Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, are plentiful on the Web. There are more than 800 universities offering more than 10,000 online courses. Many are free and can be taken at your own pace. By searching the links below it is easy to find MOOCs and other courses that will interest you.
Alison.com
Free online courses from the world's leading experts.
Class Central
190 universities have launched 600 free online courses.
Duolingo
Learn a foreign language for free.
Ivy League Classes
More than 450 free courses from Ivy League schools
Lynda.com
Now LinkedIn Learning. Offers a free month of classes on a wide variety of topics
MOOC List
A good place to begin searching for a wide variety of courses.
Open Culture
Get 1,500 free online courses from the world's leading universities -- Stanford, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford and more. You can download these audio & video courses (often from iTunes, YouTube, or university web sites) straight to your computer or mp3 player.
Road Scholar
A taste of what you might experience on a trip with Road Scholar, a nonprofit educational tour company for travelers 50 and older. They developed this series of free virtual learning sessions focused on different sites around the globe.
TabletWise
An education company offering more than 250 free eLearning courses with the support of world-class instructors. In addition, the company has arranged for access to premium educational products for educatiors here.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
All of YIVO's Shine Online Courses are now free.
If none of these interest you, look at the No Excuses List for many more online educational choices!
The Science of Well-Being
Yale University
Workload: Approx. 20 hours to complete
In this course you will engage in a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and build more productive habits. As preparation for these tasks, Professor Laurie Santos reveals misconceptions about happiness, annoying features of the mind that lead us to think the way we do, and the research that can help us change. You will ultimately be prepared to successfully incorporate a specific wellness activity into your life.
Grammar and Punctuation
University of California Irvine
Workload: Approx. 9 hours to complete
Do you need to review English grammar? Have you forgotten the grammar you once studied? If so, this course is perfect for you.
After completing this course, you will be able to:
- identify the correct verb tenses to use
- use commas effectively
- utilize several different sentence types
- write more effectively in English
Please note that the free version of this class gives you access to all of the instructional videos and handouts. The peer feedback and quizzes are only available in the paid version.
Think Again I: How to Understand Arguments
Duke University
Workload: Approx. 14 hours to complete
About This Course in the Series:
When is someone giving an argument instead of just yelling? Which parts of what they say contribute to the argument? Why are they arguing instead of fighting? What are arguments made of? What forms do they take? Think Again: How to Understand Arguments will answer these questions a more.
In this course, you will learn what an argument is. The definition of argument will enable students to identify when speakers are giving arguments and when they are not. Next, we will learn how to break an argument into its essential parts, how to put them in order to reveal their connections, and how to fill in gaps in an argument. By the end of this course, students will be better able to understand and appreciate arguments that they and other people present.
Introduction to Mathematical Thinking
Stanford University
Workload: Approx. 24 hours to complete
Learn how to think the way mathematicians do – a powerful cognitive process developed over thousands of years.
Mathematical thinking is not the same as doing mathematics – at least not as mathematics is typically presented in our school system. School math typically focuses on learning procedures to solve highly stereotyped problems. Professional mathematicians think a certain way to solve real problems, problems that can arise from the everyday world, or from science, or from within mathematics itself. The key to success in school math is to learn to think inside-the-box. In contrast, a key feature of mathematical thinking is thinking outside-the-box – a valuable ability in today’s world. This course helps to develop that crucial way of thinking.
