After our last post on How To Get An Accredited High School Diploma Online (all you need to know), comments on how to find the best and free online colleges with ease of study made us bring to you this time the 10 Best online free education websites for adults.
This article will give you insights on the best education website to go for that will give you maximum satisfaction.
Table of contents
Introduction
The question for a long time has been if education should be free. At the mention of the topic, every room is split into three or more. There are those who believe that education should be free and that all should benefit, whether young or old.
There are also those who feel that it should not be, under any circumstances while there are those who feel that it doesn’t matter.
Amongst those who feel it should be free are those who also believe that nothing is free and someone has to bear the cost. The question now is who bears the cost of free education.
Realizing the impact of poor and nonexistent education is why steps have at least been taken to make it general that primary education is free.
According to international human rights law, primary education shall be compulsory and free of charge. Secondary and higher education shall be made progressively free of charge.
While this may not be achievable everywhere, there are still moves to make education free for adults who still want to get educated.
Adult Education Statistics
According to research, In the U.S., over 130 million adults have low literacy, including 20% of adults with a high school diploma.
The U.S. ranked 21st in numeracy and 16th in literacy out of 24 countries in a 2013 assessment
of adults’ skills.
The study is evidence that points to the fact that free adult education needs to significantly improve.
There is work to be done and some have made their options available for many to participate.
Among those with available options for free adult education are those listed in the segments below.
Online Free Education websites for adults
Coursera
Coursera was founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller.
Ng and Koller were inspired by their experiences offering their Stanford courses online in fall 2011, and soon after left Stanford to launch Coursera.
Coursera.org is a website that partners with universities and organizations around the world. This brings a wide variety of topics and perspectives to one searchable database.
Coursera is a powerful tool for free online education and includes courses from many top universities, museums, and trusts.
This gives the site an extremely wide range of in-depth courses. Coursera is extremely useful if you’re looking to study many different topics or want courses from different schools and groups.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan with a goal of creating an accessible place for people to be educated.
The organization produces short lectures in the form of YouTube videos. it is one of the top online education websites.
Its websites also include supplementary practice exercises and tools for educators. Partnering with many post-secondary schools, Khan Academy offers a useable, well-organized interface.
Also curating many courses from around the web, Khan Academy offers impressive depth on many different subjects.
Among the more well known educational sites, Khan Academy is also incredibly useable, which may make it easier to keep learning goals. All resources are available to users of the website.
The website and its content are provided mainly in English but are also available in other languages like Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, French, Bangla and Hindi.
Khan Academy’s website aims to provide a personalized learning experience, mainly built on the videos which are hosted on YouTube.
The website is meant to be used as a supplement to its videos because it includes other features such as progress tracking, practice exercises, and teaching tools.
The material can also be accessed through mobile applications.
Open Culture Online Courses
finding it difficult to find exactly the material you are looking for, try Open Culture’s listing of free online education courses.
Their page highlights over 1000 lectures, videos, and podcasts from various universities around the world.
The site features a lot of material found only on universities private sites, all in easy to browse categories.
This means you can find hundreds of university courses, without having to visit and search for each university’s own site.
Open Culture’s list features courses from England, Australia, Wales and many state universities around the United States. A very helpful resource for finding many courses in one area of study.
Udemy
Udemy.com is an online learning platform. It is aimed at professional adults.
Unlike other Massive open online course(MOOC) programs driven by traditional collegiate coursework, Udemy provides a platform for experts of any kind to create courses which can be offered to the public, either at no charge or for a tuition fee.
Udemy provides tools which enable users to create a course, promote it and earn money from student tuition charges.
Udemy’s free courses are similar in concept to Coursera’s but additionally allows users to build custom courses from lessons.
Working with many top professors and schools, the site mixes the customizable platform of other sites with a heavy emphasis on top quality content.
This is another site, however, that mixes free and paid content.
Academic Earth
Academic Earth is a website launched on March 24, 2009, by Richard Ludlow and co-founders Chris Bruner and Liam Pisano.
A website which offers free online video lectures from universities.
Universities such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Michigan, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.
In the subjects of Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, computer science, Economics, Engineering, English, Entrepreneurship, History, Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, and Statistics.
The idea behind Academic Earth came to Ludlow upon stumbling on a full video course lecture from MIT Mathematics Professor Gilbert Strang.
Doing further research, he found out that there are various academic resources online although these resources were scattered across different websites and in varying file formats.
Patterned after Hulu, Academic Earth serves as an easily accessible repository for online academic lectures.
edX
Another great option for free online education is edX.
Also bringing together courses from many different schools, the site has impressive, quality information for everyone.
edX covers a great range of topics.
Alison
Unlike the previous sites on these lists, Alison is a free education site offering certification in some areas.
Alison offers courses mainly in business, technology, and health, but also includes language learning courses.
A great option if users need certification for their learning, Alison also offers school curriculum courses.
iTunesU Free Courses
A very convenient place for free online education is iTunesU, because it integrates seamlessly with your iPod or any app-ready Apple mobile device.
On iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, users download the iTunesU app.
Desktop users can access iTunes on the upper right-hand corner of the iTunes Store. iTunesU is also convenient because the store is categorized much like iTunes.
Users can search for learning materials in many different ways, including genre and topic.
However, courses are often a mix of free podcasts or videos and paid content.
iTunesU does include courses on a pretty wide scope of topics but does not integrate with Android, Google or Windows mobile devices.
Stanford Online
Your hub for all the online offerings from Stanford University, Stanford Online offers self-paced and session-based courses.
While Coursera features some courses from Stanford, many classes are only available via other hosts.
Some courses require iTunes, but most are completed in your web browser.
Stanford Online is a great site for high-quality courses, though the topics are somewhat limited compared to sites partnered with more than one school.
Harvard Extension
Like Stanford Online, Harvard Extension features free online education courses from Harvard only.
This is another excellent source for top-notch course material, though the course variety is less rich than multi-school sites.
Additionally, Harvard Extension allows you to search for courses by professional certificate. This makes it much easier if your online education goal includes certification.
Conclusion
This list is not exhaustive as the internet is blowing up with lots of options for those who do not have access to conventional education options.
This article on free adult education is one that is supposed to pave a way and show that education is possible no matter how old and disadvantaged you think you are.
Websites and other new media are great resources that should be taken advantage of.
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