5. AWS Certified Advanced Networking Specialty

This is an advanced certification exam intended for network engineers who perform complex networking tasks. It is essential to ensuring engineers are able to design, develop, and deploy cloud-based networking solutions using AWS. 

The AWS Certified Advanced Networking Specialty course is designed to help learners prepare for the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty certification. The ideal learner for this course is a network engineer who needs to understand AWS networking and/or is preparing for the Advanced Networking Specialty exam. Earning this certification demonstrates mastery of pure and hybrid cloud networking skills and shows employers the learner has the skills to be a lead engineer on complex cloud integration projects.

Instructor Zeal Vora is a Cloud Security Consultant who helps organizations re-build their infrastructure with security in mind. He’s taught over 90,000 students on Udemy. 

“Great demos and examples. Very knowledgeable on the subject matter. Clear and concise!” – Course review

Business skills

1. Psychological safety and belonging

Research from Google, reported in Harvard Business Review, found that the highest-performing teams had one thing in common: psychological safety. When people are not afraid of making mistakes, they’re more confident in taking risks, speaking their minds, and being creative. And this can have a real impact on performance. The same HBR article explains, “We become more open-minded, resilient, motivated, and persistent when we feel safe. Humor increases, as does solution-finding and divergent thinking — the cognitive process underlying creativity.”

McKinsey reports that US companies spend nearly $8 billion each year on diversity training, but there is little evidence that this training actually leads to increased diversity. This could be because these programs tend to neglect concepts like inclusion and belonging.

These topics will only continue to take on more importance as Generation Z enters the workforce — Deloitte reports that Gen Z is the most diverse generation in the nation’s history and inclusion and diversity are critical factors members of Gen Z take into account when considering a job offer.

Fostering Psychological Safety & Belonging on Teams is a course that’s designed for managers to take actionable steps to create psychological safety and foster inclusion and belonging on their teams. It covers topics such as how to manage your team to foster inclusion and belonging, why fostering inclusion and belonging at your company is ongoing work critical to your success, and six steps to building psychological safety on your team.

Instructor Shelley Osborne is the VP of Learning at Udemy. She has 15 years of experience in the education sector and in corporate learning and development.

“I felt the course did a good job of explicitly stating what it would and would not cover. I appreciate the worksheets. I feel I could easily employ some of these techniques.” – Course review

2. Exceptional leadership

More than 50% of leaders who take on broader assignments fail within the first 18 months. Why is it so hard for executive-level leaders to succeed? What are some of the most common mistakes they make and how can your organization and executives avoid them?

To answer these questions, Udemy instructor Ron Carucci conducted a ten-year longitudinal study on executive transitions to isolate leadership strengths and recurring patterns that distinguished exceptional executives. One of his major discoveries was the vast majority of leaders say they felt unprepared for the challenges of leadership they discovered when they took bigger jobs. And more than half of them didn’t have any ongoing coaching to help them once in the role.

Planning for the transition is critical to being successful in an advanced leadership role. Ron’s course, Exceptional Leadership: Leading at a Higher Level, covers the common challenges leaders face at higher altitudes and how to successfully navigate them as well as the four dimensions that set the most successful leaders apart and how to develop them in your own leadership.

Ron is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, working with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders, and industries. He has a 30-year track record helping executives tackle challenges of strategy, organization, and leadership.

“The course provided good insights on traps that people fall into when moving to higher-level management positions. It also provided valuable insights on how to be an effective leader. Well worth the time!” – Course review

3. Strategic thinking

Research by Gallup has found that only 34% of US employees are engaged in their work. Companies with higher engagement enjoy greater profits, better customer engagement, higher productivity, and increased retention. The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) also makes a connection between meaning in work and employee engagement, recommending companies look for opportunities to help employees see how their work is connected to the company’s larger purpose. 

Strategic thinking can sound like a daunting concept, but it’s really about connecting the work we do day-to-day with our company’s larger goals and purpose. Being Strategic: Thinking and Acting with Impact is designed to help learners realize that everyone can be strategic. The course covers how to identify the strategic differentiation and capabilities that set your company apart and define your role to make maximum strategic impact on your company’s performance. Instructor Ron Carucci offers concrete tips on how employees can connect their work with a greater purpose in 4 Ways to Develop Your Employees’ Strategic Thinking.

“Very insightful. We talk about a lot of these things on a daily basis but not in the sequence that makes sense like this.” – Course review

4. Public speaking

You’ve no doubt heard about the automation that’s going to transform the way we work and live. But no matter how automated work and life become, we humans still have to communicate with each other to get things done. Udemy’s recent Humanizing Learning research report found high-performing organizations nurture uniquely human traits in their employees, including creativity, public speaking, storytelling, and collaboration.

Whether your employees are giving a formal presentation, making a sales call, sharing ideas in meetings, or navigating a “hallway ambush” with their boss, they need to speak clearly and confidently to move the business forward.

Speak Like a Pro: Public Speaking for Professionals covers connecting with any audience and making them care about your message, getting your point across without rambling, mastering the art of sounding natural and conversational (while secretly being well-prepared), organizing your ideas into easy-to-remember frameworks, and thinking and speaking on your feet, even in stressful situations.

Instructor Jennifer Hennings is an executive presentation coach who has helped thousands of clients overcome speech anxiety and speak with confidence over the past two decades. Read some of Jennifer’s tips for overcoming speaking anxiety in this blog post.

“Thoroughly enjoyed this course! It was informative and practical. This a course to take for speakers at every level! Will come back to take it over again!” – Course review

5. Customer success

We can’t deny the importance of focusing time and energy on our customers. HubSpot found that growing companies are 21% more likely than their stagnant counterparts to say customer success is “very important.”

The field of customer success may experience some disruption as AI chatbots and other automated tools gain traction. Yet while automation can replace simple interactions, human employees will still be essential for solving more complicated problems. Learn how Udemy customer [24]7.ai prepared customer service agents prepare for digital transformation with additional training in soft skills and growth mindset. 

To help customer success professionals develop advanced skills, Customer Success: Building Cross-Functional Relationships investigates the goals and pressures that drive other teams inside your company, as well as the intersections between each team and Customer Success. This course will help learners create a stronger customer experience by promoting cross-functional collaboration. 

Instructor Kristen Hayer is the CEO of The Success League, a customer success consulting firm. As a former sales and customer success executive, she’s seen firsthand how poor cross-functional relationships can negatively impact the customer experience. Over time, she learned what drives other teams inside an organization, and how to build strong relationships between groups.

“This is a great course for CS leaders and individual contributors alike, and had some great suggestions on how to foster alignment and cooperation between teams! Thanks, Kristen!” – Course review