Online courses for free have given people a lifeline to education. Thanks to the Internet, it has become possible for anyone to study without having to pay expensive tuition fees.
Coursework
The number of free classes on the web is staggering. Some websites feature hundreds or thousands of free study materials. Subject matters include virtually all topics taught in traditional universities and schools.
Resources on humanities & social sciences, business, public health, psychology & cognitive sciences resources can be downloaded freely. Science aficionados and students can take up physics, biology, chemistry or astronomy. All major branches of mathematics have resources on the web.
Environment & natural resources, engineering (mechanical, civil and electrical) and computer sciences are also available. Sociology, religion, political science, international relations and law also have numerous free links. Even students of philosophy, music, literature, linguistics and law have several choices.
Other Options
You are not limited to the courses stated above. There are classes for languages, journalism, history, geography, cinema and economics. Architecture students have numerous resources they can turn to on the web. There are also subjects about aesthetics & philosophy of art, ancient and medieval philosophy and American economic history.
Science students will find sites about aeronautics, introduction to astrophysics, black holes and space exploration. Computer science programs include topics such as artificial intelligence, computational camera and photography and data structures. You can also find courses on JavaScript, computer graphics and multimedia systems.
Format
These programs are just like other web pages. You just go the website and choose which course to study. There are links to other sites on the Internet you can go to. Sometimes video and animation are included in the lessons.
Differences from Fee Based Online Courses
The biggest difference is these resources do not count for credit. In a credit earning course, you can get those credits and can then transfer them to your home institution. This is not possible with free Internet classes.
Second, some of the information in these sites are taken from universities. It means that some projects cannot be completed on the web. Those are the subjects that require students to work together. Few of these sites have instructors. You can study anytime you want, but these will not be graded or reviewed.
The nice thing about online courses for free is their contents are always being updated. You can keep your knowledge up to date by simply browsing these sites.