I’ve always believed that the best educators are lifelong learners, always striving to improve their craft and adapt to new challenges. While there are many ways for educators to upskill, taking online training for teachers is one of the most convenient and effective options.
Online courses give teachers the flexibility to learn at their own pace and on their own schedule. They also allow teachers to choose courses that match their specific needs and interests. In addition, online teaching courses offer a wealth of resources that can be used in the classroom. From lesson plans to interactive activities, the best classes provide everything a teacher needs to improve their skills.
Of course, not all online courses are created equal, and while there are many great ones, some are a waste of time and money. As a teacher myself, I’ve reviewed and ranked the best online courses for teachers based on a number of key factors, including content, cost, convenience, and instructor quality (click here to learn about our entire Editorial Process & Methodology for product reviews).
What are the Best Online Courses for Teachers in 2024?
1. Quality Curriculum & Pedagogy for Educators of 21st Century (Udemy)
Quality Curriculum & Pedagogy for Educators of 21st Century | Udemy
This course focuses on transforming education by developing quality learners who are well-prepared and supported, using a curriculum that reflects the dynamic needs of the 21st century and provides strategies for educators to enhance their teaching and foster student well-being, creativity, and productivity.
Price
Regularly $29.99, but the price can vary
Duration
53 minutes
Udemy offers this course for those parents and school officials interested in learning how a good curriculum helps children.
The module emphasizes the importance of learning. It establishes that a high-quality education equips students with the necessary skills to become economically productive, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies, develop sustainable lifestyles, and improve well-being via real innovation and creativity.
This short course provides an overview of what makes a good curriculum and what characteristics are necessary for students to study in today’s world.
I was struck by how the instructor made big concepts like creativity in the classroom, innovation, and the importance of kids being healthy and well-fed feel totally doable and essential.
The course wasn’t just a bunch of theory, it was packed with real-life examples and actionable tips that have seriously changed how I think about teaching.
Talking about making sure kids are in the right space, both mentally and physically, to learn? That hit home for me.
It’s clear that weaving creativity and wellness into the fabric of learning isn’t just nice to have—it’s a must-do for real results.
What You Will Learn
By the end of this short course, you will be able to:
- Emphasize quality in the classroom
- Make a curriculum that will enhance students’ learning capabilities
- Achieve the best results in the classroom
- Earn a certificate
2. The Art of Storytelling: Early Childhood Educators (Udemy)
The Art of Storytelling (Early Childhood Educators) | Udemy
Explore the art of storytelling in this course, where you'll learn effective techniques and methods for crafting engaging stories and designing relevant classroom activities to captivate and educate your students.
Price
Regularly $24.99 but often goes on sale
Duration
The total length of this course is 1 hour and 3 minutes.
Who doesn’t love to listen to stories? Children, in particular, have a passion for stories.
This course discusses the importance of storytelling and how it can be used as a valuable learning tool for youngsters.
The course discusses several successful storytelling strategies and approaches that aid youngsters in improving their listening, creative, literacy, and critical thinking skills.
It will teach you the importance of storytelling and how children learn various sounds, words, and sentence building when someone tells a story to them.
What You Will Learn
- Storytelling and engaging classroom activities
- The five most fundamental aspects of a story
- A thorough understanding of successful storytelling techniques and methods
- Create storytelling setups in the classroom based on themes such as the forest, construction vehicles, and the ocean.
3. Reasonable Teaching: The 13×4 to Master The Art of Teaching (Udemy)
Reasonable Teaching: The 13x4 to Master The Art of Teaching (Udemy)
Master the art of teaching by concentrating on one aspect at a time with this course, which introduces the adapted 9x4 system from the original 13x4 method, tailored specifically for educational success.
Price
Regularly $59.99 but often goes on sale (see our Udemy pricing guide for more info)
Duration
Approximately 7 hours
As a teacher, you need to master the art of conveying your knowledge to the students. But this can’t happen without developing 9 characteristics.
This course will take you through the nine broad characteristics of exceptional teaching that you will develop over the nine weeks when you take this course. The thirteen in the course title refers to a system developed by Benjamin Franklin. He proposed that developing a new skill demands a ‘One thing at a time’ approach. This system is referred to as the Franklin 13.
Four exceptional instructors came together to create this popular online course for teachers. They teach you the basics of the nine characteristics and based on their vast experiences, take you through a journey that will transform the way you look at teaching and transform your teaching methodologies.
There is lots of good, useful, actionable information in this course. Although it takes you through a journey of self-discovery, I found all of the course’s content very useful to transform one’s thinking as a teacher or a mentor.
Overall, I think that this course was a great experience for anyone wanting to get into the field of teaching and even for experienced teachers to polish their methodologies.
What You Will Learn
This online course will show you:
- The 9 broad characteristics of a teacher or mentor.
- Reflect on your current teaching methodologies.
- How to effectively engage students through the art of storytelling.
- How to convey your knowledge to students to ensure active learning.
4. Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress from Yale University (Coursera)
Price
Free to audit with paid upgrades available
Duration
The total watch time of this course is about 9 hours.
As a teacher, I strongly believe that managing your own emotions as well as your students’ emotions is essential for creating a productive, safe learning environment.
I found that this class was thoughtfully and deliberately structured, emphasizing a practical approach to problem-solving. I really believe that the lessons here will equip you with the knowledge, skills, and tactics necessary to comprehend and control emotions in the classroom.
I love that everything in this course is both practical and beneficial, providing strategies that can be applied in daily classroom scenarios to navigate emotional challenges with greater ease and understanding.
You’ll learn how to better recognize and regulate your own emotions, as well as help your pupils understand and manage theirs.
In the first week of this course, you’ll learn how emotions can help or hinder attention, relationships, decision-making, health, and performance.
As the course goes on, you’ll discover research-based approaches to modify the way you think to change the way you feel, and learn how you can implement these strategies in your life.
What You Will Learn
This free online course will show you:
- The science of stress and its effects
- How to help students identify and manage their own emotions
- How to cope with the stress and uncertainty
- How to change the way you think to change the way you feel
5. Learning to Teach Online from UNSW Sydney (Coursera)
Price
Free to audit with paid upgrades available
Duration
The total watch time of this course is 19 hours, approximately.
As a teacher, understanding the latest technology is important for best reaching your students.
This course will show you how to use online learning technologies in your classroom to improve your course design.
You’ll learn effective online teaching practices and how to incorporate them in both fully online/virtual and hybrid learning environments.
This popular online course for teachers is based on the multi-award-winning open educational resource created by Dr. Simon McIntyre and Karin Watson.
One of the highlights for me was the exceptional quality of the videos, which were not only informative but just well produced in general (too many online courses have low quality videos with difficult-to-hear audio).
The course incorporates some very interesting case studies that provide practical tips on planning an online course, making the learning experience both relevant and applicable.
Another thing I really liked about this course was the timely support and feedback from tutors on the online forums, ensuring that any queries or concerns were promptly addressed.
Overall, I really believe that this course offers a well-rounded educational experience for anyone looking to excel in online teaching.
What You Will Learn
This free online course will show you:
- How to integrate online technologies into your teaching
- Why online teaching is so important
- How to assess online learners’ progress and performance
- How to engage and motivate students in an online learning environment
6. Arizona State University TESOL Professional Certificate (Coursera)
Price
$49/month or included with 7,000+ other courses with Coursera Plus subscription. Try Coursera Plus free for 7 days.
Duration
4 months at 10 hours a week
Begin your English teaching career with this Professional Certificate by Coursera. It will help you teach English as a second or foreign language using effective tactics.
This course is for anyone interested in teaching English in any part of the world. If you want to become a teacher, improve your teaching skills, or add a certification to your resume, you should get enrolled in this course.
People enrolled in this course will design lesson plans, create a professional teaching portfolio, and record themselves teaching. You will have the chance to submit a teaching portfolio for expert approval during the final Capstone course.
It will introduce students to ideas and strategies for teaching and assess their listening, speaking, and pronunciation in a second or foreign language. Through an assessment program of content, purpose, and approach, teachers will be encouraged to appreciate the necessity of grounding their teaching philosophy.
What You Will Learn
This free online course will show you:
- How to use modern communicative approaches to engage students
- How to use engaging and dynamic techniques to present lesson ideas
- How to motivate and engage students appropriately
7. Motivating Students to Learn (Alison)
Price
Free
Duration
It will take around 1.5 to 3 hours to complete this course.
This free online motivational professional training course will teach you about behaviorism and operant conditioning and how to employ them to motivate. You’ll discover how different sorts of goals influence student motivation and how to foster mastery goals.
You’ll look at how students’ interests affect their learning and motivation, as well as how to pique students’ understanding of a particular topic. The many conceptions of success and failure will also be covered in this student motivation course, as well as how to support attributions that are likely to have a positive impact on student motivation.
By studying and applying motivation theories, this motivating training course helps pupils look forward to learning. It will show you how to establish a classroom climate that promotes highly motivated learning by teaching you the various aspects that influence students’ motivation.
Being a good teacher necessitates a wide range of abilities, one of the most crucial of which is the ability to urge students to learn. Students that are motivated will devote more time to their assignments and accomplish them more efficiently.
What You Will Learn
After finishing this free online course, you will be able to:
- Explain behaviorism and how it is related to motivation
- Talk about motivation and operant conditioning.
- Distinguish between the several types of goals that influence a student’s motivation.
- Describe how to pique students’ interest in a topic to motivate them.
- Explain the self-efficacy theory.
8. Classroom Strategies for Inquiry-Based Learning (edX)
Price
Free to audit. An optional upgrade is also available for certificate and grading materials. See our edX review to learn more.
Duration
4 weeks with 1 to 2 hours of learning every week.
This course by edX is for those in secondary education who want to learn more about inquiry-based education. It will engage kids in education through investigation and inquiry-based classroom approaches.
An inquiry-based approach respects the hard work that goes into learning. It emphasizes students’ past knowledge and experience in the classroom and encourages active problem-solving communication and collaborative creation of new ideas.
By assisting students in developing hands-on abilities, inquiry-based learning attempts to promote student engagement. This education and teacher training course explores the 5E teaching approach and its applications in the classroom.
You’ll be able to see recordings of classroom instructors demonstrating a 5E session and listen to teacher comments as they implement inquiry-based tactics with their pupils. As a consequence, you’ll have the knowledge and abilities necessary to implement inquiry-based learning in your classroom.
What You Will Learn
By the end of this free online teaching course, you will:
- Learn about the principle related to inquiry-based learning.
- Learn about the components of the 5E teaching model
- Obtain techniques and skills for adopting inquiry-based instruction from master instructors.
- Learn about the advantages of inquiry-based learning for pupils.
- Make a learning guide to use in the classroom while implementing inquiry-based learning.
9. Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms (Coursera)
Price
Duration
About 10 hours of watch time.
For anyone interested in fostering a nurturing classroom atmosphere that boosts students’ capacity to learn, I can’t recommend this course enough. It dives deep into the core principles of positive psychology and showcases how top educators leverage these strategies to ramp up student engagement and success.
What sets this course apart to me are the real-world examples it provides, especially on weaving character development into everyday teaching. The approach is all about giving feedback that’s not just positive but also respectful and motivating, fostering resilience and a strong sense of self-belief among students.
I found that the material in this class was thought-provoking and engaging, with the instructor keeping things interesting through a mix of interactive lectures, videos showcasing classroom scenarios, and insightful interviews with students who’ve thrived in character education programs.
What You Will Learn
This course will help you to:
- Use a positive psychology approach to enhance students learning outcome
- Learn tactics for achieving character-based goals.
- Create a positive environment for students
- Have a sound knowledge of the tools that will help in teaching
10. Get Organized: How to be a Together Teacher (Coursera)
Price
Duration
You will need almost 8 hours to complete this course.
Do you have a hard time juggling multiple tasks? Is it frustrating for you to juggle the various responsibilities of a teacher? Then this course is just for you.
In this class, you will learn to distinguish between organization and togetherness in the first lesson.
You first have to examine your strengths and limitations and then set a goal for yourself to complete the course.
I learned a lot from this class that I could take into my life as a teacher and just my life in general. I think anyone who takes this course will feel like they’re better equipped to get organized and feel more confident.
What You Will Learn
This six-module course will help you to:
- Get examples from real teachers on creating your weekly worksheet to arrange your life for the next seven to ten days.
- Make a specific calendar for all of your life’s activities and deadlines.
- Learn how to make all of your organized tools work together
- Get rid of many to-do lists in favor of a single forthcoming to-do list that will keep you on track
Final Thoughts
As a teacher, you care about your students, and you’re passionate about being the best you can be at your job.
That’s why taking classes online to gain new skills, knowledge, and strategies is such a great idea.
Not only will it make you a better educator, but it will also help you feel more confident and capable in your role.
The courses I’ve listed above are just a few of the many excellent options available to teachers looking to improve their practice.
And don’t forget, most of these course providers offer free trial periods, giving you a great chance to try before you buy.
Have any questions about this guide to the best online courses for teachers? Leave a comment to get some help.
