- Benefits of Online Education - resources for online education and its benefits:
Access to a wide variety of online college courses from the world's top universities, all for free. This list of courses includes open classes (MOOCs) you can sign up and participate in, as well as course materials that you can view online or download.
- Affordable Colleges Online:
Affordable Colleges Online creates 100% free, in-depth resources to help students of all ages find the right online degree for their interests and budget. ACO started in 2012 with two main goals: to make college more affordable and to spread the importance of accreditation. Our resources include comprehensive guidebooks, student interviews, user-friendly search tools, federal datasets and other materials created and vetted by experts in their fields. Our extended team includes six PhDs and more than twenty journalists, editors and subject-matter specialists with master's degrees or related educational credentials.
GCF LearnFree.org:
This North Carolina-based site is produced by Goodwill Industries and focuses on helping people from all walks of life build skills in technology, literacy, and math that will help them find work. All classes offered by the site are entirely free, and even come complete with mobile apps that make it possible to learn on-the-go. Currently, there are over 750 free lessons that teach everything from how to use Microsoft Office to basic addition and subtraction.
Saylor:
While sites like Coursera and Udacity have been drawing the most attention on the free education front these days, Saylor has largely flown under the radar. Created in 2008, the site offers nearly 250 free courses online, with topics centered on the 10 highest enrollment majors in the U.S. In addition to taking classes, learners can participate in discussion forums (organized by topic), track courses and print transcripts, and may soon even be able to access free textbooks.
University of the People:
The brainchild of educational entrepreneur Shai Reshef, University of the People is a tuition-fee, nonprofit, online academic institution that offers access to undergraduate degree programs in business administration and computer science. It maintains relationships with Yale, NYU, Hewlett-Packard, and the Catalyst Initiative to supply students with opportunities for research, future study, and internships. While the site focuses on helping learners in developing nations, students from nearly 130 different nations have been accepted (tuition is free, but you still have to apply).
The Faculty Project:
Through The Faculty Project, learners can get access to professors from prestigious schools like Dartmouth, Vassar, Duke, and Northwestern, to name just a few. There are dozens of courses and lectures to choose from, covering a broad spectrum of topics. Launched just this year, the site is slowly building up a great collection of resources that can help students learn through video, PDF, PowerPoint, discussion boards, and educational articles.
Learnthat:
Learnthat is an excellent place to explore tutorials that cover business, technology, and finance. Visitors to the site can learn how to improve their skills in Excel, digital marketing, or even management, through hundreds of helpful articles, videos, and photos.
LearnersTV:
LearnersTV brings together videos, audio lectures, science animations, lecture notes, online tests, presentations, and publications to offers visitors a wide range of material with which to learn. Those looking for an in-depth experience can find entire courses, while those just doing cursory research can browse through short articles and PowerPoints.
Grovo:
Knowing how to use technology is an essential skill in today's job market, but with so many new technologies popping up all the time, it can be hard to keep up with them all. That's where Grovo can help. The online learning site specializes in offering video lessons on top Internet products. Visitors to the site can expand their knowledge of sites like Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, and WordPress, or just learn a bit more about netiquette and online marketing.
Alison:
Alison offers free online courses and certification through 400 different courses in 10 different course categories. Launched in 2007, the site helps people from around the world earn certification in topics like legal studies, psychology, health studies, project management, and human resources. All content is free but to get a copy of your certification, you'll have to shell out about $20.
Udacity:
Our mission is to bring accessible, affordable, engaging, and highly effective higher education to the world. We believe that higher education is a basic human right, and we seek to empower our students to advance their education and careers. Sign up for a Udacity account and start taking classes for free. It's that simple. Track your progress and manage your courses in My Courses. As soon as you've finished the course, you will earn a certificate of completion along with new skills and bragging rights.
Coursera:
Choose from 300+ courses in over 20 categories created by 62 Universities from 16 countries. Watch short video lectures, take interactive quizzes, complete peer graded assessments, and interact live with your new classmates and teachers. Finish your class, receive recognition for a job well done, and achieve your goals, whether they be career, personal, or educational.
KhanAcademy:
All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.
OpenCulture:
Get free online courses from the world's leading universities. This collection includes over 700 free courses in the liberal arts and sciences. Download these audio & video courses straight to your computer or mp3 player.
MIT Open Courseware:
"The idea is simple: to publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone." MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. Through OCW, educators improve courses and curricula, making their schools more effective; students find additional resources to help them succeed; and independent learners enrich their lives and use the content to tackle some of our world's most difficult challenges, including sustainable development, climate change, and cancer eradication.
Free Learning Materials:
Ever growing collection of free to download learning materials on this site. Categories of literacy and numeracy.
MoneyGeek - Financial Aid for Online Colleges
Interested in taking online college classes? Check out this website to learn how to navigate the financial aid process to maximize your grants and loans (if necessary). This guide explores your financial aid options as well as providing an overview of the application process and advice from financial aid experts.
Additional Ones Mentioned by Staff at Spring Conference:
List of Universities with Free Online Clases
- With a computer and an internet connection, you can now access free classes online from some of the very best colleges and universities around the world, as well as free lectures. A growing number of schools are making video and audio materials available, either through their own websites, YouTube EDU, and/or iTunesU.
- Course topics cover a variety of fields. For example, you can take a course on Ancient Greek Historyor The Fundamentals of Physics from faculty members of Yale University, or you could listen to an Oxford professor lecture on Shakespeare. Whether you are a prospective student looking to get a peek inside some of the world’s most prestigious colleges and universities, an international student seeking ESL classes, or just feeling curious, you will likely find something that interests you in our list of the top 25 colleges and universities offering free online classes and lectures.
- As a word of caution, the degree finder tool is for schools that sponsor this webpage and does require you to submit personal information.