Free online it courses with Certificate

Would you like to freshen up your programming skills but you are put off by high tuition fees? That excuse doesn’t work anymore. Some top universities are now offering free online technology courses.

It happened to the music industry. It happened to the book industry. Now the Web is doing its inevitable shakedown with higher education.

Pretigious universities like our own University of Toronto offer free online technology courses. In fact, if you demonstrate mastery in a course you can get a certificate from a course offered by Harvard, MIT or UC Berkeley right now for free!

This means some great online learning opportinities for IT workers looking to upgrade their skills and qualifications. It might even be an option for people just getting started with a career in technology.

Is there a Catch?

The biggest issue is getting credit for your online course work. Employers tend to value traditional education more than online training. But that will change quickly as online training gains traction. When the online course is taught by well known professor from a prestigious school, the value of the training is clear.

Another issue is that sometimes the course materials are available online for free but there is a fee if you want to take exams, receive grades and get credits. Luckily that is changing too!

With the edX intiative from Harvard and MIT, you can earn a certificate of completion for an online course offered by Harvard, MIT or UC Berkeley. With Udacity, you can get free certificate for completing one of their technology courses. Or you can pay a fee to take a test for an additional level of certification.

3 Links for Free Online Technology Courses

Here are a three websites where you can take advantage of this explosion of free online technology courses from top universities:

Coursera

Website: https://www.coursera.org/

Coursera offers online courses from the top universities in the world for anyone to take, for free. In only six months Coursera has enabled 650, 000 students from 190 countries to gain access to 43 different university courses.

We hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.

University of Toronto offers free technology courses on Coursera. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can also get free courses through Coursera from Stanford, Princton and John Hopkins universities to name a few. .

edX-Initiative

Website:

EdX is an free online training initiative founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Currently edX offers free courses from Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley. The founders are currently working to include additional universities while maintaining the high level of quality that has already been established in their current course offerings.