Feb 27, 2017 09:45 AM EST By Emily Marks, UniversityHerald Reporter

These days online education has become a leading alternative to traditional college or university because of the flexibility it offers to students. It is also able to provide a wide variety of courses to choose from.

The top perks that an online degree program provides include flexibility, convenience and mobility. Moreover, there are several programs and courses that students can choose from, which can be especially helpful to professionals who want to gain new skills for the possibility of promotion or those who want to change careers.

Online Course Report listed the most popular MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) of all time. Check out the top 10 MOOCs below:

1. UC San Diego - Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Master Tough Subjects

It is available on Coursera and is taught by Terrence Sejnowski and Barbara Oakley. The MOOC aims to provide students with mental tools that they can use to learn. It already had a total of 1,192,697 enrollees.

2. Stanford University - Machine Learning

It is taught by Andrew Ng, who co-founded Coursera with Daphne Koller, with a total enrollment of 1,122,031. Topics in this online course include supervised learning, unsupervised learning, best practices in machine learning and case studies, among others.

3. Johns Hopkins University - R Programming

Another one from Coursera, this MOOC is part of the online education platform's data science specialization. It is taught by Roger D. Peng, Jeff Leek and Brian Caffo, with a total enrollment of 952,414.

4. University of Michigan - Introduction to Finance

Initially intended to be just an introduction to the world of finance, the University of Michigan's MOOC evolved into a five course specialization due to the overwhelming support it got. It is taught by Gautam Kaul and Qin Lei, with 846,654 total enrollees.

5. Johns Hopkins University - The Data Scientist's Toolbox

Part of Coursera's data science specialization, the MOOC includes an introduction to common tools as well as ideas that data scientists can use. It is also taught by Peng, Leek and Caffo and has total enrollment of 828,837.

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