A Good Source of Free Online Courses

Free online courses are always appearing on the internet, and Annenberg Learner offers an interesting variety of them. There's an assortment of traditional college courses which are presented in the form of online video documentaries. Two foreign language courses are on offer, French in Action and two levels of the Destinos Spanish course. There's also a variety of history courses. One blogger thinks that the course A Biography of America could replace traditional history textbooks. Annenberg Learner might also be considered as a way to homeschool the "tough" high school subjects, as there are courses in chemistry, physics, microbiology, and statistics. Documentary series often present the material in a more entertaining and easy-to-absorb fashion than traditional textbooks, so Annenberg Learner might be worth a look.

The Free Online College

As a college education is normally a major investment, it's interesting to see that it's possible to get one for free. The University of the People offers free online courses to the Associate's and Bachelor's levels in Business Administration and Computer Science. As the education is free, many people will wonder what the catch is. The University of the People isn't yet accredited, and therefore, can't yet award degrees.

Still, this college might be worth considering for some. Although the college isn't accredited, it's courses do offer valuable knowledge. Amongst their computer courses are offerings in software engineering, programming, and operating systems. It might be an idea to use this knowledge to take IT certification exams, which would be widely recognized. Also, the value of this education depends on what you want to do afterwards. If you wanted to list it on a resume while applying for a traditional job, most employers would probably be wary. It would also be difficult to transfer to an accredited institution to earn a graduate degree. However, you might have more success if you listed it as a qualification to work as a freelancer. If you were using the knowledge in your own business, the lack of accreditation wouldn't be a problem.

Personally, I'm taking a serious look at this option, as the computer science courses do look good, and you can't beat getting it for free. I still don't know what this college's policies are on taking transfer credit, or in letting people enroll for individual courses rather than the entire program. I'm thinking that it might be possible to transfer the UoP course credit to one of the Big Three distance colleges, and get an accredited degree from them. At the same time, the Big Three might also not recognize college credit from an unaccredited college.