Even though I am still a full-time college student for Cal Poly Pomona, I definitely have more free time now than I did thanks to the Stay-At-Home order. All of my classes at Cal Poly have been moved online and some of my classes have Zoom meetings during our designated class times. Other classes are completely online with set deadlines. Either way, I am still a full-time college student.
I was trying to find a new way to entertain myself during my new free time and I stumbled across this website: ClassCentral. This website showed me free online classes that I can take from different universities around the world. One of my issues with universities is that a lot of the classes are premeditated and the student cannot choose which courses they want (except with GE classes, but those are extremely limited as well). With ClassCentral, I was able to find links for Ivy League Online Classes that I could take for free.
These are classes that I would have loved to take at Cal Poly, but I was limited by 1) how many classes I was allowed to take at one time, 2) if these classes were on my list of courses I needed to take, 3) how much it would cost to take these classes, and 4) if they were even offered at Cal Poly at all.
Now, with all of my free time and the ability to take classes that genuinely interest me from accredited universities for free, I am absolutely ecstatic. I wanted to share this with everyone because this is a huge resource and I am an advocate for higher education when possible and accessible. If this is something that interests you, please take a look at this link!
Here are some examples of the classes I am planning on taking:
- An Introduction to American Law
- Introduction to Marketing (from the Wharton School of Business!)
- Moral Foundations of Politics
- Contract Law: From Trust to Promise to Contact
- Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content
- Corruption
- Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking
- Adventures in Writing
- Bioethics: The Law, Medicine, and Ethics of Reproductive Technologies and Genetics
- Social Psychology
- The Science of Happiness
- The Psychology of Criminal Justice
- The Science of Well-Being
- Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills
- Becoming an Entrepreneur
- Introduction to Negogiation
All of these classes are handpicked by myself because of my interest in their contents. While a lot of them revolve around business, what I majored in, a lot of them are based on personal interest. I am getting to study some of the materials that I had wished I would have been able to study years ago.
Please take a look at ClassCentral if this is something that you are interested in! This is a huge resource and a huge opportunity for a lot of people. I would love for everyone to have the ability to study what they want and when they want, for free. Let me know down in the comments if you’re interested! And, as always, thank you so much for reading!
Love,
Kaitlin H Powell 