We are in a time when to stay in the labour market it is necessary to renew and train oneself continuously. Nowadays having a career or a master’s degree is a necessary but generally insufficient requirement to get a job.

In addition to experience, both specialization and diversity of knowledge are rewarded. And staying trained is not only important at the work level but also enriches the psyche, makes us see things from new perspectives and even encourages the maintenance of intellectual capabilities, strengthening them. That is why in this article we present a series of online courses that start or can be taken during this month of January .

  • This article may interest you: “25 best free online courses in Psychology”

10 courses to start the year

New year, new life. In order to start this 2017 with dynamism and to make the mind work again after the excesses of Christmas, we have selected some courses linked to psychology and humanities that will start during this month .

Most of them are free or only require a small payment for the corresponding certificate.

1. Psychological First Aid Course (PAP)

  • Autonomous University of Barcelona

This is a recurrent course in the recommendations of free online training, being one of the most successful at present. It is a five-week on-demand course offered in Spanish (although the audio of the videos is in English) by the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Barcelona Crisis Centre.

This course allows you to acquire the skills to apply psychological first aid in emergency situations , whether personal or community. It is trained to prepare scenarios in which to interact with those affected by such situations and their relatives in order to apply such first aid in situations of great stress and tension.

2.Keys to Managing People

  • IESE Business School

This five-week course, starting on January 9, is focused on the field of Human Resources , offering training in multiple aspects fundamental to working in the management of organizations. Competence management, selection processes, hiring, evaluation, promotion and remuneration are the themes worked on during the course. It is offered by IESE Business School, in Spanish.

3.The Addict’s Brain

  • Emory University

Addiction to different types of substances has been common throughout history and continues to be a problem today. For this reason, this course offered in English by Emory University, which begins on January 23, aims to work on the different types of drugs, their effects on the brain, the disorders and alterations they cause and the ways to treat those who suffer from substance use disorders .

4.Computer Neuroscience

  • University of Washington

How neurons encode and decode information, how they learn neural networks and how brain plasticity influences the whole process are essential elements when describing how the nervous system processes information . This course in English, offered by the University of Washington, focuses on explaining and providing information regarding these and other topics of computational neuroscience.

5.Visual Perception and the Brain

  • Duke University

Vision is one of the senses that human beings have most developed, depending to a great extent on it for the correct adaptation to the environment, and its absence or loss is an important handicap. Throughout this course that begins on January 26, we will explore how the visual system works and how our brain is capable of representing and working with elements such as color, shapes, lights, spaces or the visual capture of movements.

6.Cultural Representations of Sexualities

  • Autonomous University of Barcelona

Sexuality is a complex dimension of the human being that throughout history has been treated in different ways in different cultures. Gender, orientation and sexual identity are analyzed through the different cultural supports and representations such as cinema or literature in this course in Spanish offered by the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

7.Introduction to Family Therapy

  • IASE: Advanced Institute of Health and Education

The family is one of the most important areas of life, where we begin development and where we generally have our main reference figures. The family greatly marks the type of development that the infant and later adult will have. In this course based on the systemic theory different ways of working with the different types of family environments and their particularities are presented.

IASE offers the possibility of taking only one of its free courses per student, so it is advisable to view the available courses in order to choose the one that best suits our needs.

8.Analysis of the brain: The neurobiology of everyday life

  • University of Chicago

Behavior, thought, emotion, perception… all of these are regulated by our nervous system. Understanding how this system works and how it communicates with the rest of the body is the aim of this course offered by the University of Chicago. It is entirely in English, and it visualizes the neuroanatomy of different senses and processes (whether perceptual, motor or even cognitive) as well as how body homeostasis is regulated or how neuronal communication occurs.

9.Sexuality… much more than sex

  • University of the Andes

A four-week introductory course offered in Spanish is especially aimed at educators and pedagogues, as well as parents and health professionals. The contents of this course allow those who take it to explain in an understandable way basic concepts such as sex, gender, orientation and sexual identity, and how the experience of these concepts can be variable and go much further than mere physical contact .

10.Initiation to psycho-expression

  • IASE: Advanced Institute of Health and Education

Applicable in the field of education and clinical practice, psychoexpression bases its action on the emission of the creative facet, liberating the emotional and psychic blocks of students and patients through playful activities and in which the inner concerns and fears can be expressed, integrating humanism and art therapy . This brief introductory course makes us see the foundations and ways of putting this branch of psychology into practice.

IASE offers the possibility of taking only one of its free courses per student, so it is advisable to view the available courses in order to choose the one that best suits our needs.