There are many great online training sites for all sorts of careers and/or hobbies. Some are quite expensive and some are, well, my favorite…free.
You are most likely already aware that all colleges and universities offer online courses. You can earn many degrees online today. Some people take courses at local universities and also take others online from the same or cooperating schools. The possibilities are endless as far as subject matter. Just for fun, I searched for, “knitting free online classes” and found many sites.
Now, be careful as you search for your classes. Make sure they are provided by a reputable source. As you will see below many higher education organizations participate.
If you find a free course, start one, give it a try and see if it provides what you are looking for. If it is educational, enjoyable and you are getting something out of it, stick around for the next. If you do not find value from the first class, quit and find another.
A couple of locations I will mention are Class-Central.com and Cousera.org. They carry almost any course you can think of. They are both part of the MOOC system and have some big name universities participating with them. I would give you a list of them but there are hundreds around the world. A couple you may have heard of are the California Institute of Technology, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft (one of my favorites), University of Virginia and many, many, many more.
There are schools from all around the world, community colleges, technical centers and other types of educational facilities.
Courses can be found in Business, Science, Art, Math, Programming, Humanities, Biology, Education, Psychology and (once again) many, many, many more.
I used an acronym you may have never heard above, “MOOC” what is it? MOOC stands for, “Massive Open Online Course” which is an online course designed to be used by huge numbers of people. They are provided through your browser on the web. They may be in a lecture, document, interactive training and other formats including combinations of all. Many include a class discussion with other participants.
You can supposedly get college credits at some of these; however, be warned, I have not been able to verify this. Do not plan on getting a degree from a real university with these classes until you check it out very carefully.
Finally, if you cannot find the facility or the course you want, go to the MOOC list site, mooc-list.com. You can search a huge collection full of everything you can think of. There are other MOOC related sites and schools out there so look around, find one and get some education.
