We spend all of our time onward developing our own learning management system, L-Cubed, and work on support and courseware development projects for our clients. So, much as we would like to, we have not developed our own supply of free content which we can offer.
However, there is much to be found on the internet. But it all comes with a ‘health warning’! Please make sure you check out the quality of the offering, its suitability for your purpose and, of course, its provenance.
You can use Classpert to search through thousands of courses (free and paid) from major course outlets.
CLICK HERE to go to the Classpert website.
Alternatively, here are just a few useful links (click on the company name) to those sources:
| Company | About |
|---|---|
| Academic Earth | Academic Earth was an early source for free video lectures. Now it also seeks to match students with the right online degree course. |
| ACAS | Promoting employment relations and HR excellence. Acas' free Learning OnLine modules provide a useful e-learning resource for anyone wanting to refresh their knowledge and improve their approach to employment relations issues. Through a series of 10 online courses, you will have the opportunity to work through the theory, explore practical case studies, and test your knowledge through interactive questions and a test. Our Learning OnLine packages are particularly useful for managers, supervisors and anyone responsible for improving business or operational performance. |
| Alison | Alison is free online education institution that offers lectures, videos, and class materials in various different topics like nursing and education. In order to enter the course, you must first sign up. Each course has a summary page, which outlines the materials provided, the instructor, a syllabus, and the amount of time it will take to accomplish. |
| Brigham Young Free Online Courseware | This site offers courses not readily found elsewhere. Topics include strengthening marriage, family history, honesty, righteousness, and other religious type topics. You need to register in order to view a class. |
| Canvas Network | Mini MOOCs that enable students, teachers and institutions to connect and chart their own pathways for professional development. Providers have the option to choose their own course length, cost, content, and design so courses are always new in content and style. |
| Capilano University | The Capilano University offers a modest selection of courses for independent study. When you enter the course, you are provided with an instructor bio, syllabus, assignments, and lecture notes. It is a simple website, easy to navigate, and great for the motivated and independent learner. |
| Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative | This website is well designed with an introductory explanation on how Carnegie Mellons OLI works. You need to create an account. The tagline right above the courses says, "No instructor, no credits, no charge." Like so many other free courseware, it is an individual study. |
| CK-12 | CK-12 is a nonprofit that creates and aggregates high quality STEM content for teachers and students. Several modalities are utilized in instruction including video, audio and graphics. Content is mapped to a variety of levels and standards including common core. Start from scratch or build from the Flexbooks library. |
| Colorado SBDC Network | The Colorado SBDC Network offers free online training videos to help you start and grow your business. The videos range in topics from starting a business to managing your finances to the foundations of marketing. |
| Connections Academy | Connections Academy powers online charter schools free to parents. This schools rely on parent involvement with a stated, 96{5f90343551c95c1cd8d815abe76582cd7f3b06a4d52ee69a52e5ef37d2cdd564} satisfaction percentage. Each lesson has an overview, a lesson, review, and assessment. There are tools, textbooks, and other resources to bolster the students educational experience. |
| CosmoLearning | This website lists 500 video classes by topic. For each class, there is a sidebar that tells you what school offers it, how many students took it, and the instructor. |
| Coursera | This is one of the largest website databases for open courseware. Like EdX, these courses are at a set time (usually lasting for 10-14 weeks). You can access 875 classes from 115 different Universities including Princeton, Duke, Stanford, and CalTech. With 10 million learners Coursera has established itself as the central "go-to" website for free online University learning. |
| Curriki | "Free Learning Resources for the World" is the slogan for this curricula creation and sharing site focused on sharing teaching best practices. This OER community is active with 425K members, 58K resources, and 797 learning groups. Content topics include, career and technical education, EdTech, STEM, health, and information and media literacy. |
| Edmodo | Where 45 million teachers, students and parents connect and collaborate on and learn about new assignments and resources. Number one in K-12 social learning networks in the world. |
| EdX | This website offers an array of courses from different universities. The main difference between EdX and other online courses is that the class is a specific length and duration. When you sign up, you are committing to the class time and assignments. You can register for classes offered by Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, and other prestigious schools. The classes here are similar to paid online learning classes. |
| e-Learning Center | The e-Learning Center offers a modest selection of courses in customer service, software, and computer science. In order to access the course, you must first sign up. This limits a viewers ability to see what is offered without first making a commitment. |
| Excel Easy | Want to learn much more about Excel? We offer a fully illustrated and extensive tutorial (Introduction, Basics, Functions, Data Analysis and VBA Programming) on how to use Excel. Related examples and features (300 Examples). We keep it easy! It's 100{5f90343551c95c1cd8d815abe76582cd7f3b06a4d52ee69a52e5ef37d2cdd564} free. |
| FlexiLearn | This website is part of the Indira Gandhi National Open University. Free courses are available after you have registered, though the site does make it clear that the courses are independent, and there is no access to a professor. However, there is an online forum attached to the website that allows you to collaborate with your peers. |
| Free World U | This is a free online k-12 learning system that specializes in flashcards as a way to test the acquisition of skills. The school is free but if you want an accredited program, which comes with tests, certificates, etc., you will need to pay a monthly fee. Without registering, you arent able to see much about their curriculum, so it is a bit difficult to navigate. |
| Free-Ed | The Free Virtual University is a bit difficult to navigate, as it is not as well designed as other open courseware websites. Similar to most databases, you search through the subjects and categories until you find the class you want to take. One advantage to Free-ed? When you find a class you like, there is the option to click on networking. It will notify you if there are Facebook groups or other online groups you can join that have individuals taking the course you are interested in. |
| Future Learn | We offer a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world. These are delivered one step at a time, and are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, so you can fit learning around your life. We believe learning should be an enjoyable, social experience, so our courses offer the opportunity to discuss what youre learning with others as you go, helping you make fresh discoveries and form new ideas. |
| 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 Word." The layout is a bit complicated, so it will take some patience to navigate the pages to find what you want. |
| 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. You simply fill out a student profile and begin studying. This site is only designed to teach the students the concepts that will be tested on the GED exam. There are no advanced courses or enrichment activities. |
| Google Code University | Google Code University offers computer science courses for those interested in coding and languages. You click on the course youd like to take, and all the materials, videos, and lessons are along the side bar. There is no option to interact with others, so it is essentially an independent study. |
| Gooru | K-12 search engine with a mission to honor the human right to education. Teachers can, find, remix, share collections of resources and monitor students engagement in a wide selection of content topics. |
| Gresham College | Gresham College offers lectures for students in different topics. You can watch or listen to past lectures, or attend upcoming lectures. This college is in the UK, so if you are interested in a lecture, youll have to wait until it is posted online to view. |
| iCivics | Reinvigorates civic learning through interactive and engaging learning resources. Resources empower teachers and prepare students to become knowledgeable and engaged citizens. Two options: Play or Teach your way to digital citizenship. |
| JHSPHOpen | The JHSPH open courses are comprehensive. Choose from the list of available topics, and view the materials in a clean and streamlined format. Each lecture comes with slides and an MP3 for download. The classes have a calendar, recommended reading this, syllabus, and a final exam. They also have a place for you to email and give your comments. |
| K12 | K12 supports online schools that are free to parents in 35 states. K12 also partners with school districts to support online and blended learning. With over one million courses delivered to date, K¹² is the leader in providing learning programs to public schools in the U.S. |
| Kendal College | This college has been offering free distance learning classes, but it may not be this way for long. Their courses do provide certification that is recognized in the business world. They specialize in areas of learning, such as mental health field, beauty and fashion, performing arts, craft and construction, and media. |
| Khan Academy | This website has a variety of video lessons for free. The course subjects are broken down into particular lessons, which is great for students who are looking to learn one principle without taking an entire course. For example, the biology subject has separate videos for evolution, photosynthesis, genetics, and others. If you prefer reading to watching, this site may not be for you as the lessons are all video based. |
| Kutztown On-Demand Online Learning | The Kutztown On-Demand program is focused mainly on business. You must fill out a brief survey before you can access the course, but the material is organized nicely, with small video clips for each topic. You can stop and start as you need to since it is broken down into small pieces. Aside from the slides, there arent any other materials to test your acquisition of knowledge. |
| Learning Space: The Open University | This website offers downloadable coursework in lots of different categories like youth and children, languages, business, engineering, and others. When you look through the coursework, you can view them according to rating. Other users can rate the class, which may help you in deciding what course to take. The main page does warn that there is a new site design coming in the fall of 2012, so there may be changes soon. |
| LearnZillion | Built by teachers for teachers. Practical and effective lesson planning and delivery resources for grades 2 -12. Number five on FastCompanys 2014 Education list. Goal: Unlock instructional expertise of instructors to meet the needs of every student while supporting ongoing teacher professional development. |
| Master Class Management | Master Class Management is a website designed solely for those students interested in a business degree. You receive a certificate at the end of each class. Unfortunately, it seems this site is more excited about receiving money through advertising, as the Google Ads are strategically placed right above the "next" button. For someone who is not tech-savvy, they may click on the ads thinking that is the next step. |
| MentorMob | Social learning experience for any skill or hobby. Comprehensive courses on everything from the basics of StarCraft to expert snowboarding tricks. Access is social and granted through Facebook accounts. |
| MIT Open Courseware | For those looking for courses that will test even the brightest student, MIT is sure not to disappoint. You can download all the course material, which is nearly identical to the course taught at MIT (it even gives you the year and semester it was taught). Since it is an on-demand course, you dont have any ability to connect with others who are taking it. It is simply an independent study for you to study on your own. |
| NASA Education | For educators and students K-12 and postsecondary, includes video instruction dubbed "eClips," leanring opportunities, apps, e-Books, podcasts, news, listings for STEM focused jobs, projects, and programs, and several archived content topics. |
| New York University | This site is a bare bones archiving of math courses offered by New York University. When you click on a class you like, it takes you to a list of files that are available as PDF documents. Perhaps the material is interesting, but the packaging is not done very well. |
| Nixty | This website does not offer its own curriculum, but is a networking site for teachers, students, and institutions. You can log in with your Facebook account and use it as a resource hub for your online learning. Unfortunately, there isnt much else you can discover without first signing up with an account. |
| NLC Open Learning Courses | The NLC website is very basic, only offering a few classes. These classes are simply a collection of web pages with information. There is not a lot that has been done to develop this program, so look elsewhere first before using this websites materials. |
| Notre Dame Open Courseware | Notre Dame has an extensive list of open courses available on their site. They are listed with small buttons next to each title, signifying what the course consists of (syllabus, assignments, video, exams, etc.). When you enter the course, a left hand menu bar helps you to navigate through all the different aspects of the course. There are required readings, which may force you to buy textbooks. Overall, it is a highly organized site and easy to navigate. |
| NROC | K-12 math, focused on college and career readiness. Monterey’s Institute’s National Repository of Open Content (NROC) courses and applications including HippoCampus and EdReady are adapted by local learning institutions for students and teachers to join on a membership basis. |
| OER Commons | Dedicated to innovation in open education content and practices. Lessons are authored with multiple modalities, with learners capable of altering displays and viewing preferences, and rating CCSS alignment. |
| Open Education Database | The OEDb has 10,000 open courses and resources from leading universities. They produce a college rankings. |
| Open University | OpenLearn is the home of free learning from The Open University. Choose something to study, and jump right in. |
| Open UW | This website is a small initiative offered by the University of Washington. It has a list of ten courses, none of which can be accessed without filling out a lengthy profile and sign up. There are other universities who take more pride in their open courseware experience than UW. |
| Open Yale Courses | Open Yale courses offers a great website that is easy to navigate and comprehensive. There are a variety of subjects offered, which can either be downloaded as a zip file, or viewed online. Each lecture has a video (which was recorded during the actual course on campus), plus a transcript and a PDF of slides used during the presentation. Along the side, the video is broken into lecture chapters, so if you cant finish the whole thing in one sitting, you can come back to it later. There is no need to sign up or create an ID. Yale has made it easy to take their courses. |
| OpenCulture | OpenCulture has compiled a list of University free courses. In their list, they identify what form the lecture comes in (iTunes, Web video, YouTube, etc.). In addition to course listings, they also offer lists of free audio books, free textbooks, and free language lessons. This site does not offer its own curriculum, but rather it compiles resources for easy navigating. |
| OpenEd Institute | Largest K-12 personalized learning Common Core aligned resource library. Offers over 1 million lession plans, assessments, videos and games for every Core Math, ELA, and Next Generation Science standard. |
| Openstax | From Rice, authors create, share and adapt content allowing learnings to view, download and also view on mobile. Tens of thousands of learning objects, called pages that are organized into textbook-style books in multiple disciplines. |
| PhET Interactive Simulations | Interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations. Students engage in science and mathematics through inquiry and get immediate feedback about the effect of the changes they made. This allows students to investigate cause-and-effect relationships and answer scientific questions through exploration. |
| Power My Learning | Free platform from nonprofit CFY for driving personalized instruction and self-directed learning. Activities in all K-12 subjects, aligned to the Common Core. For educators, students and parents. Choose from thousands of rurated activities and playlists or add your own. Also a featured eSchoolNews 2014-2015 EdTech Readers Choice Award Winner. |
| SAS Curriculum Pathways | Interactive, standards-based resources for core disciplines for teachers and students. Includes apps, audio tutorials, inquiries, and a handful of featured delivery types that are aligned to standards and vary in length from 45 to 300 estimated minutes. |
| Saylor | Saylor University is an advanced learning site, offering degree programs in a wide variety of disciplines. Once completed, you will receive a certificate (though the school is currently not accredited). Saylor promises that your knowledge and education will be equivalent to a traditional college education. The website is easy to navigate and understand and a great choice if you are interested in the material. |
| Stanford on iTunes U | Stanford on iTunes U gives you two options. You can either subscribe to the updated video lectures, or simply download the one youd like to watch. In order to participate in this course, you do need to have an iTunes account and software. |
| TED-Ed | TEDs education initiative to amplify voices and ideas of teachers and students. Content "lessons worth sharing" that are video based and feature collaborations between animators, videographers, and educators. Most recently launched of TEDs Initiatives. |
| Textbook Revolution | The Textbook Revolution is a site run by students who want to improve the exchange of free information. There are textbook exchanges, plus lists of online resources and free course offerings. This is a grassroots based organization- having been developed by students for students. This is a great site to use as a resource. |
| The Library of Congress Files | While this is not an online education site, the government has created a library of files pertaining to Americas history, literature, towns and cities, technology, war, and other important topics. These files are free to access and read, and can bolster a student interested in the social sciences. |
| TU Delft | TU Delft offers courses at both the bachelor and master level, arranged by degree program. You will have access to lecture notes, exams, and assignments in a broad range of topics and subjects. It is easy to navigate, free, and requires no sign-in! |
| Tufts Open Courseware | Tufts makes it clear from the start that their courses are not the same as the ones taught in the classroom. It is up to the professors discretion what is posted for free and common use. You dont need a login ID to view the material, and the professors lectures are available as slides. Since there is not any more explanation beyond the slides, it may require you to dig deeper in your own research to understand the whole lecture. |
| Udacity | Udacity - If youre looking for classes in math and computer programming, this is your source. Three robotics professors founded Udacity because they felt the courses would have more value online, where they could reach thousands of students rather than just 20 at a time. |
| Udemy | Udemy is the leading online learning marketplace with 4 million learners and 20,000 courses taught by leading experts. You can choose from classes on developing products for Facebook, SQL databases, Photoshop, Music Theory, Business, and many others. Udemy also allows everyday experts to create their own class, so you will have to be selective about the courses you want to take as anyone can create a course. There is a bio about each instructor, along with an Amazon-like review area for users to rate the course and give their opinions about the class work. |
| United Nations University | This unique university offers courses in government, economics, electronic government, and more. Each unit is free to download, or can be viewed as a PDF file online. There arent many classes offered, but the classes are very specific to those who may be interested in government or International diplomacy. |
| Universaid Colombia | A Spanish website for those who do not speak English. There are a wide variety of courses offered, and the site is well laid out and organized. There is no login required. You simply click and enter the course! |
| University of California Irvine Courseware | The Irvine Courseware offers a variety of classes in different subjects. Unlike other open courseware programs, Irvine does offer a link to information about getting academic credit for some of the courses offered. All the information for the course automatically downloads as a Word documents when you click on the links. |
| University of Michigan Open | At the University of Michigan Open courseware, you can choose from a substantial variety of topics. The information all gets downloaded to your computer, after youve read the synopsis. There is no interactive component or ability to network with other students. |
| University of the People | University of the People is a private online tuition free university. You apply just like you would for a traditional institution, and they currently offer an Associates and Bachelors degree in computer science and business administration. UoPeople received accreditation from the Accreditation Commission of the Distance and Education Training Council (DETC). This university works like a traditional online distance learning degree program, where you sign up for classes, interact with other students, professors, and complete assignments. It is a great option for those who want a college education experience but dont have the money to do it. |
| USQ Australia Open Courseware | USQs courseware is limited with only ten different courses offered, mostly in technology. The modules are laid out right online with lecture notes and testing assignments. Unfortunately, there is no way to network with any other students enrolled in the courses. |
| Utah State Open Courseware | These courses are easy to access and find with quick browsing. Each class lecture is offered as an MP3 file with an html document that outlines the assignment. This is a bare bones program, as the assignments are simply exams to test your knowledge of the material. |
| Washington States Open Course Library Project | Collection of 42 shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts. Courses paired low-cost and often free textbooks. |
| Webcast Berkeley | Webcast Berkeley has a very simple model. You simply watch a recording of the class that a professor taught on campus. There are no sign in IDs, assignments, or other resources. It is simply something you watch and absorb. Some of the classes only offer audio lectures. If you are looking for a bit more structure, this school isnt for you. |
| Weber State University | Weber State University offers only six classes currently in automotive electronics, technology, health, and English. Each class has the same modules as other open courseware, but the program is small and only narrowly developed. |
| Writing Commons | Comprehensive, peer-reviewed, award winning open text for students and faculty in college-level courses that require writing and research. Major topics include Writing Processes, Information Literacy, Research Methods & Methodologies, Collaboration, Genres, Style, and New Media. |