International Varsities offers free Online Courses

The students aspiring for free online courses in higher education, here is an opportunity you can opt for. The top international universities are providing free online courses through Coursera and edX websites. These are varsities joined to the "Massive Open Online Course" (MOOC) that are broadening access to higher education.

Coursera & edX are the two leading providers of MOOCs, announcement by the universities that will expand double the number of university partners offering free online classes through websites.

A Massive Opens Online Course (MOOC) is an online course aiming at large scale participation and open access via the web.

Coursera said it will add 29 institutions, including 16 outside the U.S. Over the next couple of months, they will offer around 90 new courses, including languages in French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese.

The Professor and Co-founder of Coursera and Standford University, Andrew Ng said, "Having courses taught in other languages will enable more students to take our classes,"

Coursera website currently offers 220 courses from 33 institutions and has nearly 2.8 million registered users who have signed for nearly 10 million courses, Ng said.

Cambridge, Mass-based edX said it's adding 6 new institutions, including 5 outside the U.S., which will provide at least 25 courses. It was launched in May by Harward University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which currently offers 25 courses from 6 universities and has 7 lakh registered students.

The Australian National University, Delft University of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, McGrill University, Rice University and the University of Toronto are the new partners for edX.

The President of edX, Anant Agarwal said that Delft University in the Netherlands will be the first edX partner to provide courses as "open content," which means other universities are free to incorporate the materials into their classes.

"People can reuse it and remix it. It enable courses to get better and better over time by allowing people to share content, Agarwal added.