7 Of The Best Online Courses To Enhance Your MBA Skills

Let’s be honest—no one wants to start a rigorous business degree with little foundational knowledge in the subject matter. Online courses can help you gain a grounding in business essentials before even setting foot in the MBA classroom. 

Business is a broad topic so it’s a good idea to try out a variety of courses to ensure you gain a basic and holistic understanding of the subject.

Aside from the more traditional LinkedIn Learning MBA courses, here are 7 alternative online courses to enhance your MBA skills:

1. Essential Public Speaking

Platform: VirtualSpeech

Length: 5 hours

Cost: $200 (12 months access)

Public speaking skills are highly sought after in business. You might know your way around a financial spreadsheet or how to strategize but if you struggle to inspire and lead others, you may experience hurdles in a competitive business world.

The Essential Public Speaking course helps participants tackle anxieties around public speaking, learning the theories behind effective speeches and how to persuade an audience.

Employees at companies such as Facebook, McKinsey, and Pfizer have completed this course.

2. Wharton’s Business Foundations specialization 

Platform: Coursera

Length: 2 months (10 hours per week)

Cost: (+additional fee to gain a certificate)

Business schools regularly create their own pre-MBA courses. If you’ve landed a place at a top-ranked M7 business school such as Wharton, or you’re hoping to study there, you might choose to take part in the Business Foundations Specialization available in Coursera.

This course covers essential business skills including marketing, financial accounting, managing social and human capital, and operations management. Courses are taught by instructors from Wharton.

3. Cultural awareness courses 

Platform: CulturaGo

Length: 6 – 9 hours

Cost: $249

If you’re interested in studying for your MBA abroad, then you might want to look to courses designed to improve your cultural awareness.

CulturaGo offers short online courses that help participants prepare for a new culture, with cultural immersion courses available for countries including the UK, Spain, Italy, South Korea and Japan.

The Introduction to Korean Culture course, for example, covers areas such as avoiding embarrassing faux pas, handling culture shock, and connecting with the locals.

4. How to Build a Startup

Platform: Udacity

Length: 1 month

Cost: Free

Knowing the principles behind how to create a startup will pay dividends when you begin your MBA degree.

Udacity’s course on How to Build a Startup walks through the customer development process, with participants learning how to quickly build and test concepts by collecting market feedback.

Components include History of the Corporation, Revenue Streams, and Product Market Fit.

5. GMAC and Kaplan’s Business Fundamentals

Platform: Kaplan / GMAC

Length: 16 hours of self-paced lessons (12 months access)

Cost: $199

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC)—the creators of the GMAT—have paired with Kaplan to create a pre-MBA course in Business Fundamentals. 

You’ll study three core courses: finance, accounting, and statistics, with quizzes and assessments to test your learnings. 

Courses are all approved by business school professors so you can rest assured that you’re learning from expertly curated material.er

6. Marketing in a Digital World

Platform: Coursera

Length: 28 hours

Cost: Free (+additional fee to gain a certificate)

If you want to understand how new technologies interact with marketing, this course is for you.

The course is taught by an instructor from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and covers how digital tools are changing product, promotion, placement, and price in marketing. 

7. How to Build Confidence and a Positive Mindset for Success

Platform: Udemy

Length: 3 hours on-demand video

Cost: $7.50 (approx.)

MBA programs and business school in general can be overwhelming and intensive, so it’s important to check-in with yourself to ensure you’re mentally prepared for the academic rigor of business school. 

Udemy offers a course in building confidence and creating a positive mindset for success to support growth in areas such as learning to feel happier with yourself, changing your mindset, and overcoming self-doubt.

When choosing an online course before enrolling in your MBA program, take the time to identify the areas where you believe you would gain the most from additional learning. This proactive approach will greatly benefit you when you begin your MBA journey, as it will provide you with a clear and focused mindset as you join the program.