Like many people, I miss college. But really, I miss interesting lectures and class topics, and I really miss writing historical analysis essays. I’ve perused a bit on Coursera but haven’t found any online courses that have been particularly enthralling. Something about the online platform just doesn’t always do it for me. Has anyone found an online history course that they really have enjoyed?
Gresham College was created for the sole purpose to give public lectures. While it’s not just history, the ones focused on history are the kind you would expect to get at a uni.
It's not a course, but an entire website! The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has an entire website dedicated to providing free access to course content and materials created by actual professors. Many courses on the site were used in real schools.
The coolest part is that many of these courses provide information on when they were conducted in real life, the schedule of the course as it happened in real life (some courses even specify exact due dates for assignments), the grading weights of the assignments in real life, and many more things that were present while the course was actually being taught.
All of this is offered by MIT, free of charge and free of registration. You don't need to make an account to use the website - you can use the website at your own leisure, at your own pace, and you can download all the materials offered on the website.
Here is a List of Ivy league courses that are free online. There are many topics here.
Smarthistory (https://smarthistory.org) has thousands of fantastic videos and essays on art history. And of course, the history of art is the history of human expression, so you will definitely get all kinds of history, with possibly a different perspective than you had as a history major in college.
It’s all free, no ads, all academically sound and reliable, and a whole lot of fun (beware, starting with one subject will lead you to a whole lot of others).
It’s not exactly a course, but it’s all the content of many courses. If you want something a little more curated and course-like, Smarthistory has recently made Reframing Art History, which is sort of an alternative textbook and provides a more guided and directed experience ( https://smarthistory.org/reframing-art-history/ ). Also free and open to all.
“The Great Courses” will frequently offer 1-2 months free and or low fee 1-2 months 1.99 Most lectures are 30min spread over 20-24 episodes.
Open learn from the UKs Open University has a lot of free course material that they give free access to, mostly from retired courses that they no longer offer, so it’s all university level material. I thoroughly recommend the history of medicine material