If you want to learn new skills or update existing abilities, you might consider free online courses. Several leading colleges, universities and technical schools offer opportunities to participate in free online courses that can help non-degree seeking students in particular save hundreds to thousands of dollars in increasing their knowledge and enhancing their marketability. Free online business courses, technologies courses and more are offered from the likes of MIT, UC Berkeley, Columbia and Yale universities.
The OpenCourseWare Consortium website allows for researching schools and subject areas where free online courses are offered. Depending upon a student's selected course of study, instruction might come in the form of podcasts, text-based assignments, exams and YouTube video lectures, or a combination of any or all of these venues. OpenCulture.com notes that colleges and universities have been establishing presences on YouTube since at least 2007.
Some say that free online courses can make higher education more of a reality for many students, and President Barack Obama has reportedly been among the proponents. In June, in fact, an Inside Higher Education article reported on a program that the Obama administration is crafting where federal money would help community colleges offer free online courses. The article noted that career-oriented courses would initially receive preference.
Students aren't alone in benefiting from free online courses, some say. Colleges, universities and technical schools might garner publicity by providing free online course lectures and conferences on offerings such YouTube, OpenCulture.com suggests. A July report in artstechnica.com noted that MIT's free online course website itself receives 1.5 million-plus page views a month. The site, known as MIT OpenCourseWare, has been awarded a Science Magazine Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE), a July MIT news announcement noted.
Materials for more than 2,000 courses can be obtained from the MIT OpenCourseWare website. UC Berkeley's free online courses for the spring 2010 semester are available in subject areas such as anthropology, psychology, demography, economics and intro to environmental economics, and they're available in the form of podcasts and webcasts. Students interested in free online courses can also access archived courses; they might also enroll in free online courses from the likes of Carnegie Mellon and Michigan and Penn State universities also provide free online courses.
To keep employees up to date on work-related issues and skills, employers often pay for workers to attend job-related conferences and workshops. If employers are cutting back on costs such as these, or in instances where employees want to take their own initiative, they might explore free workshops and conferences that private companies also make available online at no cost. There are free webinars in topics that might help small business owners as well.
A few colleges and universities also offer tuition-free degrees to those who qualify. A January Bloomberg Businessweek article highlighted the online University of the People that it noted includes students from developing nations. The provost and computer science department chair at this particular university are from Columbia and New York universities, according to a November 2009 news item on the University of the People website.
Free online courses don't require applications. Students interested in applying to tuition-free colleges and universities, however, might note that institutions have different acceptance requirements, the Bloomberg article suggests. The Bloomberg Businessweek article on the web also mentions tuition-free colleges such as Cooper Union and Alice Lloyd.
Serving the purpose of informing, educating and advancing those with the curiosity to start, these courses might just lead one onto an online degree that will make a true difference in their lives. A free online degree course at an online school is just waiting for those who make that one mouse click change everything.
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