Free online courses for engineering are intended to be used as students’ supplementary study materials. Thanks to these free resources, you don’t have to spend extra money to complete your studies.
Courses
Engineering universities offer a wide selection of courses students can choose from. A single school may offer environmental, chemical, civil and electrical engineering. There are also schools for biological, nuclear science engineering and computer science engineering.
Free courses help students learn some of the more complex topics covered in these classes. There are resources for both graduate and undergraduate levels. Most of them focus on mechanical, environmental and civil engineering. But there are study materials for the other fields too.
These resources are provided by universities and other organizations. Most of them focus on popular topics. You can now study offshore engineering, bioengineering and petroleum engineering at no cost. Course information concentrate on machines related to engineering. The subjects center on their built, design and maintenance. Students also become familiar with the equipment and tools used in the industry.
Features
Even though they are free, most of these sites are updated on a regular basis. Although they do not constitute any formal education, the information is accurate. These can be used for supplementary research and for personal enrichment. A lot of these courses are offered via the OpenCourseWare program. They cover all the popular engineering programs as well as other less known disciplines.
These websites use various course materials. Most are comprised of text, images and some videos. In many universities, only select courses are available during a semester. In free sites, the topics are accessible any time. Aside from reading materials, other files may be downloaded as mp3 and used with any music player. Other files are in PDF format.
Other Information
There are Interdisciplinary and specialized fields which are offered by engineering colleges. Among these are industrial engineering, applied engineering, mechatronics and agricultural engineering.
Each of the major engineering topics has several sub-disciplines. In chemical engineering, these include materials, process and molecular engineering. Many of these can be studied online at no cost to the student.
There are free resources on energy, building services engineering and many others. Lab experiments and hands-on training are included in paid courses. Often these are not available in free sites.
Free online courses for engineering cannot replace formal schooling. But the wealth of information they provide can make a huge difference down the line.