With rising costs associated with going to university, many progressive colleges have been looking for ways to teach those who can not afford a traditional college course, or otherwise do not have the time to visit a traditional classroom. The internet is a low-cost distribution method and is a perfect vehicle for learning topics with both textual, audio and visual cues to assist the student.
The sites below offer free online college level classes to anyone willing to spend the time on them. Each differ – some have all of the materials online and some may want you to purchase (borrow?) a textbook to follow along with. Each of them offers complete courses with only one thing missing: the credit for the coursework to put towards a matriculated degree.
MIT OpenCourseware
Massachusetts Institute of Technology was a pioneer in offering online college courses and they still have the most diverse and in-depth collection of classes available anywhere. Their online offering is an archived version of real courses that have been taught at MIT, and you may need to purchase the textbook to follow along with the class. These courses come highly recommended.
Carnegie Mellon OpenLearning
Carnegie Mellon, based in Pittsburgh, PA, has a variety of courses available for anyone online. While the selection is not as great as MIT’s, many core courses are presented in an easy to follow online format. Their courses are similar to what a paying student would receive minus the course credit or access to an instructor.
Khan Acadamy
Salman Khan began putting videos on YouTube to help with tutoring a cousin. When he started receiving feedback that they were helping a lot more people than just his cousin, he realized he was on to something good.
Today, there are over 1000 videos on KhanAcademy, which is now a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Most videos are about math. However, there are also many other topics that he explores. Even Bill Gates has said that he uses Khan to teach his kids about math. These are not college courses per-se, but the math he introduces in them are at college level and many people praise them for being clearer and easier to comprehend than actual college courses!
University of California at Berkeley
UC Berkeley has put online videos and audio of many of its most popular courses up on their Webcast website. They do not include the text materials which can be very helpful for taking online college courses. However, you can still learn a lot by watching the videos of the lecures.
They have lectures for ongoing courses and also historical class archives on their website, as well as videos of recorded events and one-off lectures.
Stanford University iTunesU
Stanford has made many of their courses and lectures available via iTunes in iTunesU. This collection is great if you are on the go or want to listen to courses while commuting. They have an impressive collection of content available, all for free. The downside is that you need to use iTunes to view their content.
Tufts OpenCourseware
Tufts uses the OpenCourseware format to offer full content on a number of their programs. Worth mentioning from Tufts are their Medical and Dental school courses as well as selections from other courses.
Open University LearningSpace
Learningspace offers content from the Open University, based in the UK. This university pledges to be open and accepts many different kinds of students in its real world classrooms. It also opened up its content to anyone online. The online college courses are laid out extremely well and offer many different topics with skill levels going from beginner up to expert.
Johns Hopkins OpenCourseware
Johns Hopkins is a respected medical school outside of Baltimore, Maryland. They offer a selection of courses from their school which would be of particular interest to medical students.
Get to work!
The sites above are free as in free beer. However, if you wish to make the most out of them you will still need to make the time commitment to sit down and watch or listen to the course content. You may not receive college credit for learning via these sites but you will definitely turn out a better person!
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Also Check http://freevideolectures.com/ . It is the biggest collection Online video Courses. It has more 740+ Online Courses, 18000+ Videos from Top 20+ Universities on 35+ Categories. Most of then are down loadable in MP4, FLV, 3GP, MP3 and Torrents
Google awarded $2 million to Khan Academy and bill gates favorite teacher
Read that news not a day or so after I wrote this list up – it was such great news knowing the history of the site and how they started!
Yale has its own free video lectures too at – http://oyc.yale.edu/Then there’s Academic Earth which we have covered a few times before.
Much needed post Dave :)
Yale has its own free video lectures too at – http://oyc.yale.edu/
Then there’s Academic Earth which we have covered a few times before.
Much needed post Dave :)
check out http://freevideolectures.com as well
check out http://freevideolectures.com as well
Is there any (legitimate) online colleges that actually award credit for courses? Credits that would transfer to another college?
None that I know of. If there were such a loophole it would be exploited to obtain college degrees cheaply. The system is basically set up so that you need to take courses from an ‘accredited’ course where it can be documented that you did learn the knowledge. Although you can transfer credit in, each class is typically reviewed to make sure it means the university conferring the degree’s standards. Otherwise the degree that the university hands out is ‘watered down’ by having unqualified graduates.
But, that being said, the whole system is set up to reward people who are good at tests, quizzes and homework – not necessarily who is able to learn the information. I think the worldwide environment is ripe for some sort of ‘free’ accreditation and validation via online coursework.
yes there is open university
Hi Jeff, as was previously suggested by Digital Art Empire, the Open University offers credited distance learning education, check it out at http://www.open.ac.uk/. Be under no illusion their standards are in no way diluted in comparison to a regular ‘brick’ university!
Academic earth’s great!!!
None that I know of. If there were such a loophole it would be exploited to obtain college degrees cheaply. The system is basically set up so that you need to take courses from an ‘accredited’ course where it can be documented that you did learn the knowledge. Although you can transfer credit in, each class is typically reviewed to make sure it means the university conferring the degree’s standards. Otherwise the degree that the university hands out is ‘watered down’ by having unqualified graduates.
But, that being said, the whole system is set up to reward people who are good at tests, quizzes and homework – not necessarily who is able to learn the information. I think the worldwide environment is ripe for some sort of ‘free’ accreditation and validation via online coursework.
This is also useful…
http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/
This is also useful…
http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/
WOw really like the khan academy.
vvv tanx u
Great post! Although online education does not require class attendance, it still consists of dynamic interactions with lecturers and professors. Online education involves thorough planning before taking the big steps in finishing a degree. Thanks!
Correct. To get the ‘fullest’ experience you need to plan out your coursework – these are often available on a university’s website. You can emulate a whole ‘degree’ program from most of these courses with the correct amount of planning.
You forgot Connexions (cnx.org), a different kind of open courseware site made up of small knowledge “chunks” developed by Rice University.
That seems like a great site for finding coursework – I hadn’t heard of it before. Thank you!
Yeah, I love it. It’s helping me survive engineering statistics right now.
Thanks for the site!
You forgot Connexions (cnx.org), a different kind of open courseware site made up of small knowledge “chunks” developed by Rice University.
academic Earth would have to be the best resource
yes there is open university
Hi Jeff, as was previously suggested by Digital Art Empire, the Open University offers credited distance learning education, check it out at http://www.open.ac.uk/. Be under no illusion their standards are in no way diluted in comparison to a regular ‘brick’ university!
I was unaware you could take free online college courses. I recently just graduated from Liberty University Online. It was a wonderful experience, but it was not free. I actually just made a donation at http://www.lugiving.com.
I was unaware you could take free online college courses. I recently just graduated from Liberty University Online. It was a wonderful experience, but it was not free. I actually just made a donation at http://www.lugiving.com.
Thank you very much!
Fantastic resource for those looking to further their education! I’m extremely impressed with the vast amount of schools offering free courses and study! I attended Liberty University then http://www.luonline.com to obtain my online Christian degrees
The thought of free online college classes scare me. I’m actually attending a paid one because the whole free college just doesn’t sit well with me. If your interested in a fully accredited online college check out http://www.luonline.com I assure you that you wont be disappointed.
The thought of free online college classes scare me. I’m actually attending a paid one because the whole free college just doesn’t sit well with me. If your interested in a fully accredited online college check out http://www.luonline.com I assure you that you wont be disappointed.
i think its just perfect idea to learn online.