FreeCourse.info
The ultimate directory of truly free and credible online courses from around the world, applicable anywhere in the world
There are thousands of free online courses in hundreds of subject areas. The quality of the courses ranges from excellent (often much better and cheaper than courses taken at local universities or colleges) to very poor or even scams. To search for credible and truly free online courses can be a daunting task because the few truly free courses is diluted in a sea of paid courses or scams. The purpose of this website is to make this search easy. We already done the searching and present you only with courses that is truly free and credible.
These courses are truly open to everyone, regardless of your income or academic background:
- We only assume you can afford internet access to download the course material and access to a device like a smartphone or preferably tablet or computer to view. Let us be clear about being free because there are different degrees of being available for free: Access to the full body of course material for all the courses listed here are completely free. However, most (but not all) of these courses do charge for assessment and/or certificates. If you do have access to sufficient funding to pay for expensive courses or full-time university education, you are not our target audience, however, you may still benefit from these courses, especially the paid options.
- Your school or college grades don’t matter since these are “open” courses, it does not discriminate against you based on a lack of previous learning opportunities. There are courses that begin at the beginning of a learning path, assuming you have no knowledge about the subject. Then as you progress, there are more advanced course options. So if you are already highly qualified, there will still be something to learn because some courses are presented at a highly advanced level.
Please tell all your friends who cannot go to university or who also want to improve their skills or career prospects about the courses listed here as well.
How does it work?
All of these platforms have basically the same method of teaching:
- It consists of short courses, usually in the form of 4 weeks (sometimes as long as 12 weeks) of part time study. When a course is 4 weeks long it certainly does not mean it will take 4 weeks of full time study, it is usually assumed that you will spend about 3 to 10 hours per week on reading or watching videos, and if you choose to, doing assignments or assessments.
- Lecture material is usually in the form of online videos, sometimes as reading material and sometimes a combination of the two.
- Assessments is in the form of automatic marking by computer, or peer reviews (students mark each other's work – on first thought it may look difficult to administer but it work very well in practice).
- All learning material and assessments/tests can be accessed online and there is no need to travel to the university or exam centre. The course interfaces are very easy to understand, all in one place. Edx, Coursera and Khan Academy have excellent mobile apps where it is even easier to download courses and watch in your own time offline. This is great to minimise cost of downloading videos: you simply go to a place where there is free or low cost Wifi at malls or wherever you can access Wifi for free, then you simply download the videos on your phone or tablet, then you can watch it offline at home.
- Some of the short courses can be grouped together to form "Specialisations", also called "Nanodegrees" or "Programs" on the different platforms.
- You can register for a course and access the lecture material for free (no catch points, it is really for free). You only pay if you want to be assessed and/or if you want a certificate on most platforms. One notable exception is Open2Study where even the certificates is free. Some course certificates on other platforms like Edx are also free, but they are few and far between. However, even if you want to pay for a certificate the costs are very reasonable (usually about US$50, usually payable in your own currency).
- Start with the free options only because the free options will take you very far already and may even be all that you need, only go for paying options if you are very familiar with the platforms and courses and gathered more detailed information.
