8000+ OpenCourseWare Courses from Top Institutions

Curated collection of thousands of open educational resources from MIT, Stanford, Yale, and more.

Heba Ledwon, Rui Ma, Manoel Cortes Mendez & Pat Bowden

Sep 23rd, 2024

Twenty years ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) set itself the ambitious goal of making the bulk of their courses available online to learners worldwide. On April 4th, 2001, MIT announced they’d published core educational materials for free through their MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) platform.

Soon, other universities joined in by sharing Open Education Resources (OER) on their university websites, including the Open University, as reported by Class Central: 1000 Open University Free Certificates.

“The idea is simple: to publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone.” Dick K.P. Yue, Professor, MIT School of Engineering.

A decade later, Harvard and MIT launched the course platform edX. Online course platforms typically offer more interactive learning experiences than OCW platforms, often allowing students to sign up, complete assignments, interact with peers, review courses, and earn badges or certificates of completion.

MIT OpenCourseWare classic look, before its refresh in 2022

Class Central has been monitoring the development of the modern online course movement for more than a decade. Nowadays some of the course content may be locked behind a paywall. OCW platforms, by contrast, give educators an opportunity to freely share high quality educational resources, and also leverage them in their own courses.

So we did some research and compiled the following list of OCW platforms launched by institutions worldwide. They offer some of the best teaching and learning materials available for free online.

Some of these institutions are members of Open Education Global, which has more than 200 member organizations and 220 open educators.

If you find an important source missing, please leave a comment below. We’d be happy to include it in our compilation.

Quick Links

For your convenience, we’ve listed all the institutions that maintain an OpenCourseWare platform below. Click to jump to the corresponding section:

MIT
Stanford
Yale
Open University
NPTEL
University of Michigan
Carnegie Mellon University
TU Delft
Utah State University
UC Irvine
NTHU
NTU
NYCU
University of Tsukuba
METU
Hanyang University
UTokyo
Kyoto

More Courses

If you don’t find what you need in the course list below, browse Class Central’s catalog of 250K courses or visit our thematic collections:

OpenCourseWare (OCW) Courses

2500+ MIT Free Online Courses

Launched in 2001, MIT OpenCourseWare offers more than 2,500 courses and resources, provided on their website, which was refreshed in 2022, and on their YouTube channel, which has over 450M views. These courses cover a wide variety of subjects both at the undergraduate and graduate level. The platform’s most popular courses list is updated each month. More learning resources can be found in the MIT Open Learning Library.

Here’s a selection of MIT OpenCourseWare courses:

Aircraft Systems Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(121)
Artificial Intelligence from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(74)
Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science I from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(40)
Circuits and Electronics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(38)
Computer Systems Security from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★☆(35)
Fundamentals of Photovoltaics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(29)
Private Pilot Ground School from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(28)
Introduction to Algorithms from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(21)
Cryptocurrency Engineering and Design from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(18)
Principles of Digital Communications I from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ★★★★★(14)

150+ Stanford Free Online Courses

Stanford Engineering Everywhere homepage

Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) provides free access to full course materials of popular courses in Engineering. With its Creative Commons license, it allows educators to use Stanford engineering course materials in their own classrooms.

Most of Stanford’s on-campus computer science courses have a companion website. Many are only open to Stanford students. But others are open to everyone, giving access to course materials such as slides, readings, and assignments. Some even provide video lessons — for instance: CS110, CS221, CS229, CS231n, and CS224N.

Class Central has collected 150+ Stanford on-campus courses that are available online.

Stanford Online offers a catalog of extended education, including paid professional certificates, degrees, and free content. Its Youtube channel Stanford Online offers 2.5K videos, including info sessions, webinars, seminars, and courses. The courses include:

40 Yale Free Online Courses

Since 2007, Open Yale Courses (OYC) provides selected lectures and other learning materials from Yale College courses, free of charge. Millions of learners from around the world have watched them on the OYC website, and through YouTube and iTunes U. Yale’s YouTube channel has accumulated over 169M views. The courses offered include:

1000 Open University Free Online Courses

The Open University offers 1000 free online courses via their OpenLearn platform. And unlike some other institutions, these include free certificates of completion, or sometimes, badges.

OpenLearn takes the form of a catalog of open educational resources (OER), including articles, podcasts, videos, and of course, full-fledged online courses.

Here are some popular courses you can take on OpenLearn:

Introduction to cyber security: stay safe online from The Open University ★★★★☆(13)
Learning to teach: mentoring and tutoring student teachers from The Open University ★★★★★(9)
Developing your skills as an HR professional from The Open University ★★★★☆(8)
Sure, I know how to talk to people! from The Open University ★★★★★(8)
Forensic science and fingerprints from The Open University ★★★★☆(8)
IT in everyday life from The Open University ★★★★★(8)
Information security from The Open University ★★★★★(7)
Introduction to child psychology from The Open University ★★★★★(6)
Project governance and Project Management Office (PMO) from The Open University ★★★★★(6)
Supply chain sustainability from The Open University ★★★★★(6)

3000+ NPTEL Free Online Courses

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is an online learning repository initiated by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Guwahati and Roorkee) along with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2003.

It provides free access to over 2,300 courses in engineering, basic sciences, and selected humanities, social science, and medicine.

The videos of these courses can also be found on their YouTube channel, which since 2007 have accumulated 455M views, making NPTEL one of the most popular OCW resources on the planet. Their courses include:

150+ Michigan Free Online Courses

Open Michigan is the home for all things open at the University of Michigan, including Open Educational Resources. Learners are free to access a range of course materials, PDFs, videos, lectures licensed under Creative Common. Courses include:

36 Carnegie Mellon University Free Online Courses

Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative courses

The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) provides textbook-replacement courseware in some of the domains of research of Carnegie Mellon University. Most of them are paid (albeit often reasonably priced), but some are entirely free. There are 57 courses, including:

250+ TU Delft Free Online Courses

TU Delft launched its OpenCourseWare (OCW) website with three master’s degree programs: Water Management, Micro-electronics, and Offshore Engineering in October 2007. Today, they offer 250+ courses. These include:

40+ Utah State University Free Online Courses

USU’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) provides open access to educational resources in Engineering, Education, and other subjects. The latest material is from 2008 and the lectures are audio recordings. It does allow reuse. Courses include:

20+ University of California Irvine Free Online Courses

UC Irvine launched its OpenCourseWare in November 2006 and posts lectures on its YouTube channel. Courses include:

190+ NTHU Free Online Courses

National Tsing Hua University is a research university in Hsinchu City, Taiwan. They host nearly 200 courses in Chinese language on their OCW platform. The videos are also uploaded on their YouTube channel which since 2008 has received 12M views.

It is one of the rare OCW platforms still creating and uploading new content. You can switch between Chinese and English to browse the course information and most video lectures are taught in Chinese. Courses include:

270+ NTU Free Online Courses

National Taiwan University (NTU) is one of the most prestigious universities in Taiwan. NTU OCW now offers 270+ courses in traditional Chinese language on the website and some course videos are also on its Youtube channel. 5 new courses were launched in 2024. The 10 most popular courses on the platform have more than 16M views.

220+ NYCU Free Online Courses

National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) is a national university in Taiwan. NYCU OCW hosts 220 courses on its website and videos are also available on YouTube. As far as we can tell, the courses are mostly in the Chinese language. NYCU OCW Youtube channel has garnered 28M views since 2012.

50+ University of Tsukuba Free Online Courses

The University of Tsukuba, located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, is one of the prestigious national universities established by the Japanese Government. Tsubaka OCW offers a number of courses and lecture videos in the field of Maths, Psychology, Physics, and many others. The videos are hosted on their YouTube channel which since 2013 has accumulated 1.5M views.

200 METU Free Online Courses

Middle East Technical University (METU) is a public technical university located in Ankara, Turkey. METU OpenCourseWare offers ~200 courses in Turkish and English. The videos are hosted on its YouTube channel which since 2013 has received 3M views.

140 Hanyang University Free Online Courses

Hanyang University is a private research university in South Korea. Their OCW Platform hosts 140 courses in Korean and English. Their YouTube channel has received 8M views since 2008.

140+ UTokyo Free Online Courses

The University of Tokyo is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. On their OCW platform, they offer 140+ courses in the Japanese Language. In 2018, they launched a Youtube channel which has since then accumulated 900k views.

60+ Kyoto University Free Online Courses

Kyoto University OpenCourseWare (OCW) actively publishes and publicly shares the videos and materials from the courses, open lectures, and international symposiums at Kyoto University. They offer 60+ courses, but also keep uploading lectures to their YouTube channel, which since 2008 has accumulated over 27M views.

Heba Ledwon

Heba was the Business Development and Partnerships Specialist at Class Central. She worked closely with businesses and universities to provide the most possible value for the Class Central community.

Rui Ma

With a background in Health Statistics and Sociology, she has built a career path in Data Analytics.

Manoel Cortes Mendez

Software engineer and online graduate student in computer science passionate about education, technology, and their intersection.

Pat Bowden

Online learning specialist, still learning after 200+ online courses completed since 2012. Class Central customer support and help since 2018. I am keen to help others make the most of online learning, so I set up a website: www.onlinelearningsuccess.org

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