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5 Universities with Free Online Electrical Engineering Courses

Learn about electrical engineering with these free online courses. See the full list of free electrical engineering courses and find the course that's right for you.

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Free Online Course Information and Requirements

Students interested in free online electrical engineering courses find that materials like handouts, problem sets and lecture notes are often available as PDF files. Courses may also offer instruction via recorded video lectures. Free online electrical engineering courses cover topics ranging from circuit design and probability theory to mathematical operations and product testing.

In addition to the multimedia software required to access these materials, students may need to download specific software programs before beginning some courses. Prior knowledge of physics, probability and mathematics is also useful to prospective electrical engineering students. Courses are not offered for credit and students' work is not graded. Read on to learn about five universities offering these free, online classes.

Delft University of Technology

This course is part of the school's OpenCourseWare (OCW) project. It uses lectures, course documents, videos and exams (with solutions) to educate students on voltages, translinear circuits, oscillators and structured synthesis. Students have access to 10 lectures in video format. Course documents include prerequisite, reference and source materiasl.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science course teaches students the fundamentals of electrical engineering by exposing them to controller and circuit design for robots. A familiarity with physics and mathematics is necessary to understand the required reading materials and lecture notes. Students need to have experience with the Python programming language, which is used to complete many of the lab projects; however, the course also offers a Python tutorial. In the Introduction to Electronics, Signals and Measurement course, students gain hands-on knowledge of transducers, frequency domain, capacitors and frequency response through PDF lecture notes, assignments, labs and exams.

Using video lectures, assignments and exams (with no solutions), students learn to understand basic circuit analysis method, digital abstraction and small signal circuits in the Circuits and Electronics course. Modeling of microelectronics, relation of electrical behavior, development of circuit models, integrated circuits and model limitations are the focus of Microelectronic Devices and Circuits. Lecture notes, tutorials, assignments without solutions and project descriptions are available. Students are encouraged to purchase the textbook used for this course. The course Solid-State Circuits provides students with assignments and exams, as well as a complete set of 26 recitation notes. This graduate course focuses on the methods and tools used to design and estimate circuits and future devices, such as device physics, transistor biasing, device modeling and charge controls.

Stanford University

This electrical engineering course examines the Fourier transform and its applications. Recorded video lectures cover such topics as Fourier coefficients, the central limit theorem and infinite sums. Class handouts and exam questions are included in this course, as are problem sets and their corresponding answers. Students can choose which documents to download and study.

University of California, Berkeley

Online students have access to 26 video lectures related to electrical engineering on the school's YouTube channel. The domain for this course is digital integrated circuits. Course topics include design metrics, switch logic, complex logic, wires, transistors and transistor capacitors.

Utah State University

Discrete-time systems, signal building blocks and samples are a few of the topics explored in the Signals and Systems class. In addition to HTML and PDF lectures, students have access to homework and assignments. MATLAB software is required to complete the Communication Systems course, which requires prerequisite math and signaling courses. Students delve into analog communication, Fourier transform properties and analog modulation through 8 lab assignments and 12 homework assignments.

The probability theories used by electrical engineers who work with communications and computer systems are covered in the Stochastic Processes course. Through course outlines and homework assignments, students study discrete random processes, power spectral density, queuing theory and Markov chains. Homework assignments can be viewed as HTML, PDF or documents. Technical requirements include MATLAB software, and required texts are not available to OCW students. The Information Theory course examines coding and signal processing and requires a prerequisite course in communications systems. Students have access to 14 sets of lecture notes, homework assignments and programming assignments.

Earn Real Credit from Free Courses

While the free courses above don't award credit directly, you can earn credit by passing an exam and transferring credit to your college. There are two widely recognized and affordable options for exams that award credit.

Option #1: CLEP Exams

The College Board's 33 CLEP exams allow you to test out of your general education requirements. Credit is accepted at 2/3 of colleges and universities in the U.S.

Option #2: Excelsior College's Credit-by-Exam

Excelsior College offers over 40 exams that lead to transferable credit. You can also earn three full degrees by taking free online courses and earning your credit by exam.

Learn how Education Portal Academy will pay you to earn credit!

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