Free online Education courses for Adults

Or are you an online teacher interested in the latest technology to make your online courses more effective?

Whether you’re new to distance learning or an experienced online teacher, you can find free online training resources to fit your needs.

For example, some online schools offer free training modules to help campus-based teachers learn how to transition to cyber-classrooms. Other organizations offer tips on designing online classes and teaching with technology.

Michigan State University’s Virtual University Design and Technology website offers text-based lessons in topics including pedagogy and best practices, online course content, enlivening techniques, course structure and design, and hybrid courses.

The Learning to Teach Online project has been developed by COFA Online, an academic unit at the College of Fine Arts, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. It is designed to be practical and easy to access for time-poor teachers. The video- and PDF-based episodes each examine specific successful online teaching strategies from many different disciplines, offering tips, guidance and pointing out the potential pitfalls to both novice and experienced online teachers. Best of all, the more than 50 lessons can be accessed for free through ITunes.

Originally developed for Texas Woman's University, this course includes modules showing how to design a course, along with explanations of best practices for distance education.

Also from Texas Woman's University, this course gives tips to help you successfully create the navigation, layout, colors and design of your course content.

This step-by-step video resource shows teachers how to use technological tools such as Blackboard, wikis, online surveys, podcasting and more.

MERLOT provides a large, peer-reviewed collection of online curricula and other resources, as well as forums and publications aimed at online educators. Search the MERLOT database for “distance learning” to find links to material to help you plan and design effective online classes.

The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (OER) is a great site that assists faculty who are developing online courses for community or junior colleges in finding and utilizing free online textbooks, learning modules, and creative commons resources for distance learning courses.{{ad102}}

The Sloan Consortium studies and funds online education. The consortium’s Effective Practices site is a way for online educators to share techniques, strategies, and practices in online education that have worked for them. Practices are peer-reviewed before being put on the site.