Top 15 online learning platforms within your easy reach

Online education is a truly disruptive development that owes its birth and existence to the explosion of the Net. The Internet has facilitated the transmission and exchange of humungous loads of information across a multitude of mediums. When so much information could be sent across so many sources, the Internet’s utility and suitability to education was only to be expected.

Today, we have dozens, maybe even hundreds of companies from around the globe that specialize in this concept of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). What this medium does is that it broadcasts massive amounts of educational material across the Net from one geographical region to another with utmost ease. That is the felicity that information technology has enabled.

So, which are the top online learning platforms that you can enroll with to augment your learning in any area of your interest? Let us take a look at the top 15 online learning platforms within your easy reach:

Khan Academy: Another of the top 15 online course providers, Khan Academy is aimed at making the learning easy and fun. Its interface is attractive and easy to use. This, however, is only one of the reasons for its popularity. It brings together a large number of learners and experts for imparting its courses.

Simpliv: A platform for the widest learning across geographies, Simpliv is Fremont, CA-based. It prides itself on wanting to be not just another provider of online courses, but one which will make a difference to the education scenario around the world. It offers courses as varied as psychology and pottery, and photography and business management.

Udemy: A provider of literally thousands of courses is what Udemy can be described as. Udemy is firmly entrenched in its position among the top online video library platforms. After being rejected many times by investors initially, it today stands tall in the market. Udemy is a well-known provider of online courses that fit into every age group and every budget.

Alison: Alison may be considered the true forerunner of the many online providers, claiming that its business was born even before industry pundits coined the phrase MOOC. Ireland-based Alison facilitates interaction with many top universities around the world.

Coursera: If there is one trait that distinguishes Coursera from the rest of the players in the market, it is its credentials from major universities. Coursera’s pedigree allows it to do this, founded as it was by two professors from Stanford. One can hop into Coursera for taking up just about any topic of one’s interest.

Lynda: Lynda came into existence as early as the mid-1990’s in its early stages, with its founders, the husband-wife pair of Lynda Weinman and artist Bruce Heavin teaching animation and multimedia courses. It has come a long way from then, has now become a LinkedIn-owned company. With Microsoft buying LinkedIn, Lynda is now a Microsoft property.

FutureLearn: FutureLearn came into being in late 2012. Fully owned by the Open University in Milton Keynes, this learning platform has affiliations from dozens of universities and non-university learning platforms from across the UK and abroad. FutureLearn offers course certifications on learners’ tablets and smartphones.

EdX: A nonprofit course provider that offers courses in English, French, Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish from many universities through the open source, edX is a Harvard and MIT initiative. The many hundreds of courses it offers have found enrolments from around 15 million students worldwide.

Udacity: With the intention of making courses for the audacious student, which is how it styles itself, Udacity is now expanding from its formal, university-style education to the more vocational ones. It offers credits from the universities whose courses it brings to learners, and offers what it calls the “nanodegree” a term used to describe its courses for the entry level IT professional.

Open Culture: Open Culture is known primarily for the high number of free courses it offers. How does the company sustain itself then, you may ask. Well, some of its courses are charged. Movies, eBooks, language lessons and audio books constitute the course mediums from Open Culture.

Eliademy: Helsinki-based Eliademy has over 50,000 users, and is based on open source technologies. It facilitates discussion and task management on its platform to facilitate the learning. It is known for being an award-winning platform for education and is considered one of Europe’s fastest growing education companies.

The Saylor Academy: Its founding dating to 1999; the Saylor Academy is a provider that is known for its free offerings. It creates its courses by assembling materials from textbooks and other sources that are freely available on the Net. The Saylor Academy has more than 300 free courses that are tailored for those who study in college.

Stanford Online: With so many online platforms partnering with Stanford, it was only natural that this world-reputed university should have something of its own. Some of its courses that are not offered through its partnering platforms such as Coursera, Stanford Online offers. This may reduce the number and spread of its courses, but that is more than compensated by the ultra-high quality of its videos.

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative:  The Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, like Stanford Online, offers what is not offered by its partnership platforms. Nevertheless, there is something on offer for any enthusiastic learner of its courses.

TechChange: At TechChange, the learners get to understand and discuss social issues such as the media, public policy, social entrepreneurship and the like. Unlike many other MOOC providers who partner with universities and colleges; TechChange partners with peacebuilding missions and arms of the UN and other such bodies to offer online courses in subjects related to these areas.