- Online Tutorials and How-to Sites
- Big Idea and Debate Sites
- Higher Education and Open Education Initiatives
- Free CE, CME, and CEU
- Topical Areas
Now for the notes and observations:
First, this is obviously nowhere near a comprehensive list. There are who knows how many sites out there, and for the purposes of this post, I have confined myself to sites that offer relatively formalized learning experiences and state this as their explicit purpose. Truth is, there is almost no place on the Web where you can learn something.
Next, I made an effort to categorize things in a relatively logical way below and even to start a key of sorts:
- T – Text-based offerings (usually with still graphics)
- A – Audio without Video
- V – Video offerings
- I – Interactive
- C – Offered as customer education, i.e. part of a corporate marketing strategy or as a way to promote sales of other products.
I clearly have no future as a librarian, however, as I finally felt like I had to give up on pursuing this and go back to earning a living, spending time with my family, etc. Perhaps I will manage to fill it over time. (Or kind readers can share their knowledge of these sites in the comments.) If I do continue to do more with this, it is probably better suited for a wiki anyway.
Finally, the main point to all of this is simply that there is so much available out there for free—even things that offer credit—and given how easy it is for non-technical subject matter experts to contribute content, it will only keep growing. Quality is all over the place right now, but I suspect competition among aggregators and the growing influence of the open education movement will drive higher quality over time. All of this suggests at least a couple of things, in my opinion:
- If part of your business strategy is to generate revenue from learning experiences provided to members, customers, or students and you haven’t yet considered how “free” impacts you, it’s high time.
- “Free” learning could potentially be one of the better forms of customer engagement in the world of the new Web—though this does not come without issues, as Stephen Downes and Lisa Neal have pointed out in a recent issue of eLearn Magazine.
The list follows. Please let me know any major gaps you see, and it would be great to hear from readers about how “free” fits into their organization’s strategy for learning. Also, let me know any sites you think need to be listed here.
Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn
If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page.
Online Tutorials and How-to Sites
There are starting to be quite a lot of these sites and you have to wonder just how many can manage to stay in business. Still, I think a probable upside of all the competition will be an increase in expectations and the resulting quality of the offerings.
- 5min Life Videopedia (V)
- About.com (V)*
- Brain Honey (T)
- eHow (T,V)
- ExpertVillage (V)
- HouseholdHacker (V)
- Helpfulvideo.com (V)
- Howcast.com (V)
- instructables (T,V)
- ITunes University (A, V)
- koonji (T,V)
- LearnOutLoud.com (A,V)
- Make (T,V)
- sclipo (V)
- SuTree (V)
- TeacherTube (V)
- TrickLife (V)
- videojug (V)
- ViewDo.com (V)
- WannaLearn.com
- wikiHow (T)
“Big Idea” and Debate Sites
Big Think is the newest entrant here. I am sure there are other sites like this that I don’t yet know about. These are places where you can see some of your favorite gurus being gurus and add your two cents.
Higher Education and Open Education Initiatives
This list won’t come close to doing justice to what is going on out there in the world of open education, but suffice to say that between universities, NGOs, and foundation funded projects, there is practically nothing that you can’t learn online, and in many cases, take the underlying intellectual property and re-configure it to your own needs under an Creative Commons or other “copyleft” license.
- Annenberg Media (V)
- University of Washington
- Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative
- Open Yale
- WebCasts/Courses.Berkeley
- MIT OpenCourseWare
- Utah State University OpenCourseWare
- China Open Resources for Education (English news site with links)
- Fulbright Economics Teaching Program (Vietnam)
- Japan OpenCourseWare Alliance
- Johns Hopkins OpenCourseware
- Oops – Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (Taiwan)
- ParisTech OpenCourseWare
- Tufts OpenCourseware
- Universia OpenCourseWare (Spanish/Portuguese)
- African Virtual University
- Princeton Archive Lectures
- School of Everything
- Qedoc
- Connexions
- HippoCampus
- ITrainOnline
- Live Content
- OLCOS
- OER Commons
- Open2.Net
- Open Courseware Consortium
- OpenLearn
- Open Media Commons
- Open of Course
- FlossCom.Net: Community-based Educational Approaches
- Sofia: Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets
- Self (Sharing Knowledge about Free Software)
- The Bazaar
- WikiEducator
- The Final Club
- University of California – San Diego
Free CE,CME, and CEU
I could post another 100 links just in this area alone. It is tricky terrain though. You have to pay attention to the fine print that tells you things like when the availability of credit expires or whether just the course/article content and not the credit (or vice-versa) is free. Particularly in the health arena, most of the “free” CE tends to be sponsored by pharmaceutical companies and medical supply manufacturers–not necessarily a bad thing, but something to keep in mind. Health-related CE also tends to be some of the less-inspired learning out there–often, for instance, credit is attached to nothing more than a journal article.
- CMEcorner.com (T,V)
- FreeCE.com (Healthcare)
- FreeCME.com (Clinical Specialties)
- HIVandHepatitis.com
- Interior Design Magazine
- March of Dimes (Genetics)
- Medscape (Healthcare, requires registration)
- nurseCEU.com
- Power-Pak C.E. (Healthcare)
- RxSchool (Pharmacy)
- studentdoc (Healthcare)
- Meco Sports Medicine
- Medi-smart
- National Association of Social Workers
Topical Areas
All of the above links are for destinations where a wide variety of topics are covered, but there are also any number of Web sites or YouTube videos covering a single topic or a handful of related topics. The list below is admittedly a fairly eclectic collection of examples.
At Home
Business and Professional Skills
- Bartending 101 (Training DVD)
- Learn to Drive a 18 Wheeler (V) Lesson 1, Lesson 2
- Building a .com in 24 hours
- keybr.com (Typing practice)
Dance
- Moshunpics on YouTube (V) Covers a variety of dance forms from waltz, to bachata, to meringue, to basic ballroom.
- Learn-to-Belly-Dance.com
- Learn to Disco (V)
- Learn to Breakdance (Moonwalk) (V,C)
Economics
Handy Things to Know
Health
Human Resources
- Economic Research Institute 54 free courses, credit available
International Development
Language, Spelling, and Grammar Skills
- iTalki (T, I)
- Study Spanish (T, C)
- Free Homeschool Curriculum Spelling Course
- Conversational Mandarin Chinese Online
- Hungarian Language
- A Swedish Language Course
- Turkish Lessons
- Polish Grammar
- Greek and Latin
- English Flash Cards (Flash cards for a variety of languages)
- Langmaster – Free Languages Online
Law
Math and Science
- Free Science and Video Lectures Online (T, V)
- A First Course in Linear Algebra
- Introduction to Probability (Dartmouth) (I)
- Online Math Center (T)
- Interactive Mathematics Materials (Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching (T,I)
Music and Art
- Introduction to Reading Music (T)
- Learn Harmonica (T, Audio only in Members Area, Videos “coming soon”)
- Rockongoodpeople on YouTube (Video) Various lesson on guitar, home recording, and setting up for live shows.
- Learn to Chant (T, A)
- Learn to Play the Ukelele (V, C) Part I , Part II
- Freedrumlessons on YouTube (V) Covers rock, jazz, Latin…you name it!
- Learn to Draw.com (T)
- Learn to Draw Portraits (V)
Sports, Recreation, and Hobbies
- How to Snowboard for the First Time (T)
- Learn to Juggle (Animation)
- Learn to Crochet (T, C)
- Learn to Play Craps (V, C)
- Learn to Play Bridge (T)
- Learn to Wakeboard (V, C)
- Learn to Sew (T)
- Learn to Jamskate.net (T, A, V)
- Learn How to Knit (V) Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3
Theological
Web and Computer Skills
- Commoncraft (Wikis, Blogs, Social Networks, Social Bookmarking, RSS)
- GCFLearnFree.org
- Make an AJAX site in Less Than 10 Minutes
- Web Design from Scratch
- Learn to Script (Windows)
- Stanford CS Education Library (W, V)
If you liked this post, you might also like:
More than 50 Web Widgets for Your Learning Mix
And you might also want to ask What is e-learning?
Related posts:
- Learn to Save a Life: 10 Free Online First Aid Resources
- Top 10 Free Health & Medical Open Courseware Collections
- Where to Find Free Computer Programming Education Online
- 35+ Free Online Business Education Sites
- 25 Free Online Resources and Web Apps for Lifelong Learners
posted on February 14, 2008
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Wayne here from WikiEducator at the Commonwealth of Learning — a non-profit intergovernmental agency.
Wow that’s an impressive resource! Just a quick note — if any readers are interested in free wiki skills training — WikiEducator is running a series free training workshops under the Learning4Content project.
Folk register online:
http://wikieducator.org/Learning4Content
What a list!
But….you could have a whole wardrobe full of sweaters to pull here if you add all the K-12 resources. Yacapaca http://yacapaca.com alone contains 2125 free, collaboratively-user-authored courses (I just counted them) on every curriculum subject and then some.
Hi Jeff
This is a great resource site. I can see that I will be coming back! You might be interested in adding your blog information to the new International Edubloggers Directory at http://edubloggerdir.blogspot.com
Patricia
Wayne–Thanks for dropping by. I’ll check out the WikiEducator offering and encourage others to do so as well.
Ian–Yes, I completely agree. This is a pale shadow, the smallest fraction of what is actually out there–which is most of the point of even undertaking this exercise. The old mantra is that information wants to be free. Learning seems to have the same inclination.
Thanks, Patricia–Heading off to the directory right now!
Jeff
Jeff,
What an amazing resource! – And yes, the trick is to figure out ways for users to easily discover and recommend all this content. I think aggregation and ‘digg’ style submission systems provide ways for users to recommend their favorites. Sites like the following, but with an education/learning focus, might provide a valuable way to find what’s relevant to the user:
http://www.newsvine.com/
http://www.nowpublic.com/
I’ve been spending a lot of time exploring these issues and concepts in the world of Drupal (http://drupal.org/). As both a web framework and rapidly growing community, there’s a lot of exploration in development, and the business models around open collaboration and learning.
Here’s a little resource page I constructed awhile ago:
http://wiki.pepperalleyproductions.com/Learning_and_resources
Enjoying the blog!
Gus
Great site.
Anyone who’s interested in teaching will likely enjoy seeing all the free teacher-related goodies at http://www.Teachbits.com.
Thanks for this great list! I would like to suggest two more resources for the open education initatives:
http://selfproject.eu/
http://www.open-of-course.org
Gus, Michael, Catharina–Thanks so much for dropping by and adding more great resources! –Jeff
We join the legion of others who recognized what a valuable list you have offered the rest of us so we wrote about it yesterday (and will mention it at the annual iabc conference in N.Y.)
http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2008/03/16/making-conferences-more-meaningful-by-harnessing-technology/
I browsed some of the sites from this list and found that there are valuable resource materials here for learning and teaching.
It is so hard not to be overloaded with information. It takes time to look for the one online education site that will provide the specific area where one is interested
Thank you for providing a good and reliable list.
That’s certainly a well-organized list of resources with a great variety. I’d also like to add one to the Language category.
http://www.italki.com (T,I) – Practice any language with global language exchange
Thanks!
What are the rules to use this website ? are there any fees? can any one use it ?
Hope to hera from you.
Thank you;
nelsy
Hi everybody;
Please find below an excellent link to online free course on “First-Aid”:
https://www.ambulance.net.au/onlinecourse/enrolled_courses_content.asp#
I found it very useful.
It basically provide basic information on life saving in the time of emergency. I recommend it by saying that this course is a MUST for the purpose of life saving.
By the way successful completion of this course leads to a beautiful printable certificate.
Best of luck and stay safe!
You have included a good list of higher / open education initiatives. I would also add http://beanbaglearning.com – a free resource enabling independent tutors to share learning resources (via creative commons licence) and market their services.
I should also add a new tutoring collaboration website to the list of open education initiatives http://tutorhub.org
Hi Jeff! Magoosh is a new GMAT Prepoffering made by UC Berkeley students and GMAT veterans/experts. Our goal is to make high quality GMAT available to all by providing a high quality service at a low cost. On Magoosh you can answer 80 questions for free and get detailed explanations and analytics on your strengths and weaknesses. We hope this will help all who are studying for the GMAT!
Hansoo Lee
Co-founder, Magoosh.com
This is a very informative post. I got some valuable information on this site. Thanks for sharing.
Excellent Opportunity to Study
Thoughts that arise from the blending of original self-knowledge and other forms of consequent experiential knowledge provide the motives to take action to realize them in external tangible form. This is why the best of human thinking begins and ends with how to manifest one’s uniqueness in the world. When you realize the beautiful vision of your heart, of your true Self, you will rise to manifest the greatness of your dominant thoughts in all of your actions……….
http://www.sangambayard-c-m.com
Cool.
Here is another site you may want to consider. Its http://www.BridgeSA.net
Its unique in the sense that the free resources it links you to are more interactive types – audios, TV programs, radios, readers, music, etc.
I agree with you that the competition among aggregators and the growing influence of the open education movement will drive higher quality over time.
I would love to see Virtual Professors added to this list.
This is a very informative post. I got some valuable information on this site. Thanks for sharing.
I found many further and higher institutions offering free courseware. It is good of course, the bad thing is they do not grand you credit or certification, so you have nothing to put on CV. After long MONTHS! of research i found one further and higher education institution,that was granting certification upon successful assessment or exam from open courses. They do care about students are highly supportive staff and extremely active online community (im studying with them for my diploma now:P ) i found them by accident on one of free courses site, where they were posted as top partners and for small fee cant remember i think it was 20Euro that i paid for assessment they processed that final examination/assessment and after my successful completion awarded me certificate from their institution. I love them! their website is eden-institute.eu for some reason it is down
, probably upgrading or something , but as i can access my online area 
id say its just upgrade or minor work, so check them out,i cant find that open courseware site that is associated with them,but i can guarantee that if you will write the institute they will assist you, cause their staff are great!
I certainly believe your list is very effective. You have listed many informational sites or wikis which can help people to find important data fast. Perhaps, you should add http://www.choicehow.com to your list.