Upskilling Courses for the Changing Workforce
If you are looking to build your expertise or explore something new as you pursue your careers goals, our large selection of upskilling courses can help. These courses can be taken individually and do not require enrollment in a degree program, but can be applied for credit in the future if you decide to pursue a certificate or degree. Individual courses are the perfect introduction to online learning and professional skill-building.
Top Reasons to Upskill
In the professional world, skills and talents are your currency. Therefore, expanding your skillset - as often as possible - can be an excellent path to success. Whether you’re brand new to the workforce, looking to switch career paths, or just wanting to advance in your current role, upskilling is a great investment in developing your skills.
Invest in Your Career Future
- Future-proof your career
- Increase your value to your organization
- Stay current in your chosen field
- Explore something new and interesting
- Build your professional network
- Open yourself up to new opportunities
Explore Courses
Champlain College Online offers a variety of courses for you to choose from, in five areas of study. We do allow students to take most of our courses without being enrolled in a degree or certificate program, but some may have prerequisite courses you need to complete first. All the courses listed here are available for you to take, no prerequisites required.
Business/Accounting/Healthcare Courses
Finding and utilizing the right data and information to help with business decision-making - this skill is indispensable to any business professional, no matter the field or discipline of business. Students learn how to find data - the right data - efficiently and accurately, using advanced search methods. Students will harness major resources and utilize databases, government resources, and financial websites. Students will also learn to utilize a system for developing research questions, choosing the right resources to substantiate a research plan and evaluate and organize business data into useful forms.
All businesses have information systems, and the vast majority of them are computerized. Students will study the development and use of information systems to achieve organizational goals. From a management perspective, students will learn how information systems enhance business processes, how to use information systems as a competitive advantage and their usefulness in integrating across organizations. Other topics include IS security, ethical issues surrounding information systems and the consequences of its international reach.
Provides an overview of the entire legal system, with an emphasis on contract rights. Discusses the essential elements of a contract, the breach of contracts and the remedies for breach. Presents business and consumer laws, including white-collar crime, landlord-tenant rights, real property interests and administrative law.
As business environments become more complex, the accompanying dilemmas require a more advanced problem-solving process. Students are introduced to methodology for analyzing data and applying appropriate techniques for unconventional and creative solutions. They will learn how to systematically analyze a problem, generate innovative and provocative ideas for solutions, make choices among those ideas, and evaluate the results.
Accounting is the language of business. This course introduces the student to accounting from the point of view of the user of financial reports and is appropriate for personal as well as business applications. Students explore the impact of transactions on the financial position and profitability of a business, and analyze financial reports of real-world corporations.
Project Management is the formal application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project-based activities to meet organizational requirements. Project management is accomplished through the use of processes such as Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing. Project managers can divide projects into these phases to provide better management control with appropriate links to the ongoing operations of the organization. Collectively, these phases, known as the project life cycle, form the foundation for the practice of project management and are guided by the Body of Knowledge from the Project Management Institute (PMI).
Business analytics and data visualization transform data into business insights to allow for better decision-making. This course utilizes a combination of existing datasets and common analytics tools to teach new and emerging managers, without backgrounds in data science, how to evaluate data, consider available options, and present a graphical representation of data outcomes for decision-makers.
Understanding financial statements and how to interpret them is important to all those working in businesses. In this course students learn the relationship among financial statements; study how to interpret this information and to apply this understanding in real-world contexts; and learn how to use financial information to help make sound management decisions.
The perspectives, beliefs, and preferences of employees in today's workplace are more diverse than perhaps ever before. Today's high-performing managers are those who foster inclusive, positive, and responsive organizational cultures for their people. But with such varied perspectives, what cultural considerations make the most sense for an organization? Management in the 21st Century will teach students how to foster a workplace environment where people can flourish and are motivated to meet objectives and ambitions for the organization.
Students will learn about the application of positive individual and group strengths and capacities that can be recognized, evaluated, and expanded to advance organizational well-being. This course encourages students to apply positive organizational behavior processes to everyday challenges organizations face to drive positive workplace behaviors and outcomes. This course also helps students to practice and gain skills, knowledge, and competencies to become positive and impactful leaders and change-makers from whatever position they hold.
Students gain a systematic overview of the U.S. health care system, including the role of the public and private sectors. Federal and state health policy and legislation are examined in depth. Students develop an understanding of the complex social and environmental issues that are driving the need for quality improvement, performance measurement and the use of information systems. They become familiar with the various mechanisms through which health services are delivered and also compare the U.S. health care system to other systems outside the U.S.
At the very base, businesses organize resources to earn a return on investments. Students are introduced to this concept from a process-based and integrative perspective; i.e. understanding how assets and people come together to accomplish their goal. They also learn about factors that can impact a business's success including socially responsible factors, globalization, innovative thinking and technology. Students use current articles and discussions to develop informed opinions about the place of their organizations and their leaders in the global economy.
Principles of Economics introduces the fundamental concepts of economics - the study of how people manage resources, and how they react to scarcity. This course focuses on both microeconomics (the behavior of consumers and companies) and macroeconomics (large-scale economic factors such as employment and interest rates), so that you'll gain a broad understanding of how a modern market economy functions, how decisions in business settings are informed by economics, and how economics applies to your everyday life.
Students identify and analyze the myriad legal issues surrounding the workplace, employment relationships, human resources, and federal and state regulation of employment. Topics include employment discrimination, wrongful discharge, health and retirement benefits, occupational health and safety, competition and trade secret agreements, sexual harassment, and privacy rights.
This course offers a holistic approach to designing promotional materials that effectively communicate brand messages across digital and print media. Students will learn essential design elements and apply branding considerations to various formats. Through practical assignments, students will conceptualize, design, and produce a range of promotional materials while learning approaches to effectively work with design and production teams and following industry-standard practices. Some basic art supplies will be required.
Today's high-quality digital images are as much art as they are science. In this course, students learn to use Adobe Photoshop to prepare and create images for web use. Hands-on activities develop familiarity with tools like eyedropper and quick mask, but also challenge students to create vector shapes and incorporate typography into the design of an ebook cover. Students also must create an email campaign and redesign a web site to specifications.
The American Marketing Association defines Marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. In this course, students will learn marketing terminology and principles including the marketing mix, marketing segmentation and how external forces impact marketing strategy as well as how marketing fits into the organization.The impact of ethical issues, diversity, globalization and social responsibility on marketing decisions will also be examined.
This course introduces students to the fundamental language of visual form and basic skills including the industry-standard software applications used to create, acquire, and manipulate digital images. Students will learn about two-dimensional composition and design, color theory and terminology, and will apply these principles to a variety of basic design projects. Color, form and content will be explored in terms of cultural, psychological, physiological, and historical aspects.
This class is designed to provide students who have little or no digital video production knowledge with an introduction to methods and strategies for production of digital video stories. Using the art of telling a story, the class will create educational, informational or personal experience video productions utilizing audio, video, storyboard, scriptwriting and digital editing techniques
This course, through guided research and hands-on learning experiences, provides students with an understanding of operating systems, including their core fundamental principles and how they work. Students are introduced to the three most popular operating systems for personal computers (Windows, OSX and Linux), and mobile operating systems, and learn about standard functions such as memory, process/thread, input/output, storage and device management.
This course provides students with an understanding of the many different devices and technologies, from historical to emerging, that are required to design and build networks. In a broad survey of concepts and terminology, students will learn about topology, communications, protocols, and security, and to diagram basic networks to specification.
Security is everyone's problem. The Internet is full of attackers who are looking to steal your information or get control over your system. This is a problem for individuals and businesses so it's essential that even casual users understand enough of how the Internet is put together to be able to understand the threats they face. Students will learn how businesses communicate via the internet and how that exposes them to some of the fundamental attack types. Students will learn how to protect themselves from those attacks.
From storyboard to form creation, students walk through the steps to create a basic four to five-page website to specification in this course that introduces HTML5 and CSS. Hands-on assignments reinforce skills development and best practices in design: navigation, column layout, image editing and usage, fonts and tables.
From day one, students in this course are problem solving, first in terms of algorithmic design and then as early as week two via programming in the latest version of Python, using PyCharm. Students begin by writing a program to have a conversation, having strings and numbers as input, and advance, by week seven, to building a working password saver program, capable of looking up, adding (and encrypting), and storing passwords.
Mathematical reasoning, when applied to everyday and professional lives, has two dimensions: logic for deterministic situations and probabilities for non-deterministic situations. This course aims to help students develop these mathematical reasoning skills.
This course introduces students to basic statistics for data literacy. With a focus on exploring real-world data, students will interpret numerical information and utilize the tools necessary to complete the entire statistical process: designing a study; gathering, organizing, and analyzing sample data; and making inferences about a population. Students will demonstrate data-driven decision-making and effective communication of numerical data.
Students will learn how to create conditions for successful conflict engagement, a necessary skill for any professional. The course focuses on the foundational capacities to remain calm and connected with oneself and others. In this state students can access helpful ideas and responses and be their best selves regardless of environment. Improving facility for conflict creates stronger relationships and reduces fear. By the end of the course, students will understand that disagreement and difference can become a source of personal and interpersonal growth.
Starting with a frame of human communication as a dynamic system of interactions in which people make choices that impact their relationships, other people, and themselves, students will define theory-informed communication concepts and processes, and critically examine how they apply to everyday life across a variety of contexts. Students will reflect on how the theory, concepts and processes apply to their own lives in becoming competent communicators who are knowledgeable, skilled, and versatile.
This course will introduce students to major streams of social justice thought, including historical social justice movements, theoretical problems having to do with social equality, personal freedom, marginalization, and stigmatization, and the ways in which civic and professional communities respond to these issues.
This course introduces students to the foundational concepts needed to communicate effectively in writing for academic study and professional development. Students will also learn to read critically to evaluate an author's message. Students will be introduced to rhetorical modes and their role in the development of written communication. Students will also learn how to use revision strategies to create written communication that meets its intended purpose for its intended audience
To take an individual course, or courses, at Champlain College Online as a non-matriculating student complete a few steps:
- Go to apply.champlain.edu and create an account
- Select "Non-Degree" and complete a brief form, include your resumé
- Indicate which course(s) you wish to enroll in
- A Champlain College Online advisor will contact you within 2 business days.
Learn More About Upskilling With Champlain College Online
Contact our admissions advisors to learn more about upskilling at Champlain College Online.
When completing the form, select undecided for academic level. In the message box, indicate which course you are interested in taking and any questions you have. An advisor will contact you within two business days.
Contact Admissions
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