Free College Classes Online
Learn for Free with Online Distance Learning
In this economy, free is always a good thing. Many online colleges offer some of their courses online for free. They don't offer credits or degrees, but post the curriculum, syllabuses and materials of their courses online.
The Open Courseware Initiative began at MIT in 2001. It was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations. The goal was to provide free distance learning to individuals worldwide. Today, more than 160 online universities and colleges participate throughout the world.
Open Courseware in the United States
Some of the most well-known colleges in the United States offer Open Courseware. The University of California, Berkeley offers free webcasts of many of their popular courses, including Intro to Biological Anthropology, Intro to Digital Engineered Circuits, Social Psychology and Wildlife Ecology.
At UC Irvine, selections range from Fundamentals of Clinical Trials, to Spa and Hospitality Operations. There are also several courses available in Portugues and Spanish, including Human Resources and e-Marketing.
The University of Michigan offers a variety of videos and course materials through their Open Educational Resources website. Online courses offered include Process Dynamics and Controls, Intellectual Property and Information Law and Intro to Information Studies. Michigan State University has a similar open courseware site run by MSU Global Learning Ventures. They offer courses in International Business, Horse Management and Planning and Zoning.
Kaplan University has an eclectic selection of online classes. Selections include Forensic Biology, Civil Litigation, Nursing Fundamentals, and Intro to Business. The classes are adapted from actual courses taught at Kaplan University.
Open Courseware isn't limited to basic classes. For those students interested in learning Japanese online, Utah Valley State College offers Beginning Japanese, as well as Cinematography and Intro to Science Fiction. The College of Eastern Utah currently only offers five classes – Medical Terminology, Geology, Geography, American Civilization and Astronomy.
International Online Colleges Offering Free Courses
Open Courseware isn't limited to the United States. Universities and colleges around the world offer free online courses. The University of Nottingham offers a variety of language classes including Brazilian Portuguese, French, German and Mandarin.
There are ten courses available at the University of Southern Queensland Open Courseware site. They offer remedial prep programs, as well as courses with titles like, Teaching Students with Special Needs and Object Oriented Programming in C++.
For those students needing help with math, the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford has courses in Geometry, Linear Algebra, Topology, and Logic and Set Theory. Classes are available on the Oxford University Mathematics OpenCoureware website.
Capilano University is a Canadian university that offers 17 courses in 10 different subjects. Courses available range from Intro to Social Anthropology to Programming with Robots.
The United Nations University provides courses related to the work of the United Nations. Featured classes include Intro to Electronic Government and Ontology, Semantic Web and Electronic Government.
Although Open Courseware classes don't offer credit or a degree, they can be a great resource for students or for those simply wanting to learn something new.
Sources:
Ocwconsortium.org
Reusability.org, " A Modest History of OpenCourseware"
Ocwfinder.com
UC Berkeley
|
What do you think about this article?
More in Education & Career
Latest Articles