5 top universities offering free courses online

You may not have made it into Harvard or Cambridge, but that does not mean that you cannot see what the lectures are like there.

Top universities across the world offer open courseware and podcasts that include lectures, course notes and simulations.

Please note that these lectures are only for your learning and no credit points will granted by the university.

Here are our picks:

#1 University of California, Berkeley

Website: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/series.html

What you learn: Popular courses include Integrative Biology, Google & Life (by Sergey Brin) and Introduction to Non-violence.

Other courses include Electrical Engineering, Economics and Education. There is an extensive list of courses.

Software required: Media player classic

# 2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Website: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/

What you learn: Courses include Aeronautics, Health Sciences, Mechanical Engineering and Nuclear Science.

You can also watch lectures on History, Anthropology and Foreign Languages. Only selected lectures are available online. There are also a lot of lectures available only on pdf.

Software required: FoxIt Reader for pdf files

#3 Harvard Medical School

Website: http://mycourses.med.harvard.edu/public/

What you learn: Watch simulations of surgeries or go through course material. There are lectures that can also be viewed.

# 4 Carnegie Mellon University

Website: http://oli.cmu.edu/

What you learn: There are 18 free courses with an emphasis on Science. Units include Computing, Engineering, Chemistry and Biology.

There are also two units on French and American English speech.

CMU’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) does not require registration.

# 5 Cambridge University

Website: http://sms.cam.ac.uk/

What you learn: Videos on a range of subjects from Mathematical Modelling to Computer Science, Education and Entrepreneurship.

There are also videos on the Architecture in Cambridge and how Angels and Demons are portrayed in Eastern and Western cultures. Let us know if you have any sites that you visit in the comment box.

Indiancolleges.com / Sudakshina Ghosh