Free Online College Courses - Part Deux

Take College Courses Online

Did you know that many well-known universities offer free college-level courses that you can access online? In my article Free Online College Courses, I mentioned courses that you can take from MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford.

In this follow-up, you'll find web-based college courses in text, audio and video formats, from schools like Yale, Oxford, Notre Dame and other notable institutions.

• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health provides access to the school's most popular courses. Topics include Adolescent Health, Aging, Behavior and Health, Biostatistics, Chronic Diseases, Genetics, Global Health issues, Health Policy, HIV/AIDS, Infectious Disease, Injury Prevention, Maternal and Child Health, Mental Health, Nutrition, Population Science, Public Health Preparedness, and Refugee Health.

• Open Yale Courses provides online access to selected introductory courses taught by Yale faculty. About half of the course selection reflects Yale's liberal arts emphasis. Topics include Economics, English, Art History, Italian Language and Literature, Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Political Science. But the online line-up also includes Astronomy, Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and other hard sciences.
• The University of Notre Dame provides access to course materials through the popular Open CourseWare platform. Departments include Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, African Studies, Anthropology, Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, Architecture, Asian Studies, Civil Engineering, Geological Sciences, Gender Studies, and several Catholic and other religious courses.
• The University of Washington offers online courses in the American Civil War, Greek Mythology, the novel Gulliver's Travels, Hamlet, HTML Basics, the history of New Orleans jazz, the American Revolution, Shakespeare's Comedies, J. R. R. Tolkien's heroic fantasy novels, and World War II. (OK, they probably won't help you get a job but you'll learn something while waiting for that unemployment check to arrive.)
• The Berklee College of Music offers free music-related courses online, including Bass, Guitar Chords, Voice, and even a Music Business lesson.
• The University of the People was founded in 2009 as a "tuition-free" Internet school. However, it recently started charging modest ($15 to $50) fees for application processing and end-of-term tests. Its learning model emphasizes peer teaching and collaboration.
• Peer 2 Peer University ditches the whole ivory-tower university model. Literally anyone can upload a course and start teaching. You don't have to be an expert, but don't expect to get paid; all instructors are volunteers.
• Apple brings you free college courses via your iPhone or iPod Touch. Video and audio lectures are available for download to your mobile devices. Oxford University, Texas A&M and the University of Chicago are just three of several dozen schools participating in the iTunes U initiative.

You generally cannot get transferrable college credits for free online college courses. But if your objective is simply to learn, not work towards a degree, there is no easier or cheaper way to do it. What will you learn?

Do you know about another university that offers free online college courses? Post your comment or question below...