Online Alternative Education Opportunities

Goodwill Services provides online training. It includes basic literacy skills, as well as Microsoft Office Suite training (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access). You can earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for class completion and receive feedback from an online instructor. If you don't need CEUs, you can simply do some self-study. Both options are free!

For a nominal fee, you could take the College Level Examination Placement (CLEP) test in your area of expertise to earn college credit and save time.

A low-cost way to accelerate degree completion by demonstrating that the knowledge you have is at the college level - If you have experience at work, through job training, volunteer activity, civic duty, or independent study, you may be able to earn college credit from that knowledge. The portfolio you create is evaluated by faculty experts and recommendations are accepted at over 90 colleges nationwide. Learning Counts is sponsored by the Council of Adult & Experiential Learning (CAEL).

This library links to open courseware, broadcast learning, educational video, archives, lecture webcasts and podcasts from a range of colleges, and scholarly journals.

MIT offers 1,800 free lecture notes, exams, and videos in a variety of subjects, along with supplemental resources on their OpenCourseWare.

UC Berkeley presents free podcasts and webcasts of its current and archived courses.

Carnegie Mellon University provides free online courses and course material in modern biology, French, economics, chemistry, and other subjects through the Open Learning Initiative.

The foundation's website for teacher professional development offers streaming video and course materials in a variety of subjects.

Hippocampus was created by the Monterey Institute of Technology and Education and contains multimedia lessons and course materials.

Alison provides free online education for learners world-wide. If you're an instructor, you can publish your course curriculum. It offers training certifications, too. The only downside is that after you load each page of content, you will see an advertisement; however, for a small annual fee, you can learn without the advertisements.