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Online Courses You Can Take for Free

Sure. There are hundreds of online courses you can pay tuition to take through accredited colleges and universities. However, what you might be surprised to learn is that there are online courses that you can take for free.

Types of available free online courses include high school online courses, offered mainly through privately owned educational firms (e.g. Home Schooling Your Child, Connections Academy). Some educational firms also provide online courses for elementary and middle school aged students. Areas students learn about during the free courses cover a broad range of topics such as English, math, science, language and social studies. Courses are taught by licensed teachers as well as by instructors who have received formal training from leaders at the schools and academies they are employed by.

You can also enroll in a free medical terminology online course and one or more medical billing and coding online courses. You might have to join professional medical organizations like the American Medical Billing Association to take the online courses. If you’re in the process of completing an undergraduate or graduate degree, ask the dean of the nursing department at the accredited college or university you attend if you can receive credit for completing the online courses if you earn a passing grade. After all, by completing free online courses for college credit you save yourself hundreds of dollars in tuition money. You also shorten the amount of time it’ll take you to earn your degree.

Online Courses for College Credit and Continued Education

If you take online courses through accredited postsecondary schools or respected professional associations and organizations, in addition to earning college credit, you’ll strengthen your job resume, possibly helping you to gain quality employment from top firms. To keep the education portion of your resume updated consider filing certificates you receive for completing online courses in a folder where you can easily reach them. Not only will adding recent training you complete to your resume show prospective hiring managers that you have the necessary training to fill their job openings, it also demonstrates to hiring managers that you value education and are committed to lifelong learning.

Major companies like technology firms, financial services corporations and government and science institutions also offer free online courses. As with professional association training programs, you might need to be a member of the corporations and institutions to qualify to take the courses free of charge. After you join the organizations, generally all you need is a login and password to access their training courses, materials you can download in a matter of seconds or moments, depending on the size of the training programs.

Sample courses offered include:

Getting started with Access 2010
Create tables for a new database
Build and publish web databases
Calculus for business
Personal financial planning
Money and banking

Independent contractors also offer free online programs. For example, motivational speakers might offer free presentation or public speaking courses. Some book writers and journalists offer free communication and editing courses as ways to build traffic to their websites. Of course, if you work for an employer, your employer probably has a training intranet website that list dozens of free online courses you can take to strengthen your job learning skills.