In recent years, online education has become a popular and accessible medium of education that helps in shaping the future of students in large numbers. There are various computer programming online courses to enhance the skills.
Harvard University is known as the United States’ oldest as well as a prestigious institution for Higher Education.
Being a private non-profit university, it tries to impart education in every possible way, like it offers whole loads of courses of both short and long duration. It not only offers offline courses but online computer programming courses too, in order to make it more accessible to more and more students worldwide.
Harvard offers the best range of online courses in the world, it is not at all wrong to say that it almost covers all areas of education in its online way of imparting education.
As we know, Harvard’s certificates of each course have great value attached to them because Harvard faculty are working hard to provide excellence in teaching and making learning a worthwhile experience for learners in all areas. In the bigger picture, Imparting good knowledge and a proper understanding of disciplines even through online courses can lead towards a better and bright future for all.
A new concept called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) emerged and brought more popularity to Higher Education. Edx, Udicity, Coursera, etc. are some platforms that collaborate with universities like Harvard to make available quality education to large masses by expanding the boundaries beyond campus.
Edx is the learning platform that is founded by Harvard and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), so here you can get easy access to all online courses from Harvard.
The reason behind offering free courses at Harvard can be many, these courses don’t provide financial benefits to the institutions but can increase their brand value by offering more innovative courses online; to stay in competition in MOOC platforms otherwise, their popularity may get decrease; to attract more learners just by offering free basic courses of all disciplines and then charge money for next level courses; or they offer free courses as an experiment to check the response of the learners regarding the courses before introducing as full-time paid courses.
So the reasons can be many but it is clear that these courses are beneficial for students.
Here are Some Benefits of Free Online Courses from Harvard
•Harvard imparts high-quality education and heavy-weighted certificates to learners through online learning platforms, to add value to their job resumes.
•These courses are available to learners of all economic statuses as they don’t ask for a Registration Fee.
•Being taught by the best professors of Havard without paying a penny as a Tuition Fee is the best advantage of free online courses.
•Online courses offer a free and comfortable environment to learners so that they can easily regulate their studies from their homes at their own pace.
•Learners get a chance to opt for online courses along with their regular courses so that they can have two degrees at the same time.
•Online learning allows learners from remote areas to take up courses without doing much effort, just the internet can bring a classroom to their place.
•Online platforms offer more courses to make choices, students can easily choose courses according to their interests and understanding.
Free Online Programming Courses by Harvard
Harvard offers a whole range of free CS50 programming courses for online learning in connection with different fields like Law, Research, Biology, etc. Here are 8 Free Online Courses by Harvard for Programming.
1. CS50’s Introduction and Game Development
This is Havard’s basic and very useful course for aspiring program designers. This course offers basic programming of video games like Super Mario Bros, Angry Birds, Pokemon, and many more for better understanding, their 2D and 3D graphics, animations, sound, and collision detection and also offers languages like unity, Love 2D, Lua, and C# for the enhancement of programming skills.
This is a short-term course of 12 weeks which helps in blushing our basic understanding of video game programming and hand on projects that make you proficient enough to develop new games on your own. Best Instructors’ lectures for this course are recorded and uploaded on iTunes U, EdX, and YouTube by Harvard University for enrolled students.
2. CS50’s Web Programming with Python and JavaScript
This course takes CS50 a step ahead by providing deep knowledge of the designs and implementation of web apps by Python JavaScript.
This course covers languages for document designing like Git, HTML, CSS, SQL, Flasks, APIs, and JavaScript which make learners more proficient in database designing, scalability, and security.
At the end of the 12 weeks course, through hands-on projects under the supervision of Harvard’s best professors, you’ll Develop good programming skills along with deep knowledge of various tools of web designing, and this course certificate will definitely add a plus point to your CV.
EdX is the only platform from which you can enrol for this course.
3. CS50’s Mobile App Development with React Native
Third, on the list of free Computer Programming Online Courses by Harvard is CS50’s Mobile App Development with React Native. If you are done with the basics of CS50 then this is the best option to pursue because it moulds your basic understanding into Mobile App Programming which itself becomes a mandatory element of this field in today’s time.
This 13-week long course offers Modern JavaScript (ES6 as well as ES7), React, JSX and many other components like Props, State, Style, Views, and User Input.
Debugging is another component that also seems helpful for the detection and removal of errors in your Programming.
Hands-on projects will help you to understand React and its paradigms more closely. The course sums up your knowledge, understanding and application in the form of an app designed by you as a final project.
4. CS50: Introduction to Computer Science
Harvard University introduces this Computer science and the art of programming course to lead you to think algorithmically and to solve programming problems more efficiently.
This course covers topics like algorithms, abstraction, data structures, security, encapsulation, resource management, software engineering and web development. Useful Languages for understanding the above topics include JavaScript, HTML, C, PHP, and CSS.
With the completion of the 11 weeks course, you become more familiar with Computer Science and related concepts and have great knowledge and understanding to apply in real-life domains.
5. CS50 for Lawyers
Harvard University has designed this Computer Science course for Lawyers, especially for Law Students. The aim of introducing this course is to make students proficient enough to utilise technology in their legal matters.
In 10 weeks duration, this course covers topics like Computer Networking, Cybersecurity, data algorithms, data structures, computation thinking, and various programming languages. By intermixing Technology into Law, this course helps law students to become technologically advanced and incorporate CS50 learning in their legal arguments for better presentation.
6. Using Python for Research
Python has quite a range of courses and this course acts as a link between introductory and advanced courses in Python, with the right amount of skills required for research work.
In this short-term, 5 weeks course, we learn about Python 3 tools such as NumPy and SciPy modules which are commonly used in research projects along with their practical application.
This course also provides revised assessments and new modules on machine learning.
This course gives you introductory knowledge of Python programming which helps in exploring computational materials in your Research work.
7. Quantitative Methods for Biology
This course is seventh on the list of Computer Programming Online Courses and is specially introduced for medical students and Biologists who want to learn to program for a better understanding of the medical field.
This course also helps you to translate your Python, JavaScript, r and other Programming Languages knowledge into MATLAB.
Course content covers the Basics of MATLAB, Data analysis, and Programming in relation to biological and medical applications.
This course is different from the rest of the CS50 courses because it uses a unique adaptive approach to its assignments which means if you are more skilled, you have to face fewer problems to finish this course and vice versa. This 10-week long course makes sure that you develop and practice the right skills in order to succeed.
8. CS50’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python
As we know, with the advancement of technology, demand for expertise in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is growing rapidly. These computer programming online courses help you to solve real-life problems and future-proofing your career.
Course components are principles of Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning, and Reinforcement Learning, which provide knowledge about How to design intelligent systems, and also tell How to use AI in Python programs.
By the end of this 7-week long course, students have to demonstrate their understanding of all concepts by applying them in designing an intelligent system of their own.
These Free Online Courses by Harvard are very useful in establishing your career in your chosen field because the benefits attached to these courses are not limited to any particular area. Nowadays, Programming, computation, cybersecurity, data analysis etc. are some key components that are needed in every field, and these courses are meant to provide these things to you free of cost.
