Resource Round Up: Free Online Education/Courses
Here are there resources for free university lectures or online courses!
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| Alexis Rose goes back to school in S4, E7 of Schitt's Creek |
Stephen R. Covey reminds us with Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw, "It is extremely valuable to train the mind to stand apart and examine its own program. That, to me, is the definition of a liberal education -- the ability to examine the programs of life against larger questions and purposes and other paradigms. Training without such education, narrows and closes the mind so that the assumptions underlying the training are never examined. That's why it is so valuable to read broadly and expose yourself to great minds."
To this end, here is a quick round-up of free, online, quality courses and lectures that you can access anytime, anywhere.
Green College @ UBC Public Lecture Series
During the post-secondary school 'year' here in Canada (September-March), the Green College at UBC Vancouver offers a ton (like, there is a different lecture basically every weeknight) of free, frequent, online public lectures in a variety of different topics?
You can sign up for their newsletter that describes the lecture topics or check out the upcoming events calendar here.
Here is a brief list of past lecture topics since Sept 2025 so you can see how diverse the lecture topics/offerings are:
What We Know and What We Don't (yet) Know about Multiple Sclerosis
Ten Surprising Things About the History of Photography in Canada
Is There a Crisis of Narration? Narrative Imagination on Chinese Social Media
You don't even need to register for the lectures in advance, you can just click on the livestream link (when the time comes!
Also, if you miss a lecture, they intermittently post the recorded lectures to their YouTube channel here.
Free Online Courses
For those of us who are attempting career transitions or are otherwise requalifying, here are a couple sources for FREE online courses!
Open Culture has a list of 1700+ free online courses across many different disciplines and topics, ranging from animation to art history to business.
The Canadian Women's Foundation offers some courses for free as well, including:
Building Your Values-Driven Business with the Feminist Business Model Canvas
Who Cares? An ARAO Guide to Supporting Youth Mental Health
From Curiocity Vancouver: the University of British Columbia offers dozens of free courses you can take this winter (2026)
Also via Curiocity Vancouver: There's 300+ free book clubs, classes, and socials at the Vancouver Public Library right now
The Next Best Thing to Art School
This one admittedly does have a cost, however, you may be able to find this book at your local library. If your library does not have this book, did you know that pretty much every library has an area where you can request they buy/stock a given title? You can check online at your respective library or speak to one of your librarians!
At any rate, I have an art book for those of you who are looking to flex your artistic muscles. This book comes highly recommended to me by a former coworker whom I highly respect and greatly enjoyed working with (thanks again, GT!) Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney was his pick because Gurney writes about artistic methods and theories in a very accessible way, even for absolute beginners.
Additionally, while Gurney is talking about realist painting specifically, the vast majority of content is directly applicable for those of us working in other artistic fields. For example, I work in 3D animation, and we highly recommended this book for our lighting, compositing, and of course design teams.
Lastly, this one comes recommended by my friend because he once remarked that darn near everything he learned in art school was contained in this one book!
