There are a slew of free courses out there that can help you advance your writing skills, as well as enhance other subjects that interest you, and can help deepen your writing. They are MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and most are available to you for free from top universities and colleges. There are many platforms used to deliver these online classes to you, some may be familiar to you:
Many more offerings are available . . . additional sources and platforms are listed at the end of this post. Curious? then check them out.
On October 11, 2016, the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa will open a the new fiction writing course
How Writers Write Fiction 2016: Storied Women
Centered on female authorial voices and female literary characters, this online course will be offered completely free to all participants and will welcome writers of all genders. The course is using the NovoEd platform
SIGN UP HERE
Other offerings you might want to check
MOOC (massive open online course):
Academic Earth – privately owned
Khan Academy – non-profit
Coursera – venture capital financed
Udacity – venture capital financed
edX – non-profit created by MIT and Harvard
iversity – mixed (free and paid) European based
Other platforms in USA: Stanford Online, Canvas Network, Kadenze, POLHN
Platforms used in other countries: UK platform: Future Learn Australia platform: Open2Study, Open Learning India: NPTEL, WizTQ France: Open Classroom Finland: Eliademy
Why MOOC?
OCW (Open Course Ware) platforms:
There are also Open Course Ware providers of course lessons created at universities and published for free via the Internet. Here are some universities that share the OCW concepts and may have their own educational streams (some on You Tube) as well as using existing platforms sited above. 
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT Open Courseware
- Carnegie Mellon University CarnegieMellonU
- University of California, Berkeley UCBerkeley
- Stanford University Stanford
- Princeton University Princeton Academics
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Michigan University of Michigan | Free Online Courses
- Harvard University
- Yale University – Yale Courses
- Caltech
- Johns Hopkins University John Hopkins
- University of California, Irvine
- Duke Duke Center for Instructional Technology
I hope you keep reading – keep writing – and remain curious.
Wow, this is great. I will share with my authors group. Thanks!
Yes, please share Paula. Today there’s no reason for anyone to be bored, stuck in a rut, or suffering from writers’ block. There is so much knowledge at our fingertips to discover. One good thing about these courses is the interacting with people around the world. Glad you’re sharing with your group.
Thanks for the great information, Elisabeth. Now if there were only 35 hours in a day 🙂
Hi dvberkom – yes I know what you mean. Life is busy and there’s never enough time. I signed up for the Storied Women class and I’m looking forward to it, hoping to learn a few new ideas or tips on writing female POV. However, I have my son’s wedding coming up soon, (Nov 5th) so I may not be able to give it my full attention.
Priorities 🙂 We build our lives brick by brick.
You don’t need this course, you already write kick-ass characters 🙂
Keep writing Daphne