20 PLACES TO EDUCATE YOUR SELF ONLINE FOR FREE.

20 Places to Educate Yourself Online for Free


It seems like these days you can learn just about anything online for free, but of course some of that information is better than others. The good news is there are plenty of reputable places to educate yourself online for free, and here’s a good 20 of them to get you started.
1. CourseraThe coolest thing about Internet learning is that you can take college courses which in the past were only available to people who forked over immense sums of money to attend elite colleges. Courserabrings a bunch of those classes together into one site, offering nearly 400 courses ranging from Introduction to Guitar from Berklee College of Music to Constitutional Law from Yale.
Courses typically include videos and certain coursework (such as online quizzes) that must be completed in a certain amount of time, as these courses are monitored by a professor. Stop by regularly to see what’s new, or search for topics that interest you can put them on a watch list so you’ll be notified when a new class begins.
2. Khan AcademyHome to more than 3,000 videos on subjects ranging from SAT prep to cosmology, art history to calculus, Khan Academyis a great place to learn. Detailed courses are broken into smaller sections of text or videos for ease of learning that fits into your schedule, and all are self-paced so you can spend as much or as little time with the subject as you like.
You can also leave comments or ask questions if you want more information or if something isn’t clear in the lessons.
3. OpenCourseWareThe OpenCourseWare Consortiumis a worldwide effort to make college and university level course materials accessible for free on the Internet. Search for a specific topic that interests you, or search by language (20 are available) or the source of the coursework.
There are more than 5,000 classes in English alone, covering everything from statistical thermodynamics (Middle East Technical University) to Epidemics in South African History (University of Cape Town) and Creole Language and Culture (University of Notre Dame).
4. ALISON
A global-learning resource with courses in English, French and German, ALISONcovers everything from SAT prep to health and safety courses required in Ireland. There are lessons on everything from study skills to American copyright law, currency exchange to nonprofit fundraising, and general accounting to negotiating when buying a house.
Completion of a course grants you “certification,” which is a British designation, but it’s still kind of fun.
5. MIT Open CoursewareIf you always wanted to attend a big-name school like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now you can do the next best thing by taking many of its courses for free from your home on your own time. The MIT Open Coursewaresite posts course materials from a wide variety of classes you can search by department.
Choosing a course will show you when it was originally taught and by whom, and will give you access to the syllabus, course calendar, readings, assignments and study materials. You can download the course materials and work through the course at your own pace.
6. Academic EarthIf you’d like a broader collection of courses than MIT provides, Academic Earthis a great place to look. This free course aggregator has a stunning collection of courses from around 50 universities across the globe. You can search by source or general subject.
Don’t miss the curated playlists on topics such as natural laws, the nature of evil and the economic crisis. The video electives—with subjects like how to take a punch and why World War II made us fat—are lots of fun, too.
7. Open Learning InstituteThe Open Learning Institutefrom Carnegie Mellon University allows access to a handful of course materials so you can learn at your own pace from the same kind of materials and self-guided assessments that would be used in a classroom. Their offerings are limited, but there’s a lot of detail in the coursework. Instructor-led courses are also sometimes available.
8. Open CultureThis site isn’t very pretty, but Open Culturedoes boast a collection of more than 700 downloadable courses, including college-level, certificate-bearing classes, language lessons, educational materials for K-12 and more.
There are also just some interesting links that aren’t to courses but you’ll still learn something from, such as this post on a reading listsuggested by Ernest Hemingway.
9. Open Education DatabaseThe well-designed Open Education Databaseclaims more than 10,000 courses from universities from around the world. Search by topic and you’ll see the number of full courses, as well as which courses have audio lessons, video lessons or mixed media, so you can learn in whatever way you like.
You can also use this site to learn about online and offline schools, should you choose to continue your education in a more formal way.