Learn at Home with the Masters
Have you ever wanted to learn a foreign language, master a new skill, try your hand at coding, or boost your professional expertise? Now you can study virtually with Harvard and MIT professors, take a design class from Kelly Werstler, gain insights from Bill Gates, or explore astrophysics with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, all from the comfort of home. Online platforms like MasterClass, Coursera and edX offer a vast array of courses taught by world-class instructors and experts in their field. Some institutions and apps offer degrees and certifications, and many are free. Whether you’re working from home or just spending more time in, now’s the perfect opportunity to expand your horizons and learn at home with the masters.
MasterClass is an online education platform where students can access tutorials and lectures pre-recorded by 80 + renowned experts in their respective fields. Categories include business, politics & society, science, design & photography, arts & entertainment, culinary arts, sports & games, and more. Instructors are a veritable who’s who of some today’s greatest luminaries such as Anna Wintour, Kelly Wearstler, Annie Leibovitz, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Malcolm Gladwell, Bob Iger, Gordon Ramsey, Frank Gehry, Diane Von Furstenberg, Martin Scorsese, Carlos Santana, and Serena Williams, to name a few. MasterClass currently has a special offer – buy one annual MasterClass and share one free. Classes are available anywhere, anytime on all your devices.
Class Central is a search engine and reviews site for free online courses popularly known as MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses. Discover thousands of free online courses from top universities around the world, including the eight Ivy League schools – Brown, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale, the Columbia universities, and the University of Pennsylvania. HERE are 450 Ivy League Courses you can take online right now for free.
Coursera is an online learning platform founded in 2012 by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller that offers massive open online courses (MOOC), specializations, and degrees. Every course on Coursera is taught by top instructors from world-class universities and companies, so you can learn something new anytime, anywhere. Hundreds of free courses give you access to on-demand video lectures, homework exercises, and community discussion forums. Paid courses provide additional quizzes and projects as well as a Course Certificate upon completion. Coursera collaborates with 190 leading universities and companies including CalArts, Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University, Georgia Tech, Stanford University, IBM, Amazon, Google, Johns Hopkins, and more.
freeCodeCamp is a nonprofit community that helps you learn to code by building projects. You’ll learn to code by completing coding challenges and building projects. You can also earn verified certifications along the way. Each certification takes around 300 hours of dedicated learning. These certifications are completely self-paced, so take as long as you need. Every aspect of freeCodeCamp is 100% free.
Learn a new language for free with Duolingo. You can learn online or with their easy-to-use app. The bite-size lessons feel more like a game than a textbook, and that’s by design: Learning is easier when you’re having fun. But Duolingo isn’t just a game. It’s based on a methodology proven to foster long-term retention and a curriculum aligned to an international standard. Lessons focus on a real-life goal – for instance, ordering at a restaurant, going to the bank, home life, or travel. Learners develop the vocabulary and grammar needed to achieve that goal through varied practice in reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
Free online courses from edXEdX is a non-profit created by founding partners Harvard and MIT, bringing the best of higher education to students around the world. EdX offers MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and interactive online classes in subjects including law, history, science, engineering, business, social sciences, computer science, public health, and artificial intelligence (AI).
Discover 3300+ talks to stir your curiosity. TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics – from science to business to global issues – in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.
Google Arts & Culture offers a treasure trove of free learning content including natural history, science, music, fashion, food, and technology from around the world. You can also unlock culture at home with machine learning. The Google Arts & Cultural Lab in Paris has been experimenting with how AI can be used for the benefit of culture. Each of these experimental applications runs AI algorithms in the background to let you unearth cultural connections hidden in archives – and even find artworks that match your home decor.
Photo credits:
Photo #1: edX
Photo #2: MasterClass
Photo #3: Class Central
Photo #4: Coursera
Photo #5: freeCodeCamp
Photo #6: Duolingo
Photo #7: edX
Photo #8: TED Talks
Photo #9: Google Arts & Culture