Free University Level Courses
EDUCATIONFEATURED
“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows”
– Sydney J. Harris
ALISON has collaborated with top publishers such as Macmillan and Google to bring you courses tailored to areas where you may need some extra help. Do you want to learn more about supply chain management? How about polishing your HR procedures? Why not take up nursing? ALISON, like the ideal content curator, takes high-quality, reputable materials and makes them easily accessible.
Coursera, like EdX and ALISON, aggregates more than 100 courses from elite institutions. This massive library of courses, sourced from countries all over the world, makes it easy to join the more than 11,000,000 users advancing their education. Coursera provides affordable options for earning an online master's or bachelor's degree in business, data science, public health, and other fields.
FutureLearn's offerings are similar to Coursera's, but FutureLearn's user-friendly interface makes it simple to find ways to improve your professional development. You can find courses to help you Enroll in courses to advance your teaching career and skills or improve your management style by enrolling in a communication or leadership course. Courses are completely free. You will, however, have to pay to obtain a completion certificate or to apply course credits toward a degree.
Udemy is a platform that allows instructors to create online courses on a variety of topics. They can create courses by uploading videos, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, audio, ZIP files, and live classes using Udemy's course development tools. Online discussion boards allow instructors to engage and interact with students. The platform has over 46 million students, 175,000 courses, and 60,000 instructors teaching courses in over 75 languages as of 2021. Over 644 million people have enrolled in courses. Students engage primarily to improve their job-related skills, and some courses count toward technical certification. Business and entrepreneurship, academics, the arts, health and fitness, language, music, and technology are just a few of the subjects covered. They also provide Udemy for Business, which provides businesses with access to a targeted suite of over 7,000 training courses. Organizations can also use Udemy for Business to create custom learning portals for corporate training.
Learnthat.com provides adults with free online tutorials in four categories: business, lifestyle, personal finance, and technology. The website teaches practical life and business skills through a variety of video and text-based courses to help you achieve your goals. The tutorials are generally brief in comparison to other course offerings, but they are an excellent place to start. Business owners, for example, can learn how to conduct performance reviews or research the benefits of incorporating. On the technical front, you'll find a solid foundation of website and social media marketing strategies. Also, if you're just getting started with money management, Learnthat's personal finance courses are a great place to start.
GCFLearnFree is a free online educational website that focuses on technology, job training, reading, and math. The site is a Goodwill International of Eastern North Carolina Inc. program. The self-paced tutorials at GCFLearnFree.org are among the free resources available at DigitalLiteracy.gov, an Obama administration initiative focused on digital literacy. GCFLearnFree.org provides free online classes with completion certificates and continuing education units (CEUs). The International Association for Continuing Education and Training has accredited the online class program (IACET). What's particularly appealing about GCFlearnFree is that it goes beyond traditional subjects and includes lessons on Microsoft Office as well as "everyday" skills such as understanding prescriptions and nutrition labels.
Open Culture is essentially a fantastic collection of excellent resources that can be used for both personal and professional development. It is divided into six main categories: audiobooks, online courses, movies, language lessons, e-books, and textbooks. Courses from England, Australia, Wales, and many state universities across the United States are included on Open Culture's list.
Academic Earth is another website that offers courses from a variety of universities. Academic Earth brings together top-notch courses from a variety of sources and focuses on offering a wide range of subjects. They organize courses by subject and school, making it easier to find exactly what your looking for.
The Open Education Database is a user-friendly free online education site. It offers over 10,000 courses from universities all over the world. When you search by topic, you will see how many courses are available. There are video, audio, and mixed media lessons in the courses to help you learn anything you want. If you decide to continue your education formally, you can use this website to learn more about offline and online schools.
TED-Ed is another excellent resource for general learning and free online education. The creators of the all-encompassing, motivational web series have created a site chock-full of educational videos. The majority feature impressive animation and are all ten minutes or less in length. Not only is TED-Ed an excellent resource for the curious, but it also includes supplemental materials and video quizzes. As a result, the site is extremely useful in formal education settings as well as in entertaining ways to brush up on new discoveries and topics.
Udacity is a technology-focused online learning platform for those interested in data analysis, software engineering, artificial intelligence, and web development. They provide self-paced courses in a variety of formats, most notably their signature nanodegree programs. Mentorship, forums, and other services may also be included. Each nanodegree program consists of a series of courses (usually three or four), but Udacity also offers individual paid courses. The individual courses can be completed in about one month if a student studies for five to ten hours per week. After completing each course, graduates are awarded a certificate.
Udacity also offers executive programs, that are more focused on the broad issues confronting today's business and industry leaders. These programs all include a personal career coach, project reviews from industry professionals, and mentorship. Udacity has 59 nanodegree programs, two executive programs, and 187 free courses available. They are not an accredited educational institution; they do not accept hours of credit from other institutions; and certificates earned through Udacity courses are not transferable. However, the company has a collaboration with Georgia Tech and AT&T that allows students to obtain an online master's degree in computer science. As of October 2020, Udacity had awarded more than 150,000 nanodegrees, and more than 1.5 million students had successfully completed at least one course.
Coursera is an online learning platform that offers thousands of free courses as well as professional certificates. They offers everything from free Yale courses to Google career programs. They were founded by two computer science professors at Stanford University. It collaborates with over 200 of the world's leading universities and companies, including Yale, Princeton, Penn, Stanford, and Google, to offer thousands of online courses. Coursera provides free individual courses as well as bachelor's and master's degree programs. There are also professional certificate programs that can help workers get new jobs or promotions. You can take free and paid courses in a variety of ways once you've signed up. You can "enroll for free" in one-time courses. Longer programs, such as Google's crash course in Python programming, are free for seven days and then cost $39-$49 per month to earn a certificate of completion. By clicking the enroll button and then "audit this course," you can also browse courses that are part of larger programs for free. You can pay to enroll in official MasterTrack and degree programs, which can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars depending on the program.
Memrise is another impressive free online education site. Memrise, which is available both on the desktop and as an app, is a particularly useful tool for language learners. The site also covers a variety of other topics, though some of the course material is user-generated. Part of what distinguishes Memrise is the incorporation of games into the learning materials, which combines learning with entertainment.
Kadenze specializes in science, technology, engineering, art, design, music, and math education. There is a fascinating range of courses available, ranging from museum education to comic book creation to the use of machine learning in music and art. To get started, create a free account and then browse the course catalog by subject and skill level. Join many courses for free and learn at your own pace, or pay $20 per month for a premium Kadenze membership that allows you to enroll in unlimited courses, receive grades and feedback, submit assignments, and build a portfolio.
YouTube is good for…literally anything. It’s a free platform where you can browse channels and find topics of interest to you. There are over 6000 channels in the education and science section, and nearly 2000 DIY stores. While you may have to sift through some dubious videos, the platform contains a plethora of qualified instructors and experts. You can also find college lectures and public speeches. Crash Course is one of the best educational channels to follow on YouTube, with educational videos ranging from entrepreneurship to artificial intelligence to World War II. The Ted-Ed channel contains videos that explain complex topics in simple terms. If you're interested in nature and the environment, the National Geographic channel is a must-see. The Khan Academy, themselves a notable entrant into the educational field, also has an excellent Youtube channel.
Skillshare’s emphasis is primarily creative skills such as business development, software use, writing, photography, etc. Skillshare's low price and wide range of content make it an easy recommendation for anyone looking to learn new skills or hone existing ones. The website divides classes into three categories: Create, Build, and Thrive - which is essentially Creative classes, Business classes, and Personal Development classes.
In general, there are two kinds of courses: Skillshare Originals and classes created by individuals, who can earn money from them. Skillshare Originals are courses that are created by Skillshare directly. Some are created in collaboration with partners such as Mailchimp, Patreon, and Eataly. They may have celebrity or semi-celebrity instructors, and the production quality is assured. The classes created by individuals meet a quality standard expectation and all classes are rated by students so you can filter for the most popular and highly rated class options. This is a great service for people who want to develop skills within a hobby, such as drawing or pottery. Unlike many of these educational sites, there are limited free options, however the subscription or annual fee is affordable, at either $32 a month or $162 annually.
edX is a well-known educational and learning platform. Founded by Harvard and MIT, the global nonprofit is home to over 20 million learners, a majority of the world's top universities, and industry-leading companies. EdX has programs for learners at all stages, with over 3,000 classes available. The Global Freshman Academy is a collaboration with Arizona State University that allows users to take the same courses as on-campus undergraduate students and earn transferable credit, paying tuition only after passing the course. EdX also provides traditional online master's degree programs, such as the MBA program from Boston University and the master's in mechanical engineering program from Purdue University.
EdX also has options that can be stacked. Adult learners can study at their own pace while earning transferable college credit with the MicroBachelors program. The MicroMasters program allows users to work their way up to an advanced degree. For users interested in career advancement, EdX also offers professional certificate programs and executive education courses, in order to earn a credential. Users can audit almost any course on edX for free; however, they must pay a fee to access exams or complete a verified certificate. This fee ranges between $50 and $100 for many courses. Other courses may be more expensive depending on the subject. A master's degree through edX is estimated to cost between $10,000 and $25,000 USD. The cost of enrolling in the MicroBachelors or MicroMasters programs ranges from $500 to $1,500. EdX provides financial aid. Users must first enroll in a course as an audit learner before submitting a financial assistance application. If the application is approved, which could take two to four business days, the user will receive a 90% discount code. However, not all courses are eligible, and users must apply for financial aid on a per-course basis.
