University of Harvard: Free Online Courses To Register

Harvard University is widely considered one of the world’s preeminent and most influential educational institutions, boasting a long and storied legacy of excellence, innovation, and impact. Since 1636, Harvard University has served as a beacon of intellectual pursuit – producing leaders, scholars, and thinkers that have helped shape history.

Harvard offers students an exceptional and transformative learning experience. Boasting a range of programs across disciplines, Harvard facilitates collaboration among disciplines as well as critical thinking and knowledge acquisition. From arts and sciences to law, medicine, business, and public service; Harvard schools provide outstanding education and opportunities.

Free Harvard University Courses

Harvard University courses are typically self-paced, meaning you can work at your own pace to complete them whenever it best suits you. Some courses, however, have deadlines or require participation in online discussions or assignment submissions.

In this post, we will be looking at some of the high-demand free online courses which are broken down into different categories. The courses in each category are of specific subjects like Computer Science, Mathematics, Business Administration, General Education, Psychology, and more.

Typically, to enroll in a Harvard University free course, you’d create an account on Harvard’s Online Learning website and navigate its list of courses – picking those that best interest you from there. However, here are a few.

1. CS50: Introduction to Computer Science (Programming)

Harvard University offers a CS50: Introduction to Computer Science, which is an intensive foundational course designed to cover programming fundamentals as well as data structures and algorithms.

This 12-week course covers various topics of computer science such as problem-solving, algorithms, data, and programming. Each week of this course is dedicated to exploring these subjects further.

2. CS50’s Introduction to Game Development (Programming)

Harvard University offers CS50: Introduction to Game Development as an online course that builds upon its Introduction to Computer Science course by covering programming, data structures, and algorithms as basic computer science principles.

CS50’s Introduction to Game Development course equips students with the knowledge needed to build their own games using Unity game engine. Topics covered in this 12-week program include Game Design, Programming, 2D/3D Graphics Networking & audio production. Each week is dedicated to one topic of game development.

3. Nonprofit Accounting and Financial Statements webinars (Business)

Harvard University Extension School’s Nonprofit Accounting and Financial Statements webinars are a free online course covering basic concepts of nonprofit accounting and financial statements, such as revenue and expense accounting, asset and liability reporting, fund accounting, as well as nonprofit financial statements.

4. Introduction to Bioconductor (Data Science)

This course introduces Bioconductor, a software environment used for genomic data analysis. Topics covered include Introduction, Import/Merge/Manipulate Data, Visualization and Statistical Analysis. This self-paced course comprises four modules each approximately one hour long that you can watch at your convenience. Each of the recorded modules allows students to watch them at any time during their day or night!

5. Advanced Bioconductor (Data Science)

This course builds upon the material covered in Introduction to Bioconductor (Data Science) and covers advanced topics related to using Bioconductor for genomic data analysis, such as Gene set enrichment analysis, Network analysis, Differential expression analysis and Reproducibility. It is self-paced with four modules that each run for approximately one hour; all recorded so you can watch them at your convenience.

6. The Health Effects of Climate Change (Health and Medicine)

This course explores the health effects of climate change on health, such as its impacts on air quality, food security and waterborne diseases – not to mention mental health impacts. It is free and open to anyone interested in understanding its consequences on human health. This is an ideal course for anyone interested in climate change research!

7. Systematic Approaches to Policy Design (Social Sciences)

This course is free to take and requires no prior knowledge of policy design or social sciences to enjoy it. Anyone interested in discovering systematic approaches for making better policy decisions will find this course invaluable; topics include policy cycle management, analysis, and design as well as commitment requirements of about two hours per week for completion. It runs for seven weeks.

To find out more courses that can benefit your career, you can visit Harvard’s website and browse their online courses. Here’s the link: https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free

As of March 8, 2024, there were over 100 free Harvard courses online that span from computer science and history to literature.