Product Management Courses: Top 6 Platforms
The best way to advance your product management career is to develop yourself. But when you work 40+ hours per week, it is difficult to visit seminars, colleges courses or other further education programs.
A flexible option to learn and progress are MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). MOOCs are courses available over the internet and can educate a large number of people at the same time.
In this article I want to introduce you to the 6 best platforms for attending these courses. Advance your education and push your career. Every platform offers a variety of product management courses.
Tip: If you are looking to improve your PM soft skills, read these articles:
How to get respect from your development team (as a Product Manager)
How to sell your vision as a Product Manager
#1 Coursera
Coursera is the world’s largest platform for online courses. It offers courses and specializations from universities and other institutions. In addition, unlike most other sites, Coursera also offers the chance to earn an accredited master degree.
Courses: $29-$99 per course
You can choose from several courses. Each course has a duration of 4–6 weeks and includes video lectures, lessons and community discussion forums. After you finish the course successfully, you get a course certificate.
Specialization: $39-$79 per month
A specialization includes a series of courses, projects and challenges. You can acquire and expand specific professional skills. To complete a specialization, you need about 4–6 months and you will gain a specialization certificate.
Online Degree: $15.000-$25.000
Coursera offers the chance to earn a university-recognized degree. After 1–3 years of studying you can earn an accredited master’s degree.
Coursera for Business: Coursera for Business is the professional learning platform from Coursera. You can compile sets of courses for your employees. Moreover, you can analyze the learning behaviour of your employees and evaluate their engagement and successes.
You can decide between two different plans (Team and Enterprise). Prices start at $400/user/year. For larger companies, individual prices can be requested.
Best Product Management Course:
Digital Product Management: Modern Fundamentals by the University of Virginia:
#2 edX
edX is a non-profit organization that offers online courses from universities in the United States. For example: Harvard, MIT and British Columbia.It also offers the chance to earn Master Degrees.
Pricing: All courses can be attended for free. Verified certificates cost a fee.
Courses: edX offers free courses from over 130 partners.
Certificates: edX offers you the chance to get a verified certificate for a fee. A verified certificate demands that you verify your identity. Moreover, edX offers Xseries certificates which show that you have completed a series of courses.
Master’s degree: $10.000-$25.000
After 1–3 years of online studying, the students “will earn a full Master’s degree — typically the same exact diploma that students earn on-campus, such as a Master of Science in Computer Science or a Master of Science in Accounting” (edX). Master’s degrees are offered from Universities like Georgia Tech, University of Texas at Austin and University of California, San Diego.
edX for Business: edX offers a second platform for businesses. With this you can “train your teams with more than 2.200 courses by 130+ of the world’s top institutions and leading companies” (edX). Moreover, you can measure the learning engagement and success of your employees.
Best Product Management Course:
Digital Product Management by Boston University:
#3 Udemy
Udemy offers more than 100.000 courses from over 42.000 different lecturers. Moreover, it supports over 50 languages. Unlike other platforms, the courses do not come from universities but from independent experts.
Pricing: Free and paid courses
Certificates: After completing a course you get a certificate of completion. Udemy is not an accredited institution. Because of this, it’s not possible to use these certificates for formal accreditation. Some courses offer additional certificates outside of Udemy.
Udemy for Business: The Udemy for Business is a program that gives companies the chance to offer their employees access to more than 3.000 Udemy courses across more than 20 topics. The Business model includes an analytics tool to track the engagement and effort of employees. There are different pricing plans, starting at $240.
Best Product Management Course:
Become a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the Job.
#4 MindTheProduct
“MindTheProduct is the world’s largest product community.” (MindTheProduct)
This platform doesn’t offer typical MOOCs but because of many recommendations we’ve decided to put it on this list. The Slack channel, offline training, conferences and the community are great for both online and offline learning.
Slack: The MindTheProduct Slack channel is a tool to connect with other active Product Managers, ask questions and learn from their experiences.
Conferences: Conferences are offered all over the world and combine product talks, workshops and the chance to connect to others.
Training: “Mind the Product Training lets your teams access the knowledge and cutting-edge insight of expert product managers (our trainers) through in-depth, interactive training workshops.” (MindTheProduct)
ProductTalk: ProductTalk is an informal meeting that is available in over 155 cities all over the world with the purpose of sharing experiences and knowledge. A community of Product Managers, Designers and Developers participates.
For starting in Product Management, the MTP Product Management 101 workshop can be useful:
#5 Product School
Product School offers courses on 6 different topics: Product Management, Coding, Data Analytics, Digital Marketing, UX Design and Product Leadership. You can attend these courses in one of the locations in the U.S., Canada and Europe or online.
What differentiates the Product School from other product manager training programs is that all “instructors are active product managers at top technology companies. The program is hands-on, designed to be compatible with your work schedule and geared towards helping you transition successfully into a product role.” (Product School)
Pricing: $3.999 per course
Online Courses: If you don’t have the chance to go to one of the locations you can attend the online courses. Online courses offer the same experience as the in-person courses and are created by the same product managers. You will get a certificate, too.
#6 Skillshare
Skillshare offers over 22.000 classes on several topics. Unlike the other platforms it doesn’t offer long classes, but short video courses, which often just take one hour or less. You can quickly learn about specific skills needed for daily work.
Pricing: Free classes and a premium version
Skillshare for Teams: Skillshare for Teams starts at 499$/user per year. You get access to over 16.000 classes and a reporting tool to track the progress of the team members.
#7 LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world. LinkedIn Learning offers courses for three different topics: Business, technology and creativity.
Pricing: Starts at 17.84 € per month. It is free if you have a LinkedIn Premium Account.
Certificates: LinkedIn Learning offers certificates of completion to course members who complete a course and watched all videos. The members don’t have to complete exercises or tests. The certificates are not accredited.
BONUS: Edukatico
“Edukatico is a free and independent search portal for online courses” (Edukatico)
With the help of Educatico, you can search for more than 8.000 online lectures from over 50 providers and 22 subjects. It helps you search, filter and compare different courses to find the best one for you.
Moreover, the course planner will help you to organize the courses you are interested in.
Related articles:
Originally published at uxcam.com.
