In the past, if you want to learn something new, you have to go to school or spend several hours in the library trying to look for an answer. Today, not only there are educational institutions who are offering individual courses and full educational programs online, there are also experts in many different fields who are creating their own programs and courses to share their knowledge with students and audiences online.
Educational institutions and experts offer different courses online to people who want to learn. This is why there are now a lot of platforms that are dedicated to offering online courses. There are some which focus on single niche while there are others that include different courses for a wide variety of fields.
Whether you are aged five or eighty-five, the internet has a lot of things to offer. When the topic you are searching is education, the resources on the internet are endless. And the best part, many of these sites are completely free.
From coding to music, here are 15 top sites for online education.
- Coursera
Coursera is a website that partners with different universities and organizations all over the world. With more than 25 million users, 149 university partners and more than 2000 courses, Coursera is the largest online education provider.
This website is a powerful tool for free online education. It has an extremely wide range of in-depth courses, from deep learning to web development, painting, and neural networks. Courses are free but you have an option to pay between $40 to $150 for graded assignments and certifications that you can use on your resume.
- Open Culture Online Courses
If you are struggling to look for materials, Open Culture Online Courses has a listing of free online education courses. The site offers 1000 free videos, lectures, and podcasts from different universities around the world.
Open Culture Online Courses also features many materials you can only see on universities private sites that are easy to browse. You can find hundreds of free audiobook, movies, and ebooks without the need to visit and search different university websites.
- Khan Academy
In partnership with post-secondary schools, Khan Academy is offering well-organized and usable interface. The website offers an impressive depth of courses on different subjects around the web.
Khan Academy has more than 6,500 video lessons that teach a wide range of academic subjects for students in kindergarten to college as well as adult learners. You can find high-quality videos that cover calculus to personal finances, data science, and web development.
- Udemy
Similar in the concept of Coursera, Udemy offers free courses and allows the users to build custom courses from different lessons. Udemy works with many top schools and professors around the world. The website mixes the customizable platform of other sites and has an emphasis on top quality content. It allows you to create your own course and submit them for review.
Udemy has an impressive library of 55,000 courses. You can learn everything from the website: From playing the piano to hand-to-hand combat, digital marketing, copywriting, and how to start your freelancing journey.
- edX
Are you eager to learn from top universities and industry giants such as Microsoft, MIT or Harvard? edX is a non-profit educational platform that offers more than 1,600 free online courses from more than 100 university and industry partners.
edX has a MicroMasters program with a series of graduate level courses that you can take to earn credentials that you can use during job applications or for credit in participating universities. They also offer top-tier courses such as web development and marketing analytics that are taught by popular experts around the world.
- FutureLearn
Known as the largest massive open online courses in the United Kingdom, FutureLearn offers more than 400 courses for seven million learners. It is owned by Open University, a public distance learning and research university that pioneered the concept of online education before MOOCs became popular.
FutureLearn offers a wide variety of free courses and an option for you to buy a Certificate of Achievement at the end of the course. Learners can gain academic credit at the website’s participating universities. Plus, they provide full online Master’s degree programs in the fields of information technology, cybersecurity, and real estate.
- iTunesU Free Courses
A very convenient place for free online education that you can access anywhere you are is iTunesU. This online site integrates seamlessly with your iPhone, iPad or any app-ready Apple device.
iTunesU is convenient because it is categorized like iTunes. Users can search for learning materials in many different ways, including different topics and genre. The courses that iTunesU offers is a mix of podcasts and videos.
- Stanford Online
This hub offers online offerings from Stanford University. Although Coursera features different courses from Stanford, some classes are only available in Stanford Online.
Stanford Online offers access to learning materials from self-study to school subjects such as mathematics, medicine and health, business and management, and entrepreneurship.
- Codecademy
Codecademy is a website that is dedicated to teaching coding to students. While other coding sites have an example and practice session workflow, Codecademy allows you to use a live practice window. This means that you can practice coding while you are viewing the lesson material.
The courses that Codeacademy offers are easy to follow and well-written. It features a centralized dashboard where you can monitor your progress and see the modules you completed.
- Code
Another website focused on coding and app writing is Code. This site offers high-quality courses plus a learning option for children.
In addition to kid-friendly modules, Code offers free online education classes for a wide variety of technology topics. These include robotics, app writing, and Javascript.
- Saylor Academy
Saylor Academy is an online university with more than 100 courses, including learning pathways to earn some credits. Saylor Academy is structured like a university: They are offering quizzes, assignments, and even final exams.
Saylor Academy offers different courses such as political science, art history, and microbiology. If you are looking for programs suited for business development, they have courses such as project management, business administration, and computer science.
- Lynda
Owned by LinkedIn, Lynda is a popular education hub for those who are looking to learn new skills in technology, business, and creativity. The different courses that they are offering include audio and music, animation, business, development, design, photography, and more.
Lyndra offers a 30-day free trial that you can cancel anytime. If you choose to reactivate your account, the website can restore your account information as well as your course history and progress.
- Open2Study
Brought by Open Universities Australia, an educational platform that provides accredited online courses, Open2Study divides courses that gear towards freelancers and professionals who are looking to pick up new skills.
The courses consist of supplementary reading materials, video lectures, quizzes, and assessments. There is also an online classroom for interaction between other students, a gamification via their reward badge system, and free certificates for completion of every free course. Whether you are looking to learn how to start writing contents for the web, picking up an associate degree or polishing up your UX design skills, Open2Study has different courses to help you.
- Cognitive Class
Formerly known as Big Data University, Cognitive Class is an IBM-backed massive open online course provider that specializes in data science and cognitive computing. It offers growing skills for freelancers such as deep learning, machine learning, blockchain, and natural language processing.
Cognitive Class offers free courses plus IBM recognized badges and a certificate upon course completion. Courses cover essential skills such as Spark, Hadoop, Scala, and other data science fundamentals.
- ALISON
With more than 10 million students around the world, ALISON is an online learning resource that offers free and high-quality courses and education services. These resources are designed for anyone who is looking for college placement, promotion, new job or business ventures.
ALISON has a variety of subjects to pick from their 800 free courses. These courses are designed to provide you with a certificate and diploma level education. To know whether you learned from the course, you will be required to take assessments and score at least 80% to pass to make sure that you have the skills to move forward.
One of the benefits of online learning is the ability to access it anytime, anywhere you are. Learning new skills or enhancing the abilities that you have can help you in getting a job or starting your career journey.
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