World’s top 5 platforms for free online courses

The novel coronavirus outbreak has stalled classes and examinations across the world. Students have to stay home following the closure of educational institutions. By now, educational institutions worldwide have launched online education for students. Many universities globally have turned the upcoming semesters either completely online or “hybrid”. It is the same for Bangladeshi students. Bangladeshi students have quite a lot free time on their hands right now.

Are you bored sitting at home? There are opportunities are at your fingertips now. You can sign up for world-class skill development courses using your mobile phone. And it is free of cost. There are many global platforms that offer free online courses for students and professionals to develop their skills. Here are five top online education platforms of the world.

Coursera is one of the richest and most handy online education sites. This platform has nearly 4,000 courses that cover nearly all topics related to skill development. This platform is now offering “free learning resources during COVID-19… for university and college students.”

Some of its courses are completely free while some charges nominal fees. According to its survey in 2019, “87 per cent of people learning for professional development report career benefits like getting a promotion, a raise, or starting a new career.”

edX. is a non-profit platform for open online courses created by Harvard and MIT. It is one of the most popular online education websites in the world.

“It hosts online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide student body”. Once you register, you have access to over 2,500 courses which are offered by 140 institutions globally. Some of the courses are completely free of charge.

Khan Academy is also a non-profit organisation that offers free education in mathematics, art, finance, history, economics and lectures on science disciplines including computer programming, physics and chemistry.

You can log in with the site using your gmail address or Facebook account, or creating a new account on the site.

Khan Academy is founded by American educator Salman Khan in 2008. Salman has been popular for his easy and creative learning modules. It is basically a lecture-based education platform which has so far “6,500 video lessons on the wide ranges of subjects.”

Stanford Online is an educational initiative operated by Stanford University. This platform offers completely free education on varied courses ranging from free mathematics, engineering, and arts & humanities courses. This site is more suitable for fresh graduate for developing their professional skills.

Codecademy is the best place for tech-savvy who want to learn coding since it offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages including Python, Java, SQL, C++. It has millions of users.

It is an interactive platform. Previously, it was completely free, but it has imposed charges on some classes of late.