Northwestern University Leadership Specialization MOOC

Social Influence course

Instructions for Free Enrollment

If you enroll in the Social Influence course for free, you can see all the lectures but you cannot receive a certificate of completion. If you want to receive a certificate, you must (inter alia) pay a fee.

Here are the steps for free enrollment in the Social Influence course. First you have to “sign up” for Coursera (the general website)—steps #1-5 below—and then you have to “enroll” in the Social Influence course (steps #7-8).

(1) Go to www.coursera.org

(2) Double click the blue “Sign Up” button in the top right corner.

(3) Fill out the following fields:  

Full name

Email address

Password 

(4) Click the blue “Sign Up” button at the bottom.

(5) You will now get an email from Coursera (sent to the email address you specified). The email will have a green “confirm email address” button; click it.

(6) So now you are registered at Coursera.

After clicking that “confirm email address” button, you will probably be taken directly to a page at the Coursera website showing that your email address has been verified. You will also see a link to click that takes you “back to Coursera.” (You will probably already be logged into the Coursera site.)

If (after clicking the “confirm email address button”) you’re not already logged in to the Coursera site, go back to www.coursera.org and log in (the log-in button is on the upper right hand side).

(7) Once you are registered at Coursera and logged in at www.coursera.org, you can access the social influence course in two ways:

(a) You can use this link

OR

(b) At the top of the Coursera site, in the search box, enter “social influence” and look for the “Leadership through Social Influence” page.

(8) When you’re on the “Leadership through Social Influence” page, click the “Enroll” button on the right. You will be offered various options (some involve paying, one is free). For free enrollment, choose the “Full Course, No certificate. You won't get a certificate or be in the Specialization, but you can always upgrade later” option.

(9) Now you are enrolled in the course and so you can access the course content (the lectures). On the left-hand part of the “Leadership through Social Influence” page, click “Course Content.” This will reveal that the course is organized into four segments, each conceived of as a “week” of material. For example, when you click “Week 1,” you’ll see (on the main part of the page) a list of the materials for that segment.

Daniel J. O’Keefe home page
Department of Communication Studies
School of Communication
Northwestern University