If dual enrollment isn’t in your high schooler’s future but you’d still like your teen to take college classes, free college online could be the ticket. At least a dozen major universities now offer “open” courses to the public — free. These are actual college lectures from major colleges and universities that are recorded and made available online, available with no obligation whatsoever, to anyone with an interest and a high-speed Internet connection.
Imagine being able to have your high schooler sit in on a History of Art class at Yale, a Psychology course at UCLA or a Chemical Engineering class at MIT. Using open courseware, this is now a reality.
Perhaps you’re wondering how these courses might be used for homeschooling. Offering advanced high school credit is one way. For instance, just like you’d weight an AP or honors course more than a traditional high school course, you can weight the college course when applying it to the GPA.
Using the courses to supplement some other learning going on at home is another way. For instance, studying a topic at home and then sitting in on as many of the college lectures as needed to reinforce learning or satisfy whatever remaining credit hours you require.
Gauging interest is a third option. One never knows when a spark of interest may ignite. Watching online college lectures can help teens learn more about different areas and think about if these courses/careers might have a place in their future.
Lastly, there is great intrinsic value here. Like anything else, students of all ages can watch just because they want to. Whether one completes an entire course or just a sampling of lectures offered by a variety of different lecturers, the opportunities for learning are endless — and don’t forget, free.
Begin with these links and find others on your own:
Thank you so much for this. This will really help me expand my self-teaching abilities.
Excellent, Vanessa! Feel free to check back and let us know how it works out 🙂 Best wishes!
Im in seventh grade and want to take college classe like algebra and nursing can i do that here? And im not home schooled and will do this after my regular school when i get home
i want to have online learning so i can get more high school education experiance because i don’t want to go to college.
Hey, uhmmmm. I’m not homeschooled. And i’m kinda sorta still in 8th grade. However, i really want to take some beginning law OR Psychology courses if that’s possible. I just haven’t really been able to find anything because of my age. I just wanted to know if that’s a problem here.
Thanks(:
Haha, just kidding. Sorry ! I misunderstood what the website was ! Pardon Me !
is there anyway we could get college credits, lfrom taking these open courses
Absolutely! It may depend on your location, the specific course and the institution, of course, but there are many ways to earn actual credit while in high school. Dual enrollment in high school, CLEP in college, and applying for un-college type experiences, just to name a few. If this is something you’d like to pursue, feel free to email us privately, and we’ll point you in the right direction 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
Hi I am in the seventh grade but Know how to program in C++, Batch and am learning Java. I also do 3d motion graphics, and video edit I was wondering if you could tell me how to get college credit if I took some of these classes
i want to learn more about health
Im in seventh grade and want to take college classe like algebra and nursing can i do that here? And im not home schooled and will do this after my regular school when i get home
Hey I’m in high school in the 11th grade and want to take classes for a CNA
i’m in seventh grade and i was wondering if there were any writing courses or something here that i could take. thanks 😀
Hi Missy! There aren’t any writing courses here on this site, but you can find a list of some courses to try in this post, hope it helps! Good luck 🙂 http://marieclairemoreau.com/2012/11/writing-instruction/
I’m in 7th grade. I was wondering if there were any criminal justice courses that I could take…