eLearning is becoming more and more popular, simply because people don’t have the time or in many cases the money to go to a traditional brick and mortar college.
Colleges are offering portions of their coursework for free online, as well as a number of other electronic learning tools to teach skills such as typing and resume building, skills that, once learned, can serve you for the rest of your life.
Here are the top 5 eLearning websites that you’re currently missing out on.
1. Khan Academy
The Khan Academy is one of the most well known sites for free electronic learning programs. The site hosts a variety of video based lessons to help users learn pretty much anything. While the courses are not credited like a college would be, users are still able to complete college coursework for free on their own time. The site is 100% free and non profit, and is able to continue offering free coursework thanks to a variety of investors who also believe that education should be free and available for everyone to participate in.
MIT is one of the most famous and well known colleges for those going into technological fields. Did you know that they offer almost all of their course work for free online? Users can find courses by searching for course name, course number, or simply by browsing through the various categories. Courses are available in multiple styles of format, including video lectures. Students can study everything from engineering to social services and everything in between all for free and from the comfort of their own home.
iTunes offers a number of video lectures for various colleges, including the prestigious Stanford University. Users can choose to either subscribe to all of the video lectures and podcasts that are published, or to simply download one or two lectures that they wish to listen to. This is provided for free, thanks to a variety of donations. The only requirement is that the user has to have an iTunes account and software. Stanford University is famous for its business management degree programs, and many of those courses are available though the iTunes website.
4. RataType
Touch typing is one of the most essential skills to learn, and should be taught starting in elementary school. Proper touch typing techniques are not hard to learn, and sites like RataType provide the tools to help even the slowest hunt and peck typist improve their skills. The site offers free typing test and tutors for typists of all skill levels, as well as a number of drills. Spend 30 minutes a day practicing your typing skills and you’ll see a marked improvement in a matter of weeks. The average adult typist can manage about 40 words per minute. The best typist in the world set the current world record at 216 words per minute. That may seem an like an unattainable goal, but even the slowest typists can easily reach a sustainable 60-70 words per minute with no more than a few weeks of practice.
5. Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
Another well known name in universities, Carnegie Mellon also offers a free eLearning system. It offers free courses online to anyone who wants to learn. The idea came from taking the university’s specialized cognitive tutoring and incorporating it into a number of free courses designed to help people who don’t have the means or the time to go visit a traditional college. It was initially launched using a government grant and has been sustained by a number of investments and donations from a number of patrons.
While none of these programs are considered accredited, the sites offer an enormous variety of courses for anything that anyone may wish to learn. Many of them do offer completion certificates that can be included with resumes or job applications. Albert Einstein once said “The day you stop learning, you start dying.” All of these eLearning websites, and the hundreds more that are not listed here, are ideal for staving off that little death for just a while longer. Even if it’s not in your chosen field, you can spend time learning just for the sake of learning.
