Six Free Ways to Sharpen Your GIS Skills This Year

Picture the GIS manager who wants her team sharper on spatial analysis but feels a bit defeated when the training budget gets reallocated to other resources. We’re sure she’s not alone in the search for accessible educational resources to help with professional development. On this blog, we’re highlighting a great online resources to help gain those skills.

Esri’s free training resources offer a practical way to support ongoing professional development within the team. The courses cover a wide range of GIS topics and skill levels, so employees can pursue training that fits their current role or gives them an opportunity to expand into new areas. Many are self-paced, and some include certificates or other recognition that employees can add to their professional development records.

Encouraging team members to take advantage of these resources can help keep skills current, give them more direction in their individual growth, and create a culture where learning is part of the work rather than something that happens only when a formal training opportunity comes along.

Two Ways to Learn

Esri splits its free offerings into two categories:

• Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, are self-paced classes that typically run 4-6 weeks and include expert-led videos, hands-on exercises, quizzes, discussion boards, and access to the ArcGIS software you need to complete the work. Most MOOCs ask for 2-3 hours a week, though the current Enterprise GIS course runs a bit lighter at 1^_1/2-2 hours weekly, which makes it a reasonable pick for someone who may be stretched thin in this season.

• Live Training Seminars are the opposite end of the spectrum. These are one-hour sessions led by Esri experts, built around a single focused topic and on a set schedule. If you miss the live version, Esri records every seminar and posts it to Esri Academy afterward, so there is no real downside to catching one later.

Current MOOC Lineup

There is a wide subject range — stretching from foundational mapping skills to spatial data science and imagery analysis. Here is how the current schedule breaks down.

A nice touch is that the software comes bundled in. Depending on the course, participants get temporary access to ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, or specialized applications built for that specific subject, so there is no separate license to track down before class starts.

Certificate Versus Certification

Finishing every section of a MOOC earns you a certificate of completion, delivered as a PDF that can be added to a résumé or LinkedIn profile. That is a real credential worth having, but it is not the same thing as an Esri Technical Certification, which requires sitting for and passing a formal exam. Both have value, but they answer different questions for an employer. A certificate of completion says you did the coursework and built the skill. A technical certification says you passed a standardized test proving mastery of it. Knowing which one you are working toward is important.

Getting Started

1. Pick your commitment level first. If you have a spare hour this week, browse the current seminar schedule. If you can carve out two to three hours weekly for over a month, look at the MOOC lineup instead.
2. Match the topic to a real gap on your team. Choose the course that solves a problem you are actually facing, not just the one that sounds most impressive.
3. Block the time on your calendar like a meeting. MOOCs are self-paced, which sounds flexible right up until week five arrives and nothing has been touched.
4. Save the certificate somewhere it will actually get used. Add it to LinkedIn or a résumé the same week you earn it, while the momentum is still there.
5. Check back regularly. Esri rotates its MOOC schedule and seminar topics throughout the year, so a subject that is not offered today may show up again in a few months.

Educational Resources are Valuable

We love sharing great GIS educational resources like Esri’s that help encourage personal, professional and technical growth — and this is actually the first post in a four-part series on GIS training. Next week we’re covering QGIS, the open-source alternative to Esri’s software, followed by a roundup of university and library resources anyone can access for free, and we’ll wrap things up with a few specialty options built for environmental and humanitarian mapping work.

Do you have experience with Esri’s courses or any other suggested educational online resources? We’d love to hear about it!

I bet you can think of someone right now who would benefit from this training. Pass it along!

Sources

Esri. (2026). Make an impact with enterprise GIS [MOOC]. Esri Training. https://www.esri.com/en-us/training/catalog/6a03afbe268c4fd4bc341070/make-an-impact-with-enterprise-gis/

Esri. (2026). Make an impact with modern geo apps [MOOC]. Esri Training. https://www.esri.com/en-us/training/catalog/663a68f536d6dc1f7d757853/make-an-impact-with-modern-geo-apps/

Esri. (2026). MOOCs & live training seminars. Esri Training. https://www.esri.com/en-us/training/catalog/live-training-seminars-moocs

Esri. (2026). Python for ArcGIS: Take the next step [Live Training Seminar]. Esri Training. https://www.esri.com/en-us/training/catalog/6a32d545bd230124fcbf3292/python-for-arcgis-take-the-next-step/

Esri. (2026). Spatial data science: The new frontier in analytics [MOOC]. Esri Training. https://www.esri.com/en-us/training/catalog/5d76dcf7e9ccda09bef61294/spatial-data-science-the-new-frontier-in-analytics/

Esri. (2026). The ArcGIS imagery MOOC: Foundations and frontiers [MOOC]. Esri Training. https://www.esri.com/en-us/training/catalog/68250ef99d321b7e769b5e9f/the-arcgis-imagery-mooc-foundations-and-frontiers/

Esri. (2026). The power of where: Communicating with maps [MOOC]. Esri Training. https://www.esri.com/en-us/training/catalog/6a1724a8b2b1cf8cac1984ec/the-power-of-where-communicating-with-maps/

Esri. (n.d.). Training FAQ. Esri Training. https://www.esri.com/en-us/training/faq