If you are one of those who wants to take advantage of the season to learn a new skill without having to pay anything, at Genbeta we are always sharing some of the best free online courses offered by the web so that take your education in your own hands.
This time we are going to list some of the best free college courses from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, courses that you can start as soon as you want and take at your own pace.
Programming for everyone (starting with Python)
This is one of the most popular programming courses ever. Taught by the University of Michigan and fully translated into Spanish in 2019, the course offers all the basics for a beginner without any prior knowledge to be able to learn programming.
The course, available for free on the edX platform, has no prerequisites and avoids everything but the simplest math. Anyone with moderate computer experience should be able to master the materials.
An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python
This is a RICE University course With thousands of positive reviews on Coursera, it is one of the most popular and top-rated on the platform. It has two parts and you can take it at your own pace to start when you want.
It is designed to help students with little or no computer experience learn the fundamentals of building applications simple interactive. The course is in English and offers subtitles in Spanish.
Introduction to Deep Learning
At the beginning of 2021, MIT launched a new edition of its free online introductory course to Deep Learning. Now all the materials, both the videos of the classes and the presentations, are openly available on the official website of MIT 6.S191.
Unlike the previous one, this course does need a student with at least previous knowledge in the field of calculus and linear algebra. The material is completely in English, and addresses aspects of deep learning such as computer vision or natural language processing, through reinforcement learning, generative models or the uses of deep learning in the field of life sciences.
Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python
This is a famous MIT course that serves as a great introduction to computer science and programming. This course is the first in a sequence of two courses: Introduction to Computer Science and Python Programming, and Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science.
Together, these two courses are designed to help people without prior exposure to these topics to learn to think computationally and write useful programs to deal with problems. The course is completely in English.
Machine learning
Another extremely popular course that millions of Coursera users have signed up for. Taught by the prestigious Stanford University, the course provides a broad introduction to the machine learning, data mining and statistical pattern recognition.
Topics include: (i) Supervised learning (parametric / non-parametric algorithms, support vector machines, kernels, neural networks). (ii) Unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, recommender systems, deep learning). (iii) Best practices in machine learning (bias / variance theory; innovation process in machine learning and AI). All material is available in English.
Introduction to Java Programming: Writing Good Code
A introductory course at the Carlos III University of Madrid, designed to learn to program in Java and write good code in this language. The course will introduce the basic principles of software engineering to facilitate code reuse.
In addition, ethical issues and the intellectual property of our programs will be addressed, and examples and practical case studies will be provided so that students can implement simple, but increasingly complex programs in Java.
Search the Internet
A very useful course at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in which you will learn to plan a search from the beginning, and to use the various tools that the Internet puts at your fingertips so that you can find what you need.
You do not need more than basic knowledge of Internet browsing and all the content is in Spanish. You will use everything from tools to search for videos, images, to royalty-free content and institutional information, among other things.
Personal finance
A course at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to which almost half a million users have registered and which has extremely positive ratings. It is completely in Spanish.
It is a course that offers students the tools that will allow them to carry out personal financial planning and understand the need to safeguard their wealth and financial resources, as well as the minimum requirements that must be considered to make good financial decisions.
Chinese for Beginners
To finish we are going to leave one of the most popular and best valued language courses, the Chinese course for beginners from Peking University. It is a course in English, although it offers subtitles in Spanish.
After taking the classes you should have a basic understanding of Mandarin Chinese and have basic conversations of everyday life, such as exchanging personal information, talking about daily preparations and food, asking prices, talking about the city and the weather, telling about your hobbies, etc.