Open Education  – “Young Bits” – Chapter 9

In today’s world, the internet is full of various free resources available to learners. Whether they are articles written by individuals, micro-learning courses from experts, or archives made available by prestigious colleges, the internet gives you the opportunity to learn everything you ever desire as long as you are motivated and willing to pursue your learning dreams.

On this last “young bit” we will share with you a list of platforms that spread free or very cheap knowledge in a huge variety of fields.

• MIT OpenCourseWare is a free and open collection of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum It provides high-quality teaching and learning material that is available in easy accessible format. MIT does not offer credit or certification to users but Knowledge is your reward. They do not require enrollment or registration, so you can freely browse and use the materials at your own pace.
• Stanford Online is a study site that provides learning opportunities via free online degrees, online courses, e-learning, and more. You can learn a wide range of subjects including, computer science, AI, health and medicine, arts, and data science. The platform offers certification after completing the program. You can enroll in courses to learn new skills, get a job, and to create a new future. It has a collection of free e-books, webinars, videos, etc.
• Harvard Extension is a great online learning site that provides free online education courses from Harvard University. It enables students to search for courses by professional certificate as well as using the start date and duration. Harvard Extension offers various subject areas like art and design, business, data science, health, and much more. Courses of this place have three difficulty levels introductory, intermediate, and advanced.
• Udemy is an open online course provider aimed at professional adults and students. The platform has more than 52 million students, 196,000 courses, and 68,000 instructors teaching courses in over 75 languages. Udemy courses are typically well-organized, informative, and not very costly, so, for most students, the classes are worth the money. The platform provides also free classes.
• edX is an American open online course provider created by Harvard and MIT. It hosts online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide student body, including some courses at no charge. edX courses consist of weekly learning sequences. Each learning sequence is composed of short videos interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can immediately practice the concepts from the videos. The courses often include tutorial videos that are similar to small on-campus discussion groups, an online textbook, and an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions and comments to each other and teaching assistants. EdX offers certificates of successful completion and some courses are credit-eligible.
• Coursera Inc. an open online course provider founded by two professors of Stanford University. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, certifications, and degrees in a variety of subjects. Coursera courses last approximately four to twelve weeks, with one to two hours of video lectures a week. These courses provide quizzes, weekly exercises, peer-graded and reviewed assignments, an optional Honors assignment, and sometimes a final project or exam to complete the course. Courses are also provided on-demand, in which case users can take their time in completing the course with all of the material available at once.
• LinkedIn Learning – is a website that offers video courses that are taught by experts. You can use this website to access up to 15,000 courses in more than seven languages available both for free and with a subscription. LinkedIn free courses give you a chance to learn from industry experts for free. The LinkedIN training courses are suitable for any typw of lerner, from beginners to expert and are available in various categories such as business, personal development, entrepreneurship, design & tech online courses.
• Skillshare is an online platform that provides educational resourses on numerous topics related to graphics design, data science, e-commerce, analytics, etc. Course lessons last from 20 to 60 minutes and are made out of a series of small videos, class projects, and a student community that encourages interaction through discussion forums.
• Alison is a free online learning site helps you to study, learn and offers you a certification on completing the course. The subjects this site offers are business, technology, health, languages etc. The site enables you to choose three types of courses certificate courses, diploma courses, and learning paths (creating self-learning experiences). 
• Khan Academy is a study website that offers in-depth subjects and that will prove useful to match your learning goals, by giving you the chance to personalize your learning experience. This free platform can be used for learners and teachers. It includes lots of learning
  exercises and built-in video lectures which are hosted on YouTube, available in many languages like English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and more. 
• Open culture is a great education website that offers free online classes for fun. You can choose this website to learn philosophy,  literature, history, biology, and physics. The subject materials of this site are available in audio, video, and ebooks. It contains more than 800 ebooks, 200 e-books, and 300+ language lessons.
• Code is a learning resource that helps students to enroll in courses related to biology, algebra, and chemistry. The website provides classes with weekly challenges and is available in two languages Spanish and English but it offers a one-hour tutorial specially designed for people of all ages in more than 45 languages.

• Salto is a network of seven Resource Centres working on European priority areas within the youth field. The website provides non-formal learning resources for youth workers and youth leaders on various topics like inclusion, diversity, ecology, digitalisation and more. 

The content for this post is part of our online campaign called “Young Bits” which aims to increase the quality of Digital Youth Work by providing the interested parties with knowledge and tools that exist on the internet, but are not structured in a handy manner. The campaign represents the main result of the project „DIgital Technology as a TOol”, a training course that was financed with the support of the European Commission through Erasmus+ Programme. This blog reflects only the author’s views, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.