Free College Courses Put Money Back In Your Wallet
Written by Admin on November 26th, 2010Free college courses can give students a better feel for what traditional and online college and university courses are about. In addition to providing insight into a variety of subject areas, they demonstrate the different technologies that help bring college, university and technical school studies to life. Free college courses are available online – and “sitting in” on them allows for reading about subjects, listening to audio narrations and watching video lectures.
Online college and university courses and online degree programs themselves are often associated with a flexibility that allows students to schedule studies on their own time. Course work can be obtained and projects filed from wherever students have Internet access and whenever they schedule time. Online college and university programs aren’t the only courses with websites, however. Many traditional courses have websites as well. This lets students get their full value out of the college degree.
With online college and university courses, students can interact with classmates and their instructors via message boards and they receive feedback on course work they submit. That’s not the case with many of the free online courses. In free college courses, students usually don’t earn academic credit either.
Free college courses do introduce students to college, university and technical school instructors and subject areas. They come in a variety of formats, some primarily text and photographs. Still others rely also on text, video and audio. This is just another way the universities are guaranteeing that students are satisfied with their free college info.
Free college courses are often referred to as “OpenCourseWare,” and there are many of them are available online – many from well-known institutions as well. Some free college courses are provided in their entirety. Others provide highlights of what students who have enrolled in online college, university and technical school programs have enjoyed.
A University of Notre Dame architecture course on Nature and the Built Environment, for example, includes assigned readings from textbooks such “Nature and the Idea of a Man-Made World,” which was written by Norman Crowe, the course professor. The University of California-Irvine’s free college courses cover areas such as health sciences and allow for accessing medical course materials such as a Bristol-Myers Squibb video lecture on immunology. In addition to video lectures and web and textbook readings, some free college courses include lecture notes and assignments.
Adult students particularly might be able to earn academic credit for their life experiences, and Kaplan University’s free college courses toward this end offer some level of interactivity. Students exploring Kaplan University’s portfolio development course are able to view a slide show explaining the course. Answering a series of questions, they can determine whether they’re prospective candidates for the course.
Many people are going back to school to brush up on skills and train for new careers. Students who take part in a free college education might become more comfortable with, even excited about, the idea of going back to school. Once they learn about the scholarships and grants for new and returning students, they might even decide to pursue distance studies at a specific college, university or technical school. Students would be remiss to not take advantage of their accredited college degree just waiting for them.
Tags: college degree, degree, online degree
