Santiago Mallea
Content Writer At Gradehacker
Skillshare Free Courses
If you are a creative person looking for the best online video lessons to learn new skills, then Skillshare free courses are the right choice for you.
If you don’t know what Skillshare is, it’s one of the best online learning platforms. Still, unlike the others, they stand out by offering thousands of classes focused on developing creative skills.
Here you learn different practical skills that you can use to start a new hobby or apply in your professional life.
And while they used to offer a wide range of online classes for free, they have recently changed this. Before 2021, anyone could access many of their video lessons just by creating an account and without adding your credit card details. But now, it’s necessary that you add your payment information to create an account and use their free trial.
Here at Gradehacker, we are the non-traditional adult student’s most trusted resource. We know that online learning platforms can be a great alternative to college for learning new skills, and it’s even better that you can find many of these online courses for free.
In this blog, we’ll share the best Skillshare free courses you can take before their free trial is over.
How To Take Skillshare Premium Courses For Free
Skillshare ranks among the most popular online learning platforms, with thousands of monthly users and constantly adding more quality courses to its catalog. We included it in our list of best educational websites, among other great options like Coursera, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning.
If you want to learn more about these learning platforms, check out our video!
Now, Skillshare stopped offering 100% free online courses in 2021. So, does this mean that it’s impossible to take Skillshare classes without paying?
Fortunately, no!
With their one-month trial, you can try their premium membership and access a wide range of their online courses.
However, you must remember to cancel the trial before it ends. To do so, you can link your PayPal account. This way, you won’t be charged until your trial’s due date and can cancel the automatic payment the moment you subscribe to a Skillshare membership.
And if you like your Skillshare subscription and want to keep exploring their high-quality classes, consider investing in their premium membership.
Skillshare’s Premium plan costs:
- $32 for the monthly subscription
- $165 for the annual subscription
Best Skillshare Free Courses
Now that you understand what you need to do to access Skillshare’s premium classes for free, let’s see which ones can be worth your time.
They are all creative courses included as part of one of their Learning Paths.
These are sequential classes that Skillshare has gathered as an educational track; each one is composed of multiple lessons from different instructors that reinforce the main skill each teaches.
And if you are interested in trying a Skillshare subscription but wonder how its learning experience works, check out our in-depth review.
- Time to Completion: 1 hour
- Learning Track: Creative Essay Writing: Explore the Personal & Powerful (3 hours 23 minutes in total)
First, we have a great option for all writers out there.
Crafting Personal Essays with Impact is the second class in the Creative Essay Writing learning path. It teaches you how to use your personal voice and fit your story into a broader story.
Its instructor is Roxane Gray, a professional best-selling author known for her dedicated work on race, culture, and gender identity.
She offers a 60-minute class that inspires you to transform your story into a strong personal essay that resonates with the reader. Here, you’ll learn how your voice and experiences can be about a specific purpose that is part of a larger conversation.
You also have hands-on projects where you get to write your first draft to apply the concepts of this quality course. And while you’ll have to review it and check that it’s well written, you can share your work in their project gallery to receive feedback from its creative community.
This class is for you if you want to write your memoir, develop your writing craft, or play with your style until you find how to use your voice.
Here You'll Learn to:
- Write your story with a specific purpose
- Connect your writing with timely themes
- Conduct research to support your work
- Time to Completion: 28 minutes
- Learning Track: Write Powerful Short Fiction (1 hour 42 minutes in total)
Following the writing premium courses, if you want to learn how to write better short stories, then this one’s for you.
Fast Flash Fiction is a popular class within the creative community, as it explains in just a few minutes how to write a hooking opening, include sensory details, keep a fascinating rhythm, and come up with an eye-catching title that both engages the reader and boosts the meaning of your story.
To guide you, you’ll find different recommended reading stories to inspire you and boost your creativity and various writing prompts to practice. To complete the class projects, you’ll have to write a one-paragraph breathless tale, following the techniques included in the course.
If writing is your passion, this creative class will inspire you to write better short stories on a daily basis. It’s the perfect class for anyone who wants to write but needs more experience and needs a quick introduction to how to boost their skills.
Here You'll Learn to:
- Start your writing with a compelling opening sentence
- Use sensory details to draw your reader in
- Write a one-paragraph story
- Time to Completion: 58 minutes
- Learning Track: Beat Procrastination: Learn Strategies To Kickstart Any Project (3 hours 18 minutes in total)
Now, let’s see one premium class that will boost your creativity skills and help you open your mind and generate unique ideas.
The instructor will break down “the science of creativity” and explain which are the best strategies to come up with better ideas, with techniques like “Reframing”, “Constraints,” and “Lotus Blossom.”
From all these methods, you’ll be ready to develop your own toolkit of creativity that you can use in any field, whether it is graphic design, music, photography, writing, marketing, and beyond!
To prove your understanding of the concepts, you’ll have to complete the different activities related to each strategy and fill in the Creative Toolkit worksheet (that you’ll find included in the class projects section.)
Techniques You'll Learn:
- Juxtaposition
- Problem Tree
- Lotus Blossom
- Time to Completion: 38 minutes
- Learning Track: Transform Your Study Habits (6 hours 51 minutes in total)
Similarly, if you also have problems focusing when learning, then you better pay attention to this high-quality class.
How to Learn is a popular class where you can learn practical techniques to be more open to learning new skills, deal better with frustration and procrastination, and stay on track with your progress to build an ongoing learning habit.
This key lesson is taught by Mike Boyd, a filmmaker and Youtuber who learned over 50 skills from scratch in his “Learn Quick” series. And his goal is for his students to achieve the same too.
This high-quality class is the result of the research and tips he gathered in his journals from his experiences, including information that goes from his personal learning process to how he manages the learning curve. You’ll find many impactful techniques you can start employing as fast as you finish this course.
And you’ll know that you have mastered these strategies, as this class assignment is to learn a new skill from zero! Just choose an achievable skill that you want to learn and use it to train your brain with the different techniques covered.
A great choice for anyone! Even if you are one of those curious people who are still determining what skill they want to learn right now, knowing these techniques can come in handy in the future.
Here You'll Learn to:
- Cultivate passion and deal with frustration
- Train your brain in the most effective way
- Develop habits to reduce your likelihood of quitting
If this class sounds interesting and you want to find similar options, we recommend checking out “Learning How To Learn.” We included it as one of Coursera’s best free courses, and we even took it when we conducted our Coursera review.
Do you want to see how Coursera works? Then watch our video!
- Time to Completion: 2 hours 6 minutes
- Learning Track: Python for Beginners: Learn the Fundamentals of Computer Science (8 hours 40 minutes in total)
Now we move to an area directly related to the graphic design and programming world. One great option is Coding 101: Python for Beginners, a perfect class if you want to start coding.
You’ll learn the fundamentals of Python, but unlike other classes, here you don’t get an exhaustive list of minutiae.
Instead, you learn all the basics to start coding, so you can finish the class with a set of nifty tools, the knowledge to write more, and the ability to recognize different code’s value in automating day-to-day functions.
To complete the class projects, you’ll have to write a nifty tool for yourself.
While this premium class only covers the basics, we highly recommend following the Python for Beginners learning track if you want to continue expanding your coding skills. All the lessons are taught by the same instructor, and completing them will give you a much more in-depth understanding of Python.
Here You'll Learn:
- Python data types, expressions, variables
- Functions and objects
- Control Logic
- Time to Completion: 1 hour 55 minutes
- Learning Track: HTML+CSS for Beginners: Code Your First Website (6 hours in total)
But if you want to take your first steps into the programming world but are rather interested in the website designing area, then here is where you’ll want to start.
With Hand-Code Your First Website, you can get the necessary hands-on skills you need to code a basic one-page site in HTML and add the styling you like the most with CSS.
However, what’s so special about this popular class, is that it is a fun and easy-to-follow exploration of coding. This is because while you watch the video lessons, you’ll have to create a website for your favorite cartoon hero!
This educational approach makes it super easy for anyone to follow the classes and learn about browsers, code editors, and how to plan and publish your website.
And just like with Python for Beginners, if you want to learn more about coding, you can continue the HTML+CSS for Beginners learning path.
Here You'll Learn to:
- Write and structure content in HTML
- Style your site with CSS
- Back-up your code
- Time to Completion: 36 minutes
- Learning Track: Create & Promote Your Personal Brand With Zero Experience (3 hours 15 minutes in total)
As the final premium classes we included in our list, we want to share a quality alternative for those interested in marketing who want to create better content.
This popular class will teach you personal branding, why it’s more important than you think, and what tools you can use to share your ideas and build a stronger online presence. You’ll see how to implement the core elements of your brand and how to promote yourself strategically.
While this course will be valuable for those who don’t have a personal brand online, it can be just as helpful for those with an established presence. After all, this is a creative class where you’ll find a lot of inspiration to come up with new ideas and stand out on social media.
To track your progress, you’ll have to complete two assignments.
One is to create a personal website with basic information about you, and the other is to share two social media profiles, which will work as your digital portfolio.
Here You'll Learn to:
- Create your own personal branding
- Establish yourself on online platforms
- Organize and schedule brand content
Find The Skillshare Free Courses For You
These are some of the best and most valuable courses you can take for free by starting the free trial in Skillshare. But if you want to take a further look at their impressive catalog, you can start finding the perfect class for you by reviewing their Learning Tracks.
And if you really like what a Skillshare premium subscription has to offer, then you should consider investing in their basic plan.
This way, you join a community with thousands of creative students, gain unlimited access to all of their high-quality classes, and even get to download them for offline viewing (only with the app.)
And in case you are interested in learning new skills, whether they are for your professional or personal life, here are a few related blog posts for you:
Santiago Mallea
Santiago Mallea is a curious and creative journalist who first helped many college students as a Gradehacker consultant in subjects like literature, communications, ethics, and business. Now, as a Content Creator in our blog, YouTube channel, and TikTok, he assists non-traditional students improve their college experience by sharing the best tips. You can find him on LinkedIn.
