Ten Places to Find Free Technology Courses Online

1. The Open University, UK (open.ac.uk)

• Invention and Innovation: An Introduction
• Systems Engineering: Challenging Complexity
• Introduction to Polymers
• Digital Communications

Britain's Open University offers a wide variety of courses in technological matters. These classes include easy-to-follow text lectures and as many as 75 different pages featuring text, pictures, illustrations and interactive exercises. Email registration gains you access to student forums and formal quizzes.

2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit.edu)

• Sustainable Design and Technology Research Workshop
• Introduction to Building Technology
• Thermal Hydraulics in Power Technology
• Micro/Nano Processing Technology
• Introduction to the History of Technology

MIT's storied OpenCourseWare courses are based primarily on lecture notes in PDF format. Some courses include assignments and exams, while all boast an extensive reading list. Each course also provides the option to download materials for offline use.

3. Stanford University iTunes (stanford.edu)

• Podcasting
• Web Applications at Google
• Human-Computer Interaction Seminar

Stanford University offers a series of free lectures on technology through their Stanford iTunes project. Specific subjects include sensing technologies, the Facebook phenomenon, computer gaming and software development. Both audio and video files are offered. To take advantage of these classes you'll need the iTunes software, which is available for free here.

4. UC-Berkely iTunes (berkeley.edu)

• Robotics and Art in the Information Age
• The Future of Gadgets
• Commercial Applications of Wireless Sensors
• Advanced Digital Integrated Circuits
• Microelectronic Circuits
• Signals and Systems

These courses are in-depth introductions to some of the hottest topics in contemporary technology. They aren't for the time-strapped though; some courses include as many as 62 separate tracks, each of which may be up to an hour long.

5. Utah State University (usu.edu)

• Fluid Mechanics
• Uncertainty in Engineering Analysis

These free online courses offered by Utah State University include PDF slides, lecture notes and cool outside links to sites about bizarre boiling, surface tension and the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy. The notes and assignments can be very technical, so these courses aren't for beginners.

6. The Digital Education Network (actden.com)

• The Museum of Modern Technology

This cartoon-led course uses a variety of colorful characters and animations to introduce users to such modern necessities as operating systems, the Internet and Windows NT. This Microsoft-geared tutorial is for absolute neophytes, but there's hardly a friendlier introduction around.

7. Carnegie Mellon University (cmu.edu)

• Engineering Statics

This free online course from Carnegie Mellon University includes modules on subjects such as contacting bodies, force vectors and multi-force interactions. A registration option is offered that allows students to save their work. Several modules include interactive exercises so stimulating they're almost addictive.

8. University of Southern Queensland (usq.edu.au)

• Technology and Society

Rather than giving a technical overview into a specific technology, this interesting course examines the broad-scale effects of technology on society. Subjects examined include politics, power, the history of technology and sustainability. Expect to be faced with such unusual questions as 'Did hunter-gatherers live better lives than we do?'

9. The Tokyo Institute of Technology (titech.ac.jp)

• Advanced Signal Processing
• Mixed Signal Systems and Integrated Circuits
• Guided Wave Circuit Theory

These graduate-level courses are not for the faint of heart - students should already be familiar with terms like Fourier coefficient, vanishing derivatives and Chebyshev polynomial. The PDF-format lecture notes include colorful yet dense diagrams, and some courses feature actual tests.

10. Delft University of Technology, Netherlands (tudelft.nl)

• Methods and Algorithms for System Design
• Digital Signal Processing
• Digital Signal Processing

These videos are of lectures at Delft Technical University and are aimed at students with substantial prior knowledge. No registration is required. Each course includes handy course summaries, PDF course introductions and video components.