Online courses

It’s back to school time, so I’m considering taking up a course. Online courses are often easier to fit around work and life, not requiring in-person attendance at a specific location at a specific time, so I’ll be reviewing some of the following sources to find a suitable option.

  • alison.com – A catalog of free online courses across a wide range of topics (languages, computer skills, history, sciences, … full subject list here). Registration is free, and all courses are free to take – really! You can pay for certificates, transcripts and the like to add to your CV/portfolio, but if you’re purely after knowledge acquisition, it’s genuinely free.
  • lynda.com – Subscription-based, but your first month is free. There’s a “reactivate” option, which seems to suggest that you could let your subscription lapse then reactivate it later if your schedule changes and you can’t keep up a study commitment, but I haven’t tested that and it’s not stated explicitly in the FAQs. Check out their catalog here.
  • OpenLearn – The Open University provide a range of free courses. You can also sign up for paid ones. OU have been around a long time and produce good content. Who remembers getting up early on a weekend morning to follow along courses on the TV before the advent of the internet? 🙂
  • Udacity – Free and paid individual courses plus paid “nanodegrees” (with the possibility of earning rebates for finishing a program in a given timeframe). This site has a strong focus on IT/programming skills. Nanodegrees are by monthly subscription ($199/month) and you can take as little or as long as you like to study, though you won’t get the rebate if you take too long. It looks like you can “pause” your study once for up to 30 days if you need to take a break. Their catalog is here.

If you know of other good online learning resources, please give them a mention in the comments!

Author: smurphy

Writer, mother, gardener, geek...