Free Online Classes?

November 30, 2009 10:25 AM

Hi. I'm looking to take some free online classes during my free time. Are there websites that have teachers, forums and others taking classes as well? I'm completely new to this and am just asking out loud.

I'm unemployed and am trying to find a way to "get ahead" by taking free classes during the evening. I've looked at some sites that have class materials but there's no "community" involved. I recently checked out Free-ed.net and SecondLife. Does anyone know anything about that?

I look forward to any advice you have about this.

Thanks!

Dawn

posted by MrningLight to Education (7 answers total)

Not sure where your interest lies, but MIT's Slan School of Managament has all of its course materials on line. This is very helpful if you want to learn finance & accounting.
posted by dfriedman at 10:33 AM on November 30, 2009

I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for, but there was a great Mefi post about Yale's Open University a few years ago.
posted by Kimberly at 10:33 AM on November 30, 2009

Livemocha.com is a Rosetta Stone-style free online language program. It's pretty decent, and definitely has a community around it (if you want to learn German, for example, you can have a native German speaker look over your assignments).
posted by oinopaponton at 10:53 AM on November 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

Here's another MeFi post on online courses at Boise State University.
posted by runningwithscissors at 11:18 AM on November 30, 2009

I totally understand where you're coming from, when I tried to do a DIY "Masters" at the beginning of the year it was very isolating. As a result though I did meet the Peer To Peer University team a couple of weeks ago who are trying to overcome that very problem. There are aren't any courses currently available, but there's no harm in asking about an Open Course Ware subject you're interested in studying.

The Open University out of the UK is also working on a collaborative learning environment called OpenLearn.

The whole community aspect of open educational resources is a pet project of mine - so feel free to send me a message asking for more information.
posted by pipstar at 11:40 AM on November 30, 2009

If you have a computer with iTunes, click 'iTunes Store' at the upper left of the screen. When that page loads, click 'iTunes U' on the black bar near the top. There are hundreds of courses and as far as I know they are all free. You can search by University, which is what I do, or use the 'iTunes Power Search'. If you know of a course you want but iTunes doesn't have it, you can request they get it.
I have a mac, but I presume even PCs have iTunes!
posted by edaphon at 7:50 PM on November 30, 2009

Here's another one: oercommons.org ... it has free college level courses [as well as lower levels in case you have to brush up a bit]. They also have texts you can download ... at this moment I'm downloading a Physical Oceanography textbook in pdf format.
posted by edaphon at 8:23 PM on November 30, 2009