Top 60 Places to Get Educated Online for Free in 2015

by Giovanni O.C Olakunori · Published January 17, 2015 · Updated March 30, 2019

6 minutes read

educated-online-for-free

The internet has brought about a proliferation of information. However, the problem is that most of these information are not organized, hence making learning difficult.

Thankfully, several organizations have changed that. They have developed or organized a wealth of available knowledge, and made it free for all.

Miscellaneous

Coursera: This is one of the leading providers of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with over 10 million students.

Coursera offers a wide range of college, professional and high school courses for free.

You’ll also have the chance to earn a verified or specialization certificate for a small fee(or free if you apply for a financial aid).

Courses on Coursera are taught by lecturers from top institutions.

To earn a verified or specialization certificate on Coursera, you may need a government issued ID. Also, you should be prepared to do some homework, quizzes, and projects.

Coursera also offers a platform for students to discuss lectures, ideas, or topics.

I’m currently taking 2 business courses here with the University of Maryland, and it’s been awesome!

edX: This is another game changer in the field of delivering Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

edX offers professional college or high school courses in a range of subjects.

Courses are free, and students get the chance to earn an honour code certificate, or a verified certificate for a small fee.

edX was established by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in May 2012.

It is currently in partnership with up to 60 schools.

edX also has interactive forums where students can participate in discussions.

FutureLearn: FutureLearn, is a U.K. led MOOCs alliance.

It provides a wide range of courses from leading institutions around the world (most especially in the UK).

Futurelearn launched its first course in September 2013 and had more than 1 million signups less than a year later.

Khan Academy: Unlike edX and Coursera, Khan Academy does not offer certificates for completion of courses. But you’ll have access to a series of mini lectures, and interactive learning tools for different topics.

Topics include: mathematics, physics, history, science, and more.

I’d recommend this site to high school students and students in the first year of college.

Alison: Most of the students on Alison are from developing countries and that is not a big surprise to me.

Alison offers an interactive platform to take different courses.

It offers over 600 courses for free. Students are able to earn certificates for the completion of courses for a small fee.

However, for those that can’t afford the money for the certificate, you can earn a learner record for free. The learner record is a pdf file, showing courses you completed and the most recent grades you achieved (highest). It also contains a link to your Alison online profile as a proof.

iVersity: iversity is a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC’s) provider based in Bernau bei Berlin, Germany.

iVersity specializes in providing online courses and lectures in higher education.

Courses are mainly in English, Germany, Russian, Italian and more.

iVersity was launched in 15 October 2013, and has over 100,000 users today.

Courses are free and open to anyone. They vary from introductory level to final year undergraduate level courses.

Based on European Credit Transfer (ECTS), 3 iversity MOOCs offer ECTS credits to those who successfully complete the course. Final examination must be taken in each respective university campus for credits to be awarded. These courses are:

“Algorithms and Data Structures” from University of OsnabrÃ¼ck
“Fundamentals of Marketing” from LÃ¼beck University of Applied Sciences
“Introduction to Business Administration” from RWTH Aachen

Certificates are also offered to students who successfully complete a course.

Saylor: The Saylor Foundation works with credentialed professors to provide courses that are similar to what you’d find at a traditional U.S. College. These courses cover subject areas such as Business Administration, Economics, Mechanical Engineering, and more.

You’d also be able to earn college level credits with its partner institution.

Open Education Consortium: This consortium is a worldwide effort to make college or university level course materials accessible for free on the Internet.

You can search for a specific topic that interests you by language (20 are available) or by the source of the coursework.

MIT Open Courseware: The MIT Open Courseware site posts course materials from a wide variety of classes taken at MIT, one of the best universities in the world.

You can search for courses by department.

Wikiversity: You wouldn’t be able to gain certificates on WIkiversity, but you’d be exposed to a vast number of learning resources.

YouTube: YouTube has grown to become the biggest video search engine in the world. If you need help to understand that calculus or programming concept, you can find helpful videos (or channels) on YouTube.

There are thousands of YouTube channels that offer amazing content in different topic. You just have to find the right one for you. For example: when it comes to Calculus, I like to refer to Partrickjmt’s YouTube channel.

GCF LearnFree: This website advertises free courses, lessons, and apps. Rather than getting a degree, the classes are tailored to a specific skill like, “Learn Microsoft PowerPoint.”

Others include:

Books

The Free Library: It has over 21 million free articles and books on different topics.

Project Gutenberg: This provides an excellent source for public domain books throughout history as well as contemporary.

Free Tech Books: This site lists free online computer science, engineering and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes, all of which are legally and freely available over the Internet.

Free Computer Books: Free computer, mathematics, technical books and lecture notes.

Books Should Be Free: Free audio books from the public domain.

E-Books Directory: Thousands of ebooks on various subjects to download and share.

Others in this category include:

Textbook Revolution
Classic Reader

Test Preparations

GED for Free: GED for Free is a basic online course offered to students who have not been able to complete high school and need to get their GED.

LearnHub Test Prep — Raise your test scores with free practice tests & counseling on various subjects.

Larnedu: We do offer WASSCE past questions and the College Board SAT question of the day compilation or archive, plus more.

English and Communication

Guide to Grammar and Writing : This is an excellent resource to build your grammar and writing techniques, lessons and quizzes.

Lifewriting: Offers a complete text of the 9-week writing class a professor taught for years at UCLA.

Purdue Online Writing Lab: Offers over 200 free resources including lessons on: writing, research, grammar, and style guides.

Languages

Livemocha: Who says it’s not important to learn a new language? That person is probably ignorant. Livemocha makes it easy to learn a new language.

It pairs you with speakers of other languages, so you can teach each other your native language.

Duolingo: It offers a 100% free and interactive platform to learn the following languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish.

Memrise: This site uses ‘mems’, which are mnemonic flashcards that use your pre-existing knowledge to help remember new vocabulary.

Tech skills

Codeacademy: This is a brilliant, interactive, and easy tool to learn programming for free! Courses include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, and JQuery.

If you want to learn how to code, Code academy is a wonderful place to start.

You can read the success story of a 12 year old boy who learned to code on Codeacacdemy and built a successful app.

W3Schools: This is one of the best sites out there to learn how to develop websites. It offers free and in-depth tutorials on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQl and JQuery.

Google Code University: It offers free courses and curriculum on Computer Science (CS) for educators, and those interested to learn Computer Science.

Home and Learn: It offers free computer courses and tutorials on Microsoft Office,Web design, Visual Basic.NET, Java, PHP etc. All of its courses are aimed at complete beginners.

Udemy: Udemy offers both free and paid courses in different subjects. From yoga training courses, to web development courses-you stand a chance of finding the course you are interested in taking.

Udemy has over 5 million students and more than 22,000 courses online.

CodeSchool : Codeschool charges about $25 per month per student. However, it offers free entry-level tutorials on different programming courses.

Code school relies on a combination of videos and challenges to introduce and build upon coding and design concepts. It also offers interactive tools for learning.

Udacity: Udacity offers both free and paid courses in programming.

Treehouse: It offers one month free trial to take any programming course on its platform. Programming courses offered include: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

CodeAvengers: It offers free introductory programming courses on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Programmer 101: Teach Yourself How to Code: This gives you a beginner perspective to programming and connects you to some helpful resources.

Law

Business

Hp Life Global: “…gain the real-life IT and business skills needed to start or grow your business.“

Others include:

Master Class Management

Subscribe now to get summarised alerts of new posts by email.

Tags: education free online courses moocs online education

Giovanni O.C Olakunori

Giovanni Chinecherem Olakunle Olakunori(commonly known as Giovanni Olakunori) is an aspiring data scientist at heart, business developer and educator with a deep interest in ancient philosophy, healthy living, and developing economies. He’s the founder of LarnEdu, a community that inspires and supports lifelong learning especially in underdeveloped nations. He currently lives in the UK after living in 4 other countries across Europe and Africa. You can read more about him or follow him on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to see his public posts about how much he loves hot Kenkey and Jolof rice.