Online courses directory (841)

Explore how to identify and develop great ideas into great companies. Learn how to identify opportunities based on real customer needs. Take the first steps to creating a successful company.

This course emphasizes dynamic models of growth and development. Topics covered include: migration, modernization, and technological change; static and dynamic models of political economy; the dynamics of income distribution and institutional change; firm structure in developing countries; development, transparency, and functioning of financial markets; privatization; and banks and credit market institutions in emerging markets.

At MIT, this course was team taught by Prof. Robert Townsend, who taught for the first half of the semester, and Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, who taught during the second half. On OCW we are only including materials associated with sessions one through 13, which comprise the first half of the class.

Topics include productivity effects of health, private and social returns to education, education quality, education policy and market equilibrium, gender discrimination, public finance, decision making within families, firms and contracts, technology, labor and migration, land, and the markets for credit and savings.

This class surveys developmental entrepreneurship via case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapples with deploying and diffusing products and services through entrepreneurial action. By drawing on live and historical cases, especially from South Asia, Africa, Latin America as well as Eastern Europe, China, and other developing regions, we seek to cover the broad spectrum of challenges and opportunities facing developmental entrepreneurs. Finally, we explore a range of established and emerging business models as well as new business opportunities enabled by developmental technologies developed in MIT labs and beyond.

Learn to assess the strength of a business and identify early warning signs of potential future problems.

Explore the latest trends in digital marketing. Get beneath the hype. What are the implications? How will you respond?

This free certificate in accounting course looks in-depth at the transactions, processes and controls used to record typical transactions in a business. <br /><br />In sales, you will learn how to handle returns, discount and freight charges as well as working out the cost of goods sold. In inventory, you will see the two different methods of counting inventory, periodic and perpetual, as well as the different methods of calculating value of the inventory and the associated journal transactions to record the necessary adjustments. <br /><br />To help manage the cash assets within a company, the different controls and best practices are outlined with examples of documents and processes given for both checking accounts and petty cash. Samples of adjusting journals are given and the importance and use of the quick ratio are explained. This is followed with details on how to manage the accounts receivables, from calculating the provision for uncollectable accounts to the use of aged analysis. Similarly in accounts payable you will see how to make provision for both the known and unknown liabilities as well as how to use payable notes as for of short term finance. <br /><br />This free diploma of accounting course will be of great interest to entrepreneurs and business professionals who would like to better understand the transactions and controls used in business, and to any learner who is interested in accounting as a future career.<br />

Good accounting practices and procedures are needed in every business and organization. Details of trading transactions need to be accurately recorded so that you know what your financial situation is at any time.<br /><br />In ALISON's free online accounting diploma course, you will learn about the core practices involved in recording various details, from understanding debits and credits and using simple T-accounts to closing out the accounts at the end of an accounting period, producing the statement of retained earnings and balance sheet. Detailed examples are worked through on a transaction-by-transaction basis, helping you understand how and why each step is necessary. <br /><br />After reviewing day-to-day accounting procedures, you are introduced to the more formal theory of accounting, the assumptions, principles and modifying conventions, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) conceptual framework and the main objectives of financial reporting. <br /><br />ALISON's free online accounting course will be of great interest to entrepreneurs and business professionals who would like to get a thorough introduction to accounting practices and theory, and to any learner who is interested in accounting as a future career.<br />

ALISON's free online Diploma in Business and Legal Studies course covers key topics in business and law such as corporate management, human resources, operations management, accounting, types of law, how laws are created, the adversary system, and legal procedures. <br /><br />This business online course offered by ALISON is ideal for those who want to gain comprehensive knowledge and understanding of business and legal systems. Having this knowledge will greatly improve your career prospects.<br />

ALISON's free Diploma in Business Management and Entrepreneurship online business course gives you the opportunity to gain extensive knowledge and understanding of the principles and practices behind key business management subjects.<br /><br />Subjects include corporate management, operations management, accounting, human resources, financial accounting, and project management, as well as providing insight on key entrepreneurial skills from Bill Liao, co-founder of the social networking site XING.com.<br /><br />ALISON's business management certificate, with a focus on entrepreneurial studies, is ideal for those who want to further their knowledge and understanding of business management and entrepreneurship through an online business course, and will greatly enhance your career prospects.<br />

Major advances in technology have resulted in the widespread implementation of information systems into businesses and organizations. The management of processes and data are critical to the overall success of a business. <br /><br />ALISON's free online diploma course introduces you to business processes and their management. The course will explain business intelligence and knowledge management systems, systems analysis, systems design and systems implementation. It will also give you a basic knowledge and understanding of how to design, test and implement information systems for a business process. <br /><br />This business diploma course will be of great interest to business professionals, as well as any learner wanting to expand their knowledge and understanding of business process management.<br />

Providing excellent customer service is essential to the long-term viability of every business. ALISON's free online Diploma in Customer Service course introduces the fundamental elements of customer service and explains how they can be applied in any organization. Following this, it describes how a business can develop its customer service program to the highest level. <br /><br />ALISON's customer service certification course also details the role of customer service in the hospitality industry, the retail industry and the public sector. These sections explain the elements of customer service that should be focused on in these sectors. <br /><br />This free online Diploma course is ideal for business managers, business owners and entrepreneurs who wish to learn how to implement an effective customer service program in their organization. This course will also be of great interest to retail staff, hospitality workers and public servants who want to become more proficient at providing friendly and effective customer service.<br />

Building an effective online presence is critical for growing your business as it gives your company access to thousands or millions of local, national or international customers who are searching, interacting, sharing and shopping online. This free online Diploma course will help all business owners increase their knowledge and understanding of what online marketing involves and how to go about implementing a successful online marketing strategy. The Diploma will show you how to build an online marketing plan, promote your business online, and improve your Website landing page for greater customer conversion rates. This Diploma shows you in detail how to use Google tools such as Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Google AdSense and Google Webmaster to implement your online marketing strategy. You will learn how to set up a Google Analytics account, how to set up a Google AdWords account, how to write ads that attract customers, how to choose the right keywords, and budget for your online advertising. You will learn how to set up a Google AdSense account and how to set up a Google Webmaster account. This free Diploma course will be of great interest to all business owners who lack the knowledge and expertise to implement an online marketing strategy but who recognise the importance of having an effective online marketing plan for the continued success of their business.<br />

Human resources (HR) plays a key role in modern organizations and businesses, be they private sector, public sector or voluntary. ALISON.com's free online human resources diploma course covers diverse topics in HR, from the role of the human resources manager and how to recruit, select, train and assess employees, to employee motivation, employee-employer relations, and how to manage change within an organization.<br /><br />ALISON's Diploma in Human Resources course gives a thorough knowledge and understanding of the important role HR plays in organizations, and will be of great interest to HR business professionals as well as those who are pursuing a career in this area.<br />

All modern economies need industries that are innovative in product design and efficient in manufacturing. In turn, these industries need people who are knowledgeable about the process. ALISON's free online manufacturing course will give you a detailed understanding of manufacturing and product design by covering topics such as what design is, how to use models in product design, bringing ideas from concept to prototype to production, using the product design specification, manufacturing processes such as casting, forming, cutting and joining, surface engineering and optical materials engineering. There are also a number of case studies to review. <br /><br />ALISON's online course is ideal for employees or professionals who want to learn more about product design and manufacturing processes, and for learners who would like a manufacturing or product design career.<br />

Operations management is important to any organization, whether they are manufacturing companies producing physical products or organizations offering services. ALISON's free diploma in operations management online course reviews a wide variety of topics from the development of operations management, to the role of the operations manager, the transformation model, planning and scheduling methodologies and practices, and inventory and quality management. <br /><br />The Diploma in Operations Management will give you a thorough understanding and knowledge of operations management and its organizational and managerial applications. <br /><br />The course is ideal for anyone who would like to contribute to the development of an organization in the area of operations management.<br />

This free online project management professional certification course from ALISON offers a comprehensive review of project management such as methodology, tool sets and documentation, and the project life cycle including analysis, planning, design and evaluation. The course also includes a project management case study. <br /><br />With project management in great demand internationally, the diploma in project management course will greatly enhance your career prospects.<br />

Discover how businesses function and interact with the wider socio-economic environment. In association with ACCA.

This course is designed to lay the foundations of good empirical research in the social sciences. It does not deal with specific techniques per se, but rather with the assumptions and the logic underlying social research. Students become acquainted with a variety of approaches to research design, and are helped to develop their own research projects and to evaluate the products of empirical research.

A large proportion of contemporary research on organizations, strategy and management relies on quantitative research methods. This course is designed to provide an introduction to some of the most commonly used quantitative techniques, including logit/probit models, count models, event history models, and pooled cross-section techniques.