Is your agency’s training budget lean this year? Want to brush up on a few skills without having to shell out major bucks on your own? Check out these free resources below – a mix of my personal faves and some I haven’t used personally, but look promising. Then let me know in the comments where you’ve discovered great online training.
Free Online Courses and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses):
(Learn more about MOOCs here)
- Academic Earth has a collection of free online college courses from top universities.
Coursera
- Coursera partners with universities and organizations to offer free online courses which range from business and computer science to law and statistics.
- edX offers interactive online classes and MOOCs from the world’s best universities, colleges and organizations.
- Open Education Consortium aims to further openly shared educational resources, meaning access to the resources, but also the ability to modify and use materials so education can be personalized to individual users.
Webinars, Modules, etc.:
- GovLoop provides live and archived webinars all aimed at helping you do your government job better. This includes topics like technology, communication, human resources, career development, and lots more. GovLoop also just launched GovLoop Academy. GovLoop Academy is an evolution of GovLoop’s growth to inspire public sector professionals to better service as the knowledge network for government. GovLoop Academy transforms learning for government with highly relevant, free and engaging learning experiences.
- Khan Academy offers a combination of practice exercises and instructional videos for learning a range of subjects including math, science, economics, humanities, computing, and even test prep.
Khan Academy
- Open Culture curates cultural and educational media across the web and centralizes on one website.
- DigitalGov University provides webinars and in-person events highlighting innovations, case studies, tools, and resources all in the area of digital government.
- ASPE posts free live and recorded web seminars providing insights on next generation technology innovation.
- Mind Tools offers articles and assessments aimed at enhancing a range of career skills including strategy tools, decision making, and team management.
What’s missing? Let me know in the comments what free online training resources you’ve found to support your professional development.
Christine McMahon is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.
Thanks for helping fill up a new folder in my bookmark list, Christine! To add on, anyone looking for some awesome technical/programming courses should check out teamtreehouse.com (paid) and codeacademy.com (free).
These are great adds; thanks, Jamie! Code.org is a pretty coding tutorial also- it may look like it’s for kids, but don’t be fooled- it’s a fun way to be introduced to coding! And Lynda.com is a great paid resource as well for technical courses. I hadn’t heard of teamtreehouse.com so I’m adding to my list as well. Thanks!
Don’t forget Udemy or Skillshare!
This is a great list and I personally love the courses on edX a lot. I feel like we’re at an interesting time in the educational space and I’m VERY glad to be able to witness it, and potentially even reap the benefits. Great post!
Thanks, Tommy! I echo your observation about it being an interesting time in the educational space- free resources seem to be popping up all the time- including the recent launch of GovLoop Academy (https://academy.govloop.com). Thanks for mentioning Udemy and Skillshare – great adds to the list!!