Free Courses Online: More Choices Than Ever

We've written about free e-learning resources and tools, such as Moodle, several times here on OStatic, as well as collections of open source tutorials. Many universities are picking up on the fact that it is easy to use free, open source tools such as Moodle to provide classes online that anyone can take. U.C. Berkeley provides free online classes based on Moodle, and M.I.T. has a collection of over 1,900 free courses on its MITOpenCourseware site, many on tech topics. MITWorld also has a searchable database of free, educational videos. Here are some notable examples of classes and seminars that may be of interest to you.

The MITOpenCourseware site has stepped up the number of online classes that it posts. Here are some examples of classes where course materials are freely downloadable:

Introduction to Software Engineering in Java

Introductory Digital Systems Laboratory

Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science

MITWorld's searchable database of free video seminars is also worth exploring. Here are some examples of videos you can watch for free there:

Software Innovation. Brad Feld on how the next 20 years will blow the last 20 years away.

Software Breakthroughs. Bill Gates on solving the toughest problems.

A Roadmap for the Edge of the Internet. Dr. Alan Benner covers cutting-edge trends, for an audience of M.I.T. students.

In addition to these examples of the growing number of free courses you can take and lectures you can view, you may want to peruse the large library of free educational resources on software and hardware topics at iLumina. Kudos to the schools and organizations that continue to grow the field of free courses and courseware on technology topics, and to open source players like Moodle who make these efforts affordable and easy.