The 6 best providers of free online courses

Being a perfect opportunity for many people worldwide to enhance their educational level, obtain new knowledge and skills, online learning is gaining popularity every year. Publicly accessible through the web so-called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are now considered the most widely used and free learning source. The majority of them were developed by world-leading universities (like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and the others) and include the full access to video lectures, discussions and practical assignments.

Nowadays, a wide range of MOOCs, in many disciplines, is offered through the number of online resources.

• The leading educational internet platforms are coursera.org (founded by professors from Stanford) and edx.org (created by MIT and Harvard). Both provide free access to MOOCs from the best universities worldwide (including programs in different languages), asking to pay some fee for certification (if you need it). They constantly continue to expand by attracting new partner universities and offering more and more learning products. Here you can also find paid programs like Xseries (on edx.org) or Specializations (on coursera.org) comprised of a set of courses with a capstone project at the end.
• Two other popular MOOC providers, alison.com and futurelearn.com, are positioning themselves as totally free services. There are no paid courses, some minimum fee is charged for a certificate.
• Such education resources like openculture.com and khanacademy.org are in great demand among users. Along with free courses in many subjects, here you can find a number of the other educational products, tests, practical exercises, videos, which are very helpful for people of all ages and can be used successfully for a self-studying.