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New Feature: Stay on Top of Your Mental Health with Regular Check-Ins

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New Feature: Stay on Top of Your Mental Health with Regular Check-Ins

Work isn’t what it used to be. Roles are shifting, expectations are rising, and stress is showing up in new and unfamiliar ways. Now more than ever, it is time to consider how your job is impacting your mental health.

At Alison, we believe that personal and professional growth exist together. That’s why we are excited to announce the latest addition to our Mental Wellbeing Assessment, developed in partnership with Welliba. This new feature allows you to retake your workplace Mental Wellbeing Assessment whenever you need to, keeping your wellbeing front and centre.

The assessment puts you in control of your growth journey because you can track your progress over time and note the changes. You will also be able to see how you fare against other Alison Learners in your own country or globally.

Curious about how regular assessments can help you? Here’s why regular check-ins make all the difference.

What Is a Mental Wellbeing Assessment?

First things first, a wellbeing assessment is a structured set of questions to measure your mental, emotional, and sometimes physical health. It provides a snapshot of your overall state of wellbeing at a specific period in time.

The assessment uses a mix of self-reported responses, psychological tools, and sometimes physiological metrics. It evaluates several dimensions of life, such as:

  • Emotional wellbeing
  • Levels of stress
  • Work-life satisfaction
  • Personal growth
  • Social connections
  • Health habits

Whether you are trying to understand how to assess your wellbeing or need to assess someone else’s, a wellbeing assessment provides data-backed insights to help you make better decisions.

Why Are Wellbeing Assessments Important?

The simple answer to this is that if you’re not aware of how you’re really doing, it’s hard to know what needs attention or how much progress you’ve made.

With life constantly changing, so do your needs, stressors, and sources of joy. That’s why taking a wellbeing assessment just once isn’t enough. It has to be something done over time so that you can track your progress. 

So, why take a wellbeing assessment in the first place? Here are some of the key benefits:

  • Self-awareness: Understand your emotional and mental patterns.
  • Early intervention: Identify signs of burnout or mental strain before they get worse.
  • Goal alignment: Appreciate life changes (new job, new relationship, relocation) that are affecting your wellbeing.
  • Motivation: Measure your progress, reinforcing positive habits.

How to Keep Track of Your Workplace Mental Health

With the update to our Mental Wellbeing Assessment, regularly checking in on your wellbeing is simple and accessible. Our Welliba-powered tool allows you to take the same assessment as often as you need to, empowering you to stay on top of your mental wellbeing. 

Here’s how you can stay on top of your wellbeing regularly:

  • Set a reminder: Give yourself a timeline to get things done and set a reminder to reassess.
  • Use the same tool (like Alison’s wellbeing assessment): This will ensure that you can see genuine progress on matters that may have been an issue in the past.
  • Reflect: Take a moment to review your results and see how they’ve changed over time.
  • Act: Take steps towards making changes, whether it’s seeking help, making lifestyle changes, or celebrating your growth.

By making wellbeing assessments a part of your wellness routine, you develop a habit of proactive selfcare.

A Closer Look at Alison’s Wellbeing Assessment Tool

Alison’s wellbeing assessment is powered by Welliba, a well-known, cutting-edge employee wellbeing company, consisting of a global team of group of occupational psychologists, privacy professionals, HR, UX and IT experts. We have integrated this tool into our platform, allowing everyone, everywhere, to access it at no cost.

You can:

✅ Enjoy a user-friendly experience.

✅ Trust a scientifically formulated approach.

✅ Answer results-driven questions that dig deeper.

✅ Discover clear, meaningful insights.

✅ Retake the assessment whenever you need to.

Whether you’re an individual, manager or organisation, our assessment offers an easy way to start your personal development journey.

Small Habit, Big Impact

Tracking your wellbeing should become routine, just like checking your bank balance or making your bed. When you do it regularly, it can have a transformative impact on your growth and development.

Making regular wellbeing assessments a part of your life can help you identify shifts early, build resilience, and make more conscious decisions about your life. With this new feature, you now have the power to monitor your mental and emotional health on your terms.

Start checking in. Not just once, but whenever you need to. Assess your wellbeing for free on Alison.

Word of the Day: mystify

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This word has appeared in six articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?

What’s New at Codecademy: Certification Prep & Skills Training Updates

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What’s New at Codecademy: Certification Prep & Skills Training Updates

Welcome to our centralized hub for all new course launches and updates at Codecademy. Here, you’ll find an up-to-date record of what’s new so you can easily discover fresh learning opportunities, figure out who a course is best suited for, or just jump right in and start. 

We’re always launching new courses and fine-tuning our learning environment so you can stay ahead of emerging tech trends and build the skills that are in demand right now. Bookmark this blog and check back regularly — we’ll update this anytime there’s a new launch you need to know about.

Use the links below to skip to the week or update you’re interested in. 

Want to see all our courses in one place? Browse the catalog to find courses and paths, filter by level and topic (or sort by “Most recent” to see the newest launches). You can also chat with the AI Learning Assistant to build a learning plan that helps you reach your goals.  

July 28, 2025

What’s new 

We’ve added 40+ new learning paths to our catalog, including prep for intermediate and advanced certification exams (think AWS Certified DevOps Engineer and Oracle Database SQL Certified Associate) as well as skill-building for specific tools like Snowflake and Terraform.  

There are now 35 certification prep paths for intermediate and advanced certifications in AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, CompTIA, Oracle SQL, CBAP, and more. 

  • New Microsoft certifications  
  • New CompTIA certifications  
  • New Google certifications  

The remaining 9 new skill paths focused on applied learning in IT, DevOps, and data engineering.

Who these paths are for 

Our new paths are designed to support you on your career journey with professional, certification-focused training. From cloud architecture and data engineering to DevOps, cybersecurity, business analysis, or IT project management, you can find a route that helps you advance and specialize. These paths are best for: 

  • Mid-career professionals seeking to deepen expertise and gain relevant credentials. 
  • Teams aiming to upskill in cloud, data, security, and DevOps. 
  • Anyone who wants to earn certifications from leading providers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud. 

Last updated: July 2025

Word of the Day: lagniappe

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This word has appeared in four articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?

Confidence and Control: Grasp Essential Life Skills With New “Adulting” Hub

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Confidence and Control: Grasp Essential Life Skills With New “Adulting” Hub

Do you ever feel ill-equipped to handle all the challenges of adult life? Our new “Adulting” Hub  is here to help with free online courses. While the term “Adulting” is sardonic, in reality, navigating life’s challenges is no joke. Housing, social media overload and the pressures of work and study are all stressors. According to a YoungMinds study, 90% of young people worry about earning enough money to support themselves, while 93% of young adults have been stressed to the point of overwhelm, according to the UK’s Mental Health Foundation. 

Our “Adulting” Hub may not be a magic pill for all life’s ills, but it is packed with practical, accessible life skills courses that will help you face real-world challenges, from managing personal finances and maintaining a home to fostering mental wellbeing and advancing a career. Best of all, it is completely free! For Gen Z skills and Millennial life skills, dive into sections covering:

  • Home & Kitchen: Mastering living spaces, cooking and baking, and basic repairs.
  • Personal Finance: Budgeting, saving, investing, and understanding credit.
  • Wellbeing: Stress management, building healthy habits, and fostering mental health.
  • Personal Development: Self-improvement, goal setting, emotional intelligence, and productivity.
  • Thinking Skills: Enhancing critical thinking and problem-solving.
  • Communication & Relationships: Boosting personal and professional connections.
  • Practical Life Skills: Hands-on abilities like driving, car maintenance, sign language, first aid, typing, and shorthand.
  • Digital & AI Skills: Mastering software and AI tools to boost your efficiency.
  • Career & Professional Growth: Covering job searches, workplace skills, promotions, and academic and professional writing.

“The word “Adulting” might be a bit jokey, but behind it lies a significant need for training in the everyday skills that are crucial for thriving as an adult,” said Fiona Rutherford, Publishing Editor at Alison, who curated the hub. “We have selected a diverse range of high-quality courses that directly address the real-world challenges faced by Millennials and Gen Zs today. Having said that, the “Adulting” Hub is a toolkit for confident living, whatever your age.”

The “Adulting” Hub reinforces Alison’s commitment to breaking down barriers to education. The courses are available in various formats, including text, video, and slides, ensuring diverse learning styles are accommodated. Users can also download the Alison app for the option of continuing courses offline – perfect for those with intermittent internet connections. Why not enrol today and begin taking control of your own destiny! Explore the “Adulting” Hub now.

Word of the Day: skulduggery

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This word has appeared in 17 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?

Digest #181: Popular Learning Scientists Posts

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Digest #181: Popular Learning Scientists Posts

Cover image by Arduinna from Pixabay

By Althea Need Kaminske

If you, like me, have wondered, “What are people reading on our blog this summer?” then wonder no more! I looked through our most visited pages from the beginning of June until now to see what people have been interested in so far this summer. Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, our original posts on the six strategies and how to use them are consistently in our most-read blog posts. Read more about the six strategies and the individual explainers on Dual Coding, Concrete Examples, Elaboration, Interleaving, Spacing, and – the most popular – Retrieval Practice.

While I’m happy to see that those posts are still very popular – as they should be! – I was more interested in our other blog posts that highlight a topic and discuss recent or foundational research on that topic. Below are the top 5 reads from this summer!

In this post I review an experiment by Theobald et al. (2002) that examined how anxiety affected performance in German medical students. How does test anxiety affect learning? I concluded: The relationship between test anxiety, working memory, and exam performance is complicated!

This post is part of the “Be Your Own Teacher” series that Rachel Adragna put together for us. Rachel breaks down how students can approach learning from a textbook with a template and examples. The whole series is worth checking out for students who may feel a little lost when it comes to studying!

In this post Carolina reviews a recent meta-analysis that examines the benefits of handwritten versus typed notes for college students. Which is better? The answer, as always, depends on a few factors.

This more recent blog post by Cindy explains some key components of self-determination theory, one of the major theories on how motivation works. She pays special attention to how teachers can use this theory in their classroom.

This oldy, but a goody, from 2018 is still one of our most popular posts! In this post Megan breaks down the strengths and weaknesses of descriptive, correlational, and true experimental designs.

Word of the Day: gobble

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This word has appeared in 89 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?

Our 2025-26 Student Contest Calendar

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Eight challenges that invite teenagers to engage, experiment, reflect and create — via writing, photography, audio, video and more.

Alison vs Coursera: The Best Free Online Learning Platform in 2025

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Alison vs Coursera: The Best Free Online Learning Platform in 2025

If you’ve ever looked up online learning platforms, the results may overwhelm you. There are so many options to choose from, and many people are not sure which one would be best for them. A good online platform offers flexible learning, quality content, and countless career benefits, and it can be tough to figure out which one is actually worth your time.

Two popular options available are Alison and Coursera. Both of these platforms have a global reach, and although they are both online learning platforms, they differ in what they offer. Whether you are looking to upskill, change your career or just want to learn something new, choosing the right platform can make your quest much simpler. In this article, we will break down what each platform offers in 2025, and which one is best suited for your specific needs.

What Sets Each Platform Apart

Alison: Practical Skills Without the Price Tag

Alison was founded in 2007 in Ireland, with a clear goal in mind: to make education accessible to everyone, everywhere. It is one of the few platforms that deliver on their promise of 100% free learning. You can access any course free of charge and learn at your own pace.

Alison focuses on workplace skills, like digital marketing, project management, customer service, and tech. The platform is designed with employability in mind and offers free Certificate and Diploma courses that focus on real-world skill development without unnecessary fluff. Alison gives people the freedom to learn at their own pace, in their own time, without the cost. And with the Alison App, you can download the courses you would like to take and learn offline – ideal if you are constantly on the move or don’t have access to the internet.

Coursera: Academic Learning, University Ties

Coursera, on the other hand, partners with universities and tech companies to offer more formal online education. It was founded in 2012 and has built its reputation on structured, academic-style content. They offer both short courses and full degrees. However, access to most of their features comes with a price tag. You can audit many of their courses for free, but assignments, peer feedback and certificates require payment. Although the quality is high, accessibility is limited if you do not have the necessary funds.

Course Variety and Subjects

One of the biggest differences between Alison and Coursera is the purpose for which their courses are created. Alison’s courses are built around real-world job skills. Here’s a list of the course categories you will find at Alison:

The courses within each category are short and targeted. They are designed to get you job-ready, fast. You can opt to do many courses within a category or choose various topics that spark your interest.

Coursera’s catalogue, on the other hand, is designed a little differently. If you’re looking to study courses that are backed by universities, you’ll find them here. However, with that depth comes a commitment: longer course durations, certificates that take an average of 3-6 months to complete, graded assignments, and significantly higher costs after the initial trial period. Some of them are:

  • Data Science
  • Health
  • Arts and Humanities
  • Information Technology
  • Business
  • Social Science
  • Physical Science and Engineering
  • Math and Logic
  • Computer Science
  • Personal Development
  • Language Learning

Certificates and Credibility

There’s a lot of confusion around online course certificates, especially what’s free, what’s paid, and whether any of it counts for something in the real world.

Here’s what you need to know:

Alison offers Certificate and Diploma courses accredited by the CPD UK (Continuing Professional Development). After successfully completing a course and passing the assessment, you can choose to purchase a Certificate or Diploma. These are widely used by professionals in healthcare, administration, hospitality, IT, and other industries that value practical, job-ready skills.

Alison courses remain completely free to study. Coursera, by comparison, charges for all certificates. These are co-branded with the institutions offering the course, so if you’re taking a course from Yale, Google, or Imperial College, the certificate will reflect that. While this academic branding can hold weight in certain sectors, it’s not the only path to credibility. In many industries, it’s the skills, not the school name, that matter.

User Experience and Accessibility

Ease of use can make or break your learning experience. Here’s how the two platforms compare:

  • Alison has a clean, intuitive dashboard that’s easy to navigate, even for first-time users.
  • The Alison App supports offline learning, which is a major plus if you’re learning on your commute or in areas with limited data connectivity.
  • Coursera offers a more structured, academic-style interface. It feels more like a virtual university portal, which may appeal to learners who prefer not to commute to campus. You’ll need to sign up to access free course auditing options, while some are locked behind paywalls.

Pricing and Subscription Models

Understanding what you’re getting for free and what you’ll need to pay for isn’t always straightforward.

Here’s a direct comparison based on how the platforms work in 2025:

FeaturesAlisonCoursera
Access to course content100% freeFree (audit mode)
Certificate AvailabilityPaid (courses CPD-accredited)Paid (co-branded with institutions)
Subscription modelFree access with paid CertificatesCoursera Plus available for monthly/yearly fee
Degree ProgrammeNot offeredOffered, paid
Offline learningAvailable on the Alison AppAvailable via the app (with restrictions)

While Coursera’s audit mode does let you view course content for free, many key features like assignments, certificates, and support are locked behind a paywall. Alison offers all its courses completely free, including access to quizzes and course assessments. If you’d like to showcase your achievement, you have the option to purchase a Certificate or Diploma, which will be available for immediate download. To further celebrate learner success, Alison also hosts online graduation events for those who complete Diploma courses.

Best Platform for Different Users

Here’s a summary of what each platform does best.

Alison pros:

  • 100% free access to all course content
  • CPD-accredited courses that support professional development
  • No sign-up fees are required to begin learning
  • Ideal for jobseekers and upskillers
  • Offline learning on the Alison App

Coursera pros:

  • Courses from top universities
  • Academic-style content with graded assignments
  • Degrees in partnership with universities

Which Platform Should You Choose in 2025?

Alison is ideal for job seekers and career changers, while Coursera may be great for academic learners and professionals. However, for the vast majority of learners in 2025, those who want to grow their skills, stand out in job applications, and make progress without breaking the bank, Alison is the smarter, more accessible option. It makes learning possible for everyone, everywhere

No cost, no fuss, just the skills you need, when you need them.