The year 2020 has proven to be a time of both change and resilience. Due to the pandemic and stay-at-home orders issued globally, people had to change their lifestyles, adopt better eating  habits, learn to work from home, and some even picked up a new skill — like coding.

The point is, regardless of if people learned to cook, create pivot tables in Excel, or program using a new computer language, we all learned something new. 

This uptick of people using online learning platforms to help them gain knowledge and new skills in their downtime, made us wonder which online courses and Nanodegree programs our students liked the most. 

After examining our Nanodegree programs and student feedback, we compiled a list of our top-rated Nanodegree programs for 2020, according to our global community of students. 

Top 10 Highest-Rated Udacity Nanodegree Programs for 2020

Top Rated Nanodegree Programs — Program and Developer Programs Top the List

After learning the “learning to code” was one of the most searched terms this year, according to Google Trends, it was illuminating to see that programming topped our list of the most highly rated Nanodegree programs. 

Here’s a look at the full list:

Intro to Programming Nanodegree Program 

Rating – 4.8 out of 5 

Skills Covered: Introduction to Programming, HTML, CSS, Python

Program Details: This program is perfect for beginners to enter the world of Web and App development, Machine Learning, Data Science, AI and more.

Intel® Edge AI Scholarship Foundation Course

Rating – 4.7 out of 5

Skills Covered: Edge AI, Computer Vision, Deep Learning, Edge Computing, AI Modeling, Deep Neural Networks (DNN), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), IoT and more

Program Details: Lead the development of cutting-edge Edge AI applications for the future, including the Internet of Things (IoT).

Android Kotlin Developer

Rating – 4.7 out of 5

Skills Covered: Android Development, Kotlin, Android Studio, Gradle, Restful interface, Web APIs, App Architecture, Databases, Custom Views, Notifications, Location Services, Testing and more

Program Details: Learn to build professional apps for the world’s most popular app platform.

Hybrid Cloud Engineer

Rating – 4.7 out of 5

Skills Covered: Hyper-converged Infrastructure, Hybrid Cloud, Public Cloud, Private Cloud, HCI Clusters, Workload Management, On Premise, Off Premise and more

Program Details: Be at the forefront of cloud technology and learn to design and deploy hybrid cloud infrastructure and applications. 

Sensor Fusion Engineer

Rating – 4.7 out of 5

Skills Covered: Perception, Lidar, Radar, Sensors, Computer Vision

Program Details: Learn to fuse lidar point clouds, radar signatures and camera images with  Kalman Filters to perceive the environment and to detect and track both vehicles and pedestrians over time.

Programming for Data Science with Python

Rating – 4.7 out of 5

Skills Covered: Python, Numpy & Pandas, SQL, Git & Github

Program Details – Prepare for a data science career by learning the fundamental data programming tools: Python, SQL, command line and git.

Business Analytics Nanodegree Program

Rating: 4.7  out of 5

Skills Covered: Excel Spreadsheets, SQL, Data Visualization, Data Dashboards

Program Details: Gain foundational data skills applicable in  any industry. Collect and analyze data, model business scenarios and communicate your findings with SQL, Excel and Tableau.

Android Basics by Google

Rating: 4.7 out of 5

Skills Covered: Android Development, Java Programming, Android Studio, XML, Layouts, Android Views

Program Details: Start developing Android apps even if you don’t have any programming experience.

Data Scientist Nanodegree Program

Rating: 4.7out of 5

Skills Covered: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Software Engineering

Program Details: Learn to run data pipelines, design experiments, build recommendation systems and deploy solutions to the cloud. Plus, advance your data science career with real-world data projects.

Data Analyst Nanodegree Program

Rating: 4.7 out of 5

Skills Covered: Data Wrangling, Matplotlib, Bootstrapping, Pandas & NumPy, Statistics

Program Details: Use Python, SQL and statistics to uncover insights, communicate critical findings and create data-driven solutions

What Else Was on the List?

Students also rated the following programs highly (4.6+): Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Self-Driving Car Engineer, Digital Marketing, Flying Car, AWS Cloud Architect, Programming for Data Science with R, React, UX Designer, Predictive Analytics for Business, Computer Vision and Deep Reinforcement Learning Nanodegree programs. 

The New Year is coming up fast and you can start the year strong by gaining new skills that will get you ready for the new world of work. 

Visit our Catalog to review our comprehensive list of Nanodegree programs and get the digital skills that you need to be in-demand in 2021. 

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Ritika Pradhan
Ritika Pradhan
Ritika is the Content Manager at Udacity and is passionate about bringing inspirational student stories to light. When not talking to the amazing Udacity students, she can be found reading an article or watching a video on the internet.