Online self-directed courses by Silicon Valley instructors

Our instructors don't just teach—they shape the future of their fields. As industry leaders, innovators, and creators, they bring real-world expertise to every course they develop. Explore their popular, low-cost Coursera courses and experience the knowledge of great teachers helping learners around the world build new skills and advance their careers, all at your own self-directed pace.

Explore our instructors and the courses they've brought to life below!

Artificial Intelligence

Kelvin Lwin, AI Instructor

Kelvin Lwin

CEO/Founder | Field CTO | Expert Attention Trainer

Educator in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, brings a decade of experience teaching in both US academia and industry. He expanded into building AI fullstack solutions in China for four years, gaining a broader global perspective. He now combines AI, empathy, and ethics, informed by 20 years of meditation practice, to build new educational AI for all, with ALIN (Assistive Learning Intelligence Navigator) as his main vehicle for bringing modern meditation as attention training to navigate today's challenges.

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Courses:

This nontechnical course provides an overview of artificial intelligence advancements and the ethical challenges we now face as we navigate the development, implementation, and ubiquitous global use of AI.

Learning outcomes:

  • Compose a personal ethical framework for AI use
  • Explain how various types of AI programs work
  • Speculate about the role of AI in the future
     

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Software Engineering

Paddu Melanahalli, Instructor Software Quality

Paddu Melanahalli, M.S.

Strategic Technology Executive | Global Engineering Operations | AI & DevSecOps Transformation

Senior director of engineering at Cisco, leads product development and solutions in various business units in engineering. He has more than two decades of software industry experience and has contributed to Quality, Release Ops, IWAN (SD-WAN), Wan optimization, and management solutions, as well as other routing services areas.

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Courses:

This hands-on course teaches Agile principles, Scrum, and Python-based Test-Driven and Behavior-Driven Development (TDD/BDD) practices to help you write cleaner, more reliable code and manage real-world projects effectively. By the end, you'll be able to apply Agile frameworks, test code using Pytest and Behave, and collaborate seamlessly with developers, testers, and stakeholders, skills that will help you build better software and advance your career in today's Agile-driven industry.

Learning outcomes:

  • Apply Agile principles and Scrum practices to manage software development projects effectively.
  • Implement test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD) to write clean, reliable, and maintainable Python code.
  • Build a collaborative, iterative workflow that improves communication, reduces bugs, and enhances software quality.

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This course introduces the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a practical framework for building reliable, stateful AI agents that overcome common real-world limitations like forgetting instructions or hallucinating facts. Through hands-on exercises, you'll design enterprise-grade AI architecture combining memory management, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and intelligent agent actions, building a fully functional RAG pipeline, session context service, and agent executor along the way.

Learning outcomes:

  • Analyze the LLM Context Window constraint and token cost as primary drivers for specialized architecture.
  • Design and implement the MCP Server/Client framework and construct two core services (RAG and Sliding Window Cache) for efficient context management.
  • Develop an intelligent agent that uses a tool protocol for dynamic, context-aware decision-making.

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Project Management

Moshe Gotesman

Moshe Gotesman

Principal, Mosgot Consulting

Brings extensive experience as a consultant, trainer, and coach in project and program management, specializing in Agile methodologies. He holds multiple professional certificates, including CSM, CSP, SAFe, PMP, Scrum@Scale, Kanban, and DevOps, and has managed enterprise-level projects in software development, IT hardware, networking, and security for Fortune 500 organizations, including Visa, Walmart, Sun Microsystems, Nokia, and Google. He is recognized for his expertise across SDLCs, including Agile, Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, Scrum@Scale, Waterfall, and hybrid methodologies, and teaches project management at UC Berkeley Extension and UCSC Silicon Valley Extension.

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Courses:

This course introduces the PMI Cognitive Project Management for AI (CPMAI) framework, a structured, repeatable methodology for planning, managing, and executing complex AI projects. You'll gain practical skills across the entire AI development lifecycle, from aligning AI initiatives with business objectives and managing data pipelines to developing, evaluating, and operationalizing AI models, while embedding trustworthy AI practices like governance, ethics, and continuous monitoring into every phase. Unlike traditional project management courses, this data-centric, iterative, and vendor-neutral program equips you with a methodology to reduce AI project failure rates and position you as a critical leader in today's AI-powered world.

Learning outcomes:

  • Apply CPMAI methodology to AI projects by aligning business objectives, assessing data feasibility, and structuring iterative cycles to improve ROI.
  • Identify core AI patterns, anticipate pitfalls, and apply trustworthy practices to evaluate and manage AI project risks across the project lifecycle. 
  • Develop, test, and deploy models with strong pipelines, versioning, and retraining strategies to optimize AI solutions, performance & adaptability.
     

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This course continues Managing AI Deployment Projects, Part 1, building on the PMI Cognitive Project Management for AI (CPMAI) framework for planning, managing, and executing AI projects. You'll gain practical skills across the AI development lifecycle, from aligning initiatives with business objectives to developing, evaluating, and operationalizing AI models, while embedding trustworthy AI practices like governance and continuous monitoring. This data-centric, iterative, vendor-neutral approach positions you as a critical leader in today's AI-powered world.

Learning outcomes:

  • Apply CPMAI methodology to AI projects by aligning business objectives, assessing data feasibility, and structuring iterative cycles to improve ROI.
  • Identify core AI patterns, anticipate pitfalls, and apply trustworthy practices to evaluate and manage AI project risks across the project lifecycle.
  • Develop, test, and deploy models with strong pipelines, versioning, and retraining strategies to optimize AI solutions, performance & adaptability.
     

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Early Childhood Education

Ninet Moradi, ECE Chair and Instructor

Ninet Moradi

Program Chair | ECE Professional Advisor

Published author with nearly three decades of experience in early childhood education and special education, has run her own childcare program and helped several state-funded, for-profit, and nonprofit programs obtain licensing. She holds degrees in special education with a specialization in psychology, along with certificates in Applied Behavior Analysis, Child Trauma, and Educational Therapy, among others. She has taught at UCSC Extension since 2014, chairing the Early Childhood Education: Supervision and Administration Certificate Program Advisory Board since 2021.

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Courses:

This hands-on course dives into the critical nutritional needs of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers during their first five years, when rapid brain, body, and emotional development demand the right nutrients to thrive. Through interactive activities and real-world nutrition planning exercises, you'll learn to tailor dietary strategies to each developmental stage and design balanced, age-appropriate meals. Whether you're a parent, caregiver, educator, or health professional, this course empowers you to make a lasting impact on children's lives through informed nutritional choices.

Learning outcomes:

  • Gain expertise in early childhood nutrition by exploring age-specific dietary needs from infancy through preschool.
  • Develop practical skills in responsive feeding and mealtime strategies that support physical growth, brain development, and emotional well-being.
  • Identify and manage feeding challenges, such as picky eating and allergies; create age-appropriate nutrition activities that promote healthy habits.

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This course helps learners recognize the diverse ways autism presents, appreciate the strengths and challenges individuals may experience, and develop strategies to foster inclusion and support, combining scientific research with lived experiences rather than a purely clinical focus. Through real-world examples, interactive exercises, and evidence-based practices, you'll build tools to create supportive environments, advocate effectively, and communicate with empathy in professional, educational, and personal settings. By the end, you'll feel more confident engaging with and supporting autistic individuals, transforming understanding into action within your community.

Learning outcomes:

  • Build practical autism awareness by understanding how autism presents across individuals and recognizing both strengths and support needs.
  • Develop real-world strategies to communicate effectively, foster inclusion, and create supportive environments in professional, educational, and personal settings.
  • Gain confidence to make a difference using evidence-based practices, authentic lived experiences, and practical tools to advocate for and support autistic individuals.

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Clinical Trials Design and Management

Instructor Jay Vaishnav

Jay Vaishnav

Director Regulatory Affairs, Canon Medical Informatics

Industry regulatory affairs leader and former FDA regulator, brings more than 20 years of experience across startups, multinational corporations, academia, and federal agencies including the FDA and NIST, with deep experience negotiating high-stakes FDA interactions for medical devices, including AI-enabled and software-based technologies. She is co-editor of Fundamentals of Medical Device Regulations: A Global Perspective, a widely used industry reference with over 70 authors, and a fellow of the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society, serving as vice-chair of the Fellows Program. She holds a doctorate in physics from Harvard University and serves on the advisory boards for UCSC Silicon Valley Extension's Regulatory Affairs and Medical Device Quality and Design certificate programs.

More clinical and life sciences courses

Courses:

This course trains regulatory professionals to communicate strategically and effectively with the FDA in the context of medical device development, using scientific framing, structured reasoning, and ethical persuasion rather than conventional negotiation. Through real-world scenarios, document analysis, and structured assignments, you'll develop the judgment needed to prepare for pre-submission meetings, frame effective regulatory questions, respond to inspections or enforcement actions, and escalate disagreements professionally. The course emphasizes the FDA's public health mission, legal boundaries, and internal review logic, focusing on what can be influenced and how to operate effectively within that structure.

Learning outcomes:

  • Frame FDA communications using regulatory logic, scientific clarity, and professional tone.
  • Distinguish negotiable from non-negotiable issues in FDA interactions and align strategy accordingly.
  • Prepare, execute, and respond to FDA meetings, inspections, and enforcement actions with sound judgment.

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More coming soon!

Up next: Bineet Sharma, teaching AI for the Workplace.