Universities around the world are already incorporating online learning courses at different levels; from diploma and certificate courses to bachelors, Masters and up to Doctoral degrees. However most of these universities offering online learning courses are not easily affordable for most people in Africa and developing country.

Interestingly, there are for-profit and not-for-profit online learning Universities and Academies offering free and/or affordable online learning courses that are worth considering. These online Universities and academies have different learning interface. Some offer text-based content, while some offer a mix of text, audio and video course contents. With some, once you register, you can get on with any of the already created courses while others operate on enrollment bases where you register and wait for the an interactive course. Each course programme has a community of learners where you can meet and discuss with other learners with similar interest.

Below are 6 Awesome online learning universities and academies offering free and low cost learning.

ALISON

ALISON (Advance Learning Interactive System Online) offers Free Online Courses, Workplace Skills, Interactive Education and Multimedia learning. With ALISON you can self-certify, at Certificate or Diploma level, on a wide range of courses across ten subject areas. ALISON Certificate-level courses take on average 1 to 2 hours to complete while the Diploma courses take approximately 10 to 11hours. Through your study you will be assessed and, should you achieve a pass rate on your assessments, you will become an ALISON graduate and be entitled to purchase a certificate or Diploma Parchment (as low as $20).

Udemy

Udemy’s goal is to disrupt and democratize the world of education by enabling anyone to teach and learn online. Just as blogging democratized the publishing industry (enabling anyone to instantly become a journalist), Udemy seeks to dramatically change education by empowering millions of experts around the world to teach & share what they know.

Udemy online learning courses are built on an incredible platform that makes it easy for anyone to build an online course. Instructors can use video, PowerPoint, PDFs, audio, zip files and live classes to quickly build a course and share their expertise. Students can take courses across a great breadth of categories, including: business & entrepreneurship, academics, the arts, health & fitness, language, music, technology, games, and more.

Most courses on Udemy are free, but some high quality courses are paid. Paid courses typically range in price from $5 – $250.

Coursera

Coursera offer high quality courses from the top universities, for free to everyone to improve your resume, advance your career, expand your knowledge, and gain confidence by successfully completing one of the challenging university courses. This online learning platform currently host courses from Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and University of Pennsylvania. With a Coursera account you can enroll in multiple courses and keep track of them all in one place.

Khan Academy

At Khan Academy, you learn almost anything for free. With over 3,100 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, the online academy is on the mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

Udacity

Udacity believe university-level education can be both high quality and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, it has connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students all over the world.

Udacity was founded by three roboticists who believed much of the educational value of their university classes could be offered online for very low cost. A few weeks later, over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled in the first class, “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.” The class was twice profiled by the New York Times and also by other news media. Now the organization is a growing team of educators and engineers, on a mission to change the future of education, offering all courses for free.

Edx

EdX is a transformational new partnership in online education between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world.

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a permanent free web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content and is open and available to anyone around the world. The over 2100OCW course materials reflect almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. Whether you want to improve on your present skill, refresh your memory, decide on the right field for you to go into or want to learn at your own space for your own benefit, MIT OpenCourseWare provides the opportunity.

University of the People

University of the People (UoPeople) is proclaimed the world’s first tuition-free online university dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The University embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring tuition-free undergraduate degree programs to qualified high school graduates around the world. UoPeople offers Associates and Bachelors degree programs in Business Administration and Computer Science.

University of the People is a tuition-free, non-profit institution. The University does not charge students to take classes.However, In order to remain sustainable, the online University charge small processing fees for application and examination processing.

8 Most Popular free Online learning Platforms – Take Free Courses

Online education is an amazing way to get a degree from anywhere in the world. But, without the opportunity to meet people in person and develop one-on-one relationships, it can be difficult to use an online degree program to make professional connections, as well.

Traditional on-campus students often have an advantage when it comes to making those personal relationships that can transform into business connections. But, in reality, the online environment has the same potential for networking, if you are willing to make the effort. There are plenty of ways to make connections as an online student that could further your career down the road. Here are just a few ideas:

1. Start conversations with professors.

You don’t need to be available in person to create relationships with professors. Make sure to actively answer questions they pose on discussion boards and do your best in all your work, and they will surely notice you. You can also email them personally with questions or with requests for more information about what they do and how you can get into similar fields.

2. Organize study groups.

Online study groups can actually be very efficient. If you organize a group that divides up work, you can get together anytime over Google Docs or via video chat. This is a great way to get to know your classmates and connect with students who are just as driven.

3. Create online topic forums.

If you have particular conversations that you would like to start as an extension of class, try creating your own forum where students can participate and add their two cents. If you have a particular interest or professional area you would like to discuss, you may attract people with similar passions.

4. Do a remote internship.

There are plenty of internships that can be done online. From writing to researching to book-keeping, positions for interns are often abundant because the pay is low and the pool of students vying for them is vast. Even if you can’t find any advertised internship opportunities, there is no reason not to make contact with a small online company in your area of interest that might be interested in a helping hand.

5. Start a blog.

Starting a blog can be just like starting your own PR firm. You can say and do whatever you want, and, if you keep working at it, you may even garner enough interest to establish a place for yourself online. Either way, it’s a great way to connect with people who share your interests.

6. Get a LinkedIn profile.

There is no easier way to make instant professional connections than by creating a profile on LinkedIn. You can connect with your classmates and professors, and you can also request connections with people in your desired industries.

7. Tweet about areas of career interest.

If you’re an online student with a Twitter profile, try to use it to your advantage professionally. Instead of tweeting only about your personal life, make sure to include content about people who you admire professionally or industries that you would like to enter.

Nancy Wood is a freelance blogger for onlinecollegeclasses.com. She loves writing about education, health, and college life and works to provide helpful information on the best colleges for all students. She welcomes comments and questions below!

7 Ways to Make Professional Connections as an Online Student

Marissa Mayer, believes that ideas for new products come from everywhere – every employee, every department, from both necessity and serendipity. By creating an environment where ideas can be freely exercised, like a muscle they will likely get more toned and more in tune with the organization’s circulation.

New Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is an ideas expert. During her 13 years at Google, she oversaw the company’s Search, Maps, and Local Products in addition to User Experience.

At Google, product ideas came from users, strategic planning, acquisitions, and engineers solving problems for themselves. Marissa’s free Udemy course will teach you how to build a culture of innovation at your company.

Learn how to build a culture of innovation with, Ideas Come from Everywhere, free online course by Marrissa Mayer, VP of Google’s Search Products and User Experience.

Visit Course page.

Free Online Course: Ideas Come From Everywhere by New Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer

These services are only being spurred on by the more than one billion people who have joined the middle class in the last decade. In fact, in the next eight years, 150 million people will seek higher education. Additionally, funding for education startups has tripled in the last decade, going from $146 million in 2002 to $429 million in 2011.

This leaves entrepreneurs with the opportunity to create exciting new ways for individuals to learn online. Here are some of the startups that are shaping the online education trend.

Read full Details

5 Startups Transforming Online Education

Two-third (² /₃) of all jobs are secured through the process of networking. The internet is filled with fresh job opportunities every single day. Yet most of the jobs go to the job seekers with the network (connection). It’s often a custom for job seekers to complain of nepotism; which exists, undeniably, in the job market. But a rather rewarding approach is to build your own network of people to leverage on their networks to get your desired job.

In her book, Resumes For Dummies, Joyce L. Kennedy stated:

“The familiar adage claiming the secret to landing a good job ‘is not what you know, but who you know’ is hereby officially stamped incomplete in this era of online social connectivity. Consider this revised version: The secret to landing a good job is what you know, who you know, who knows you, and who your friends know”.

Continue Reading

21 Networking Tips for Job Seekers to Build your Connection

Nicholas said, “I was inspired to write the book after I realized that I was losing my own capacity for concentration and contemplation. Even when I was away from my computer, my mind seemed hungry for quick hits of information. I felt perpetually distracted”.

Technology is shaping the way we live our lives. More than any other form of technology, the internet; social media, has the most effect on our daily routine. You often admire social media icons with thousands of Facebook friends and even reached the 5000 limit. While you want to maximize your Facebook usage to hit that maximum friend’s limit, you also deserve to understand the emotion associated with attaining your goal. Being friendly pays whether offline or on Facebook but having many friends can be nuisance.

Psychologists have found that the more Facebook friends you have, the more likely you are to suffer from stress and anxiety concerning your profile.

They said that a significant minority of Facebook users suffered considerable anxiety for which there was only a limited reward.

12% of participants in an online survey conducted by scientists at the Napier University, Edinburgh said that Facebook made them feel anxious. A third (32%) said they experienced feelings of guilt and discomfort when they declined a friend request.

Dr Kathy Charles, lecturer in forensic psychology who conducted the study said that “the results threw up a number of paradoxes.

“For instance, although there is great pressure to be on Facebook there is also considerable ambivalence amongst users about its benefits. And we found it was actually those with the most contacts, those who had invested the most time in the site, who were the ones most likely to be stressed.”

It’s thought that some of the stress could be a self-imposed pressure to come up with status updates which are going to appeal to a large and diverse group of people. Dr Charles compares it to a news channel dedicated solely to the person; the more viewers there are, the greater the pressure to produce content. If you feel yourself to be a key player in your own narrative then you create pressure to produce something to give to your audience.

The survey used qualitative interviews and quantitative questionnaires to find out the views of students who use the Facebook regularly. 10% said that they disliked receiving friend requests while two-thirds (63%) said that they put off accepting or replying to friend requests. What Dr Charles described as “an overwhelming majority” of participants stated that the best thing about Facebook was that they could “keep in touch” without any further explanation being given.

People who didn’t enjoy using the site or didn’t find it worthwhile were still reluctant to leave the site because they were worried about missing information because so many people use it to keep one another updated about their social activities; they also worried about offending their friends if they closed their account. Dr Charles compared the compulsion to keep on using Facebook to gambling: “Like gambling, Facebook keeps users in a neurotic limbo, not knowing whether they should hang on in there just in case they miss out on something good.”

Other causes of tension that using Facebook put upon its users included performing Facebook culls, where you purge your friends of those that you no longer have any interest in, and the pressure to be entertaining and informative while maintaining the correct etiquette for various types of friends.

If your value lies in subtlety and not just the speed of today’s fast moving digitally controlled world, you are likely to find the emerging trends troubling.

The more Facebook friends you have, the more likely you are to suffer from stress and anxiety says Psychologists

In the past, distance/online learning was a complicated alternative to tradition classroom learning. There have remained controversies to whether taking online learning courses is worth the time and effort. Sloan Survey of online learning reveals that enrolment rose by almost one million students from previous year in 2010. Further research also shows that the number of students adding online learning courses as part of their regular college curriculum has increased by up to 150%. Online education also has a 21% growth rate which exceeds the 2% growth in overall education.

In the field of study with the most number of student enrollment in online learning, computer and information science and technology has the most number of enrollment (27%), followed by business (24%) and General studies (24%), with courses in humanities and Natural Sciences, Mathematics + Agriculture having the lowest rate of enrollment at 14% each. This appears understandable as the courses with the highest number of enrolment (computer/information technology) aligns favorably with the method of online learning compared to other courses, which are better learnt on practical experience.

Why you should consider taking Online learning courses

From the figures above, you would have figured that online learning would be more suitable for one student than another, considering their fields of study and in some cases personality. However, if we consider the constant innovation in technology, there are skills you can’t do without, regardless of your field of study and personality. The good news is that most of such course/skills can be learnt through online learning. Computer and internet skills can be acquired through online learning through self-taught or structured elearning. Basic Business skills can be learned online.

Rather than wait until you get the chance to learn the skills you want in a traditional learning environment, enrolling for online courses will get you up to speed while also focusing on your core area of study.

Change of career

One the biggest advantage of taking online learning courses is that it offers easy gateway to making a career change. For instance if you are a real estate agent and want to change career to web developer or customer representative, taking short online learning courses in these field will help you decide the better career choice for you. You’ll also network with people with similar interest already in the field to learn with/from.

Starting a business

The first step with starting a business is practically studying the industry you want to get into. The step before the first step is figuring whether the business is a good fit for you. Most businesses have a basic online course for beginners. These online courses will help you quickly understand the basics of the business and how to go about getting local information about the industry.

Figuring out the right vendor

The major problem with the online learning industry is differentiating valuable programmes from mere noise. While there are awesome online learning courses out there, there are online learning vendors that are not worth your time and effort.

Here are a few tips to help you:

If you are taking an online course for the certification (like you intend to get a job with your qualification and not just for the skill and knowledge) as prove to potential employers that you are actually qualified in the field, you should consider an accredited online university/college.

If you are concerned about getting the skill and knowledge for practical purpose, then accreditation would not be your primary concern. Accredited online schools are generally much more expensive and not easily affordable for low-income earners or students. However there are non-accredited online programmes, like Udemy with affordable (even free) quality courses to learn from.

When next you are thinking of how to learn a new skill or to venture into a new career or business, you should consider taking an online learning course.

See a list of websites for Free and affordable online learning course here.

The Best Courses to Study through Online Learning – Computer, IT, Business….

The following infographic from theoatmeal.com tells a story different from what he already know about most inventions and the inventors.

Visit theoatmeal.com for more resource about Nikola Tesla, the greatest geek who ever lived.

Could it be that Thomas Edison was not Who we Thought he was? How about Nikola Tesla?

Over time, Social media marketing have proven to be a great way for business owners to get their businesses in front of those who need their products or services. You might have tried using this marketing method to promote your business in the past without reasonable result, but that does not mean that social media marketing is not right.

Do what successful businesses are doing

Research shows that in the US 93% of businesses use Facebook to share information about their products or services and get conversion and feedback from customers. 70% use Twitter for sharing, distribution of their products or services and replying to customer feedback. 61% use YouTube for sharing video messages and distribution of their product. By learning from and doing what these people are doing, you stand a better chance at being as successful in your business.

For business owners of any size or niche who wants to find and keep new and existing customers, this dynamic online marketing method holds huge opportunity.

An effective Social media presence will get people talking about your product and service.

Social media goes from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube (for video marketing) to blogs and other online social sharing medium. 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blogs and 35% are blogging about brands and product reviews. These are great medium to reach a range of audience at no cost.

Take an Online Course on Social Media marketing for Startups

Social media if done right will do wonderful things to your business but if done wrong will be a waste of your (and everyone’s) time. Unless you are just good at figuring it all out on your own and wouldn’t mind the time it takes to get through the learning curves, you need to get up speed to learn from those who have gotten it right over time.

Udemy online academy offers a comprehensive online course on Social Media marketing for Startups, 5 lectures from top founders and CEOs, to get Social media training for your business, with interactive video tutorial and 2.5hrs of content to take you through the process of effectively marketing your startup business on social media.

The course is administered by successful social media experts who have used social media to build successful businesses. Each takes an aspect of social media marketing and thoroughly offers practical techniques to deal with the subject.

Course are offered by:

Dan Martell, an award-winning Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Flowtown Introduction to Social Media Marketing

Stew Langille, Vice President of Marketing at Mint.com Creating Engaging Content

Laura Lippay, Search and Social Marketing Consultant Improving Your Search Rankings With Social Media

Jeff Widman, Founder of Brandglue.com Leveraging Your Audience to Increase Your Reach

Jonathan Strauss, Co-Founder of awe.sm Optimizing and Measuring Your Impact

Dan Martell

Some of the areas you will learn include:

• How to use social to launch, position your messaging and get distribution.
• Foundation: Keywords and Position
• Creating content in a variety of mediums – writing blog posts, engaging tweets or video/podcast/etc.
• Content is King
• A look into how search and social interact with each other
• Using Search to Own Social
• What makes people want to share? How to make your content shareable – technically and psychologically.
• Building Followers
• And more

Course Table of Contents

• Over 6 lectures and 3.5 hrs of content!
• Gain traction when starting with nothing
• Set effective social media goals
• Create content that relates to your audience
• Optimize your search visibility with social media.
• Turn all this social buzz into real momentum
• Optimize your content for Facebook
• Measure the effect of your campaigns

If you have an internet connection, the  course is available on any device at any time. If you don’t have an internet connection, some instructors also let their students download course lectures.

Cost of Online Course -52% Discount

The online course normally cost $19 but Udemy is offering a 52% discount on the course (Social Media Marketing for Startups).

With 52% discount, you only pay $9 and save $10. This offer is only available from now till Sunday May 6th 2012

If you are not satisfied after taking the course, you can ask for a refund within 30 day.

Click here to take the Online Course on Social Media Marketing for Startups -

Learn How to create a buzz for your Startup or Small Business with Social Media Marketing

On Thursday, 27 April 2012, the Graduation ceremony of the entrepreneurship development center was held at the EDC Ikeja, Lagos. The graduation ceremony is a testimony of what the government of Nigeria is doing through the CBN.

The 4-week graduate entrepreneurship training programme is an enlightening training session on how to start and run a business profitably. During the training, participants are trained to write a bankable business plan and compelled to write one as a prerequisite for graduation. The aim of the Entrepreneurship Development Center is to promote and facilitate the linkage between trainees and financial institutions and high network individuals, to bridge the gap of the Government’s inability to meet the needs of all potential entrepreneurs.

The graduation ceremony started with an official opening exhibition and introductory remarks by the Executive Director, Africa Leadership Forum, Ayodele Aderinwale,MFR. This was followed by a statement by Paul Eluhaiwe, Director Development Finance, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The ceremony had a lively graduation lecture on: Core Issues on Entrepreneurship Development in Nigeria by Felix Awonauja, General Manager, GROFIN Nigeria, represented by Mr. Friday.

Since the inception of the entrepreneurship development center in 2008 till March about 584 graduates have received access to low interest loan out of 15379 total trainees thus far. 900 bankable businesses plans have been certified and 168 new businesses has been established, with 773 businesses expanded and diversified. A total of N53,673,000 have been disbursed through financial partners to EDC graduate entrepreneurs to startup or expand their businesses since 2009.

According to statistics, over 70% of Nigerians are living below poverty level of $1 per day. With 127 academic universities in the country, an excess of 500,000 graduates emerge every year to join the already crowded labor force, thereby culminating into the challenges of poverty in the country. These are the problems CBN seeks to provide solution to, through the EDC programme with the believe that the reconstruction of Nigeria has to be collective effort of entrepreneurial minds.

The programme emphasizes on the fact that entrepreneurship training should not just be certification training but one to practically empower youths to be able to identify real live opportunities and take necessary steps towards harnessing the opportunities. EDC aims to produce individual with the entrepreneurial drive to move Nigeria and Nigerians out of poverty. Students are reoriented to accept entrepreneurship other than total dependence on white-collar jobs.

Three of the EDC graduates emerged winners of the recently concluded Federal Government initiative, Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN). The three successful entrepreneurs are Agunbiade Ayodeji Emmanuel, Olajide Samuel Taiwo, and Olawande Tope. Agunbiade Ayodeji Emmanuel, who now owns a laundry service outfit, testified to have emerged one of the top 300 applicants who submitted their business plans for the competition, out of over 24,000 participants. The top shortlisted candidates were opportuned to meet with the President, Goodluck Jonathan in Aso Rock.

YouWiN is a collaboration of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Communication Technology, and the Ministry of Youth Development that organizes an annual Business Plan Competition (BPC) for aspiring young entrepreneurs in Nigeria, in line with the Federal Government’s drive to create more jobs for Nigerians.

EDC has indeed helped a lot of young Nigerians start or expand their own business and in so doing gradually eliminating poverty in the country. To participate in the Entrepreneurship training, visit the Africa Leadership Forum website for details.

The CBN entrepreneurship programme is offered at a subsidized rate of N5000 for graduates and students for 4 weeks and 6weeks training respectively. As a current student of this programme, I’m convinced that the rate is a giveaway fee compared to the knowledge and insight gained by the participants.

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3rd Graduation Ceremony of the Entrepreneurship Development Center (EDC) held today in Lagos