Free Online Courses and Lectures
from Universities Around the World

Online Courses from Yale University (yale.edu)
http://oyc.yale.edu/

Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

Open Yale Courses reflects the values of a liberal arts education. Yale's philosophy of teaching and learning begins with the aim of training a broadly based, highly disciplined intellect without specifying in advance how that intellect will be used. This approach goes beyond the acquisition of facts and concepts to cultivate skills and habits of rigorous, independent thought: the ability to analyze, to ask the next question, and to begin the search for an answer.

All lectures were recorded in the Yale College classroom and are available in video, audio, and text transcript format. Registration is not required and no course credit is available.

Justice: A Journey of Moral Reasoning at Harvard University (harvard.edu)
http://athome.harvard.edu/programs/jmr/

Hundreds of students pack Michael Sandel's "Justice" course-an introduction to moral and political philosophy. They come to hear Sandel lecture about great philosophers of the past-from Aristotle to John Stuart Mill-but also to debate contemporary issues that raise philosophical questions-about individual rights and the claims of community, equality and inequality, morality and law. Now you can too when the course is broadcast on TV starting September 2010.

The OCW Consortium
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a worldwide community of hundreds of universities and associated organizations committed to advancing OpenCourseWare and its impact on global education. OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open digital publication of high quality university-level educational materials. Below are 10 members of the OCW Consortium, but there are many more.

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit.edu)
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
If you are looking for a wide range of free courses offered online, MIT is an excellent option. More than 1,800 free courses are offered through the school's OpenCourseWare project. Courses are in text, audio and video formats and translated into a number of different languages. Students all over the world use OpenCourseWare and 96 percent of visitors to this site say they would recommend it to someone else.

2. Open University (open.ac.uk)
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
The Open University is the UK's largest academic institution. The school's OpenLearn website gives everyone free access to both undergraduate and graduate-level course materials from The Open University. Courses cover a wide range of topics, such as the arts, history, business, education, IT and computing, mathematics and statistics, science, health and technology.

This is a site where you'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others.

3. Carnegie Mellon University (cmu.edu)
http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/
Carnegie Mellon University offers a number of free online courses and materials through a program called Open Learning Initiative. OLI courses are intended to allow anyone at an introductory college level to learn about a particular subject without formal instruction. Course options include such offerings as statistics, biology, chemistry, economics, French and physics.

4. Tufts University (tufts.edu)
http://ocw.tufts.edu/
Like MIT, Tufts has OpenCourseWare that is available free to everyone. Courses are sorted by school (i.e. School of Arts and Sciences, School of Medicine, etc.) and include assignments, lecture notes and other supplementary materials.

5. Stanford (stanford.edu)
http://itunes.stanford.edu/
Stanford University, one of the world's leading academic institutions, has joined forces with iTunes U in providing access to Stanford courses, lectures and interviews. These courses can be downloaded and played on iPods, PCs, and Macs and can also be burned to CDs. If you don't have iTunes, you can download it for free.

6. University of California, Berkeley (berkeley.edu)
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php
UC Berkeley, one of the best public universities in the nation, has been offering live and on-demand webcasts of certain courses since 2001. Hundreds of UC Berkeley courses, both current and archived, are now available as podcasts and webcasts. Courses cover a range of subjects, including astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer programming, engineering, psychology, legal studies and philosophy.

7. Utah State University (usu.edu)
http://ocw.usu.edu/
Utah State University also provides access to free online courses. Study options include everything from anthropology to physics and theatre arts. These comprehensive text-based courses can be downloaded as zip files or viewed directly on the site.

8. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania (kutztownsbdc.org)
http://www.kutztownsbdc.org/course_listing.asp
Kutztown University's Small Business Development Center offers the largest collection of free business courses available on the web. Course topics include accounting, finance, government, business law, marketing and sales. Comprehensive text, interactive case studies, slides, graphics and streaming audio help to demonstrate the concepts presented in each course.

9. University of Southern Queensland (usq.edu.au)
http://ocw.usq.edu.au/
The University of Southern Queensland in Australia provides free online access to a number of different courses through yet another OpenCourseWare initiative. Courses from each of the five faculties are available, covering a broad range of topics, including communication, science, career planning, technology, teaching and multimedia creation.

10. University of California, Irvine (uci.edu)
http://ocw.uci.edu/
UC Irvine, one of the nation's top public universities, recently joined the OCW Consortium and began providing free university level courses online. Right now, there are only a handful of options to choose from, but this list is growing. Current courses cover topics like financial planning, human resources, capital markets and e-marketing. Course materials include syllabi, lecture notes, assignments and exams.

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