The 100 Best Free Online Courses of All Time
Methodology and Summary Statistics
Now, for those keeping score:
Then, between 2011 and 2013, new platforms such as Coursera and edX began offering more interactive university courses, still totally online and free for anyone to use.
These university courses attracted so many users – more than 100 thousand in some courses – that they picked up the name MOOCs, short for massive open online courses.
Each year, more MOOCs are released, contributing to an ever-growing collection of university content that anyone can use for learning. While not all courses have remained free, all the courses on this list feature content that is free to access (though you will probably have to pay a fee if you wish to earn a certificate).
Fun fact: did you know there are now more than 13,000 MOOCs, from around 1,000 universities worldwide? With numbers like that, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the choices. That’s where this list comes in. Whether you’re online learning curious, or a dedicated online learner with a dozen courses under your belt, there’s probably something in these 100 courses that you could learn. And share with your friends, co-workers, and social media followers.
Methodology and Summ
This list is based on more than 60,000 user reviews. To generate the list, we sorted the courses in our database by the Bayesian average of their ratings, then removed courses with fewer reviews and courses that have been discontinued.
- The Top 100 List features courses from 53 universities in 18 countries.
- Three universities have 5 courses in the top 100
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
University of Sheffield (UK)
University of Cape Town (South Africa) - Three other universities have 4 courses in the top 100
- Stanford University (US)
University of Michigan (US)
University of Pennsylvania (US) - And six more universities have 3 courses in the top 100:
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Hong Kong)
Galileo University (Guatemala)
Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
University of Tasmania (Australia)
Monash University (Australia)
Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). - Coursera is the top course platform with 45 courses, followed by edX (24) and FutureLearn (17).
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