a number of online courses available by email. Readers can select the courses they want and learn through course materials sent in the form of a newsletter. There are many subjects available; just search for your favorite topics on the About site. The Busy Cooks guide, for example, has a number of email courses about how to bake and the Credit Management guide offers a course entitled Rapid Debt Reduction. Just sign up for the classes you want, and they’ll show up in your inbox.

Brigham Young University has a number of online courses offered for credit to paying students, but they also offer free classes open to the general public. Although these classes do not offer the same amount of interaction as the Barnes and Noble courses, they have a nice set up and often provide useful information. One of the most common subjects offered is genealogy; BYU has quite a few courses specialized to help genealogists locate their personal family information. Also available are a number of religious courses.

Stanford University offers free lectures, interviews, and material avaliable for download on iTunes.

Free-ed.net offers a variety of courses that include materials completely online. Some even have free online textbooks. The Information Technology programs are some of the best and include step-by-step instructions on mastering computer skills.

The Small Business Administration provides dozens of links to course that teach you how to plan, start, and run a successful business.

The Teaching Company sells audio and video classes taught by top professors. However, if you sign up for their email newsletter, they will send you occasional free lectures that are yours to download.

Open Courseware

Open courseware programs are designed to give students around the world access to course materials actually used in university classrooms. Participating colleges post syllabi, assignments, calendars, lecture notes, readings, and other materials online making it easy for self-learners to study the topic on their own terms. Open courseware programs do not require registration or charge tuition. However, they also do not award credits or allow for interaction with a professor.

Want to take an MIT course for free? MIT’s open courseware program offers students around the world access to materials and assignments used in actual classrooms. More than 1,000 courses are currently available.

Tufts University also offers a handful of quality open courseware classes as does Utah State University and John Hopkins University.

More Free Online Courses

There are so many free online courses they can’t be listed in one place. To see more free online course, check out these subject-specific directories: