Top Five Online Courses Academies | All you need to know about, how to learning something online | Courses and Websites.

There are several easily accessible (and mostly free) avenues for you to take when it comes to learning the skills you've selected for yourself . There are of course ,ways to find out about offline courses in universities like IGNOU's unusual creative courses. But if you feel like sitting at home and learning at your own pace, here are a few ideas for you.

If you are going to turn towards the Internet to start your learning journey than MOOCs are something you will be interested in.

What is MOOC ?
An MOOC is a Massive Online Course. It is a course aimed at open access via the web, leading to unlimited participation . Basically it is a course that can be taken anywhere and by anybody. The prerequisites remain limited to subject knowledge rather than entrance tests or scores. Built on the foundation of existing online courses,it is an entirely different take on distance learning. Students and professionals can affordably learn new skills and earn degrees adding significant weight to their portfolios. MOOCs are the start of the most revolutionary phase of higher education.


The rise of MOOCs
MOOCs came into being when Stanford's computer sceince professor Sebastian Thrun made his artificial intelligence course freely available to all online. Since then , with the participation of many universities , the online started replacing the offline .Even students already enrolled in universities prefer to watch their lectures and submit their assignments online. 
Many elite universities like Princeton,Harvard,MIT ,Caltech are embracing MOOCs in a big way. These brands seem to cement the quality of learning associated with a MOOC. People are ensured of a rock solid curriculum and well explained lectures. They only need to put in the learning effort.

MOOC programmes out there 
  
Khan Academy

 It is an interesting place to rummage for interesting things to learn online. It has a vast collection of lectures and talks on subjects ranging from comic books to cooking and everything under the sun .Sometimes you end uo finding things you would have never considered learning but end up finding things you would never considered learning, but it is interesting in itself. The online teaching website set up by Salman Khan has risen since its inception back in 2006.It's primary method of teaching entails 'micro lectures' on YouTube explaining facets of any subject ranging from civil sciences to basic mathematics. It's a great resource for learning about academic subjects or improving your knowledge of a particular specialised segment of any subject.

Coursera

Coursera was created by two Stanford Professors , Andrew Ng and  Daphne Koller. They firmly beleive that education should be a right ,not a privelege. It's an online e-learing website that has resources spanning form Berkeley College of Music and USC to the universities of Taiwan and Amsterdam . The website hunts down reputed teachers across the globe for online courses on practically anything under the sun. Coursera follows up their courses with legitimate certificates of merits if the participants have done well in course. Some of the courses are available for free.

edX

edX is the completely not for the profit open source learning platform launched bu the Massachussets Institute of Technology and Harvard University. More than 70 schools, nonprofit organizations, and corporations offer or plan to offer courses on the edX website.


Udemy

Udemy has over 4,000 courses which you can register for by paying a nominal fee of $1.99 ( ₹ 1,230 aaprox) per course. The instructors recieve a cut of the fee .Courses range from yoga to photography.
Well there are many free courses also.

Udacity

Udacity's learning concept is slightly different from the other MOOCs .They promote intellectual engagement and problem solving through their programmes. Their focus is on math, science, technology , and egineering ubjects .They offer nanodegrees . The programmes are divided into beginning ,intermediate and expert levels.