Plan Your Free Online Education at Lifehacker U: Summer Semester 2013. CSU: OpenCourseWare. Open CourseWare (OCW) are FREE online materials of entire courses (syllabus, presentations, assignments, and assessments) published by select universities. MERLOT (www.merlot.org) provides easy access to almost 5000 Free Online Courses. Simply click on a major topic heading and you can browse through the MERLOT collection of Free Online Courses. Instititutions Providing Open CourseWare (OCW) We’ve organized a list of US and UK universities that provide easy access to their courses. Review a list of partnering OCW institutions from around the world at Open Education Consortium. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC's) A MOOC is a type of FREE online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the web.
Coursera- Classes offered on Coursera are designed to help you master the material. Open Education Database - Free Online Courses. Written by: Thomas Broderick Universities, colleges, and private organizations offer free online college courses to help students acquire new knowledge and skills. These courses cover a variety of traditional academic topics and other subjects that can lead to career advancement and personal enrichment. Courses occur online, allowing learners from all over the world to participate. At the end of a course, students may qualify for an official certificate. Some institutions charge a small certificate fee. Featured Online Programs Most online courses provide an introduction to a topic, although there are some intermediary and advanced courses. Some free college courses use the term massive online open course (MOOC). Benefits of Open Courses Free online college courses allow students to learn from home, a significant advantage for learners who prefer to eliminate a commute.
In a free college course, learners can explore new academic topics without incurring high tuition costs. Open Courses FAQ. MOOCs: Top 10 Sites for Free Education With Elite Universities. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses. Although there has been access to free online courses on the Internet for years, the quality and quantity of courses has changed. Access to free courses has allowed students to obtain a level of education that many only could dream of in the past. This has changed the face of education. In The New York Times article Instruction for Masses Knocked Down Campus Walls, author Tamar Lewin stated, “in the past few months hundreds of thousands of motivated students around the world who lack access to elite universities have been embracing them as a path toward sophisticated skills and high-paying jobs, without paying tuition or collecting a college degree.”
Although MOOCs are the latest trend, not everyone agrees that schools should offer them. Joshua Kim Insight Higher Ed article Why Every University Does Not Need a MOOC noted that offering free material may not make sense for the individual university. What is MOOC Video. Education Portal - Universities Offering Free Courses Online. See our list of the top schools offering free courses online. Learn about what types of courses are available to find the school and courses that are right for you. Online Courses for Credit Plenty of free resources are available online for students who want to learn a new topic, but these free options don't generally lead to college credit. Students who want to earn college credit might want to look for online options that charge a small fee in exchange for access to online lessons.
These fee-based courses can help students earn alternative forms of college credit. Education Portal offers this style of distance learning with quick, engaging video lessons and self-assessment quizzes. Students can also find free transcripts for the video lessons. Free Online Non-Credited Courses Students who want to use the free university resources can go to the school's link, scroll through the list of available courses and lectures and view or download the available content. Yale University at Open Yale. Class Central • Free online courses AKA MOOC aggregator. iTunes U. Ed2go online courses. Videolectures.net. ALISON - Free Online Courses.