Everyone who takes online classes wants to know what the best free online teaching tools are. Online universities and colleges use teaching aids for students. These learning & teaching aids include free, easy to use websites that can help all students learn faster, study smarter and improve understanding of the course materials.
If you teach online or are thinking about teaching online, you’ve probably heard about using creative online teaching tools to help support your students. It can be difficult to manage an online class without the right tools available to you. Luckily, there are a lot of tools that are freely available for use and help make teaching online easier than ever. Here’s my list of free online classes and teaching aids.
Craftsy (formerly Bluprint)
Pros:
- High production values
- Variety of purchase options
- Many patterns available
- Best for sewing and needlecrafts
Cons:
- No certificates or accreditation
- Slightly troubled history
- Missing community features
If Creativebug sounds interesting to you, Craftsy is also worth a look. It also has a variety of sewing and needlecraft classes, plus patterns and more.
Some of you may know Craftsy by its previous name, Bluprint. It’s since closed and reopened, hopefully this time for good.
The history and revival of Craftsy
The Craftsy platform has been around for more than a decade, but it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.
After being purchased by NBCUniversal in 2017, its courses were slowly integrated into another platform called Bluprint.
However, NBC pulled the plug in 2020, and the platform went dark for several months. Its assets were then purchased by another company called TN Marketing, and the platform was revived a few months later as Craftsy.
It doesn’t have all the community features as before, such as a marketplace and course reviews, but at least most of the content has returned.
Needlecrafts, sewing, quilting, and more
In the past, Craftsy was known for its sewing and needlecraft classes, and that largely remains true today.
However, there’s far more on offer here than that. There are excellent courses for woodworking, cooking, papercraft, and more. These fall into five major categories:
- Fabric Crafts
- Yarn Crafts
- Food
- Art
- Living
If you want to try it out, there are tons of free classes available on a variety of topics.
Once you’re ready to pay, you have a few options. For those who don’t like subscriptions, you can purchase classes individually and keep them forever. They run anywhere from $5 to $70.
But the best value is in a Premium subscription. It’s inexpensive at just $8 a month (or $80 a year) and offers access to more than 1500 classes. This isn’t everything on the platform, but it’s more than enough to get your money’s worth.
Domestika
Pros:
- Dedicated to creative courses
- Professional production
- Highly qualified teachers
- Inexpensive (~$10 a course)
- Lifetime access to courses
Cons:
- No professional certificates
- Many courses in Spanish with subtitles
- Finicky mobile app
Domestika is a relative newcomer when it comes to online course platforms, but it’s quickly become my go-to source for creative courses.
The entire platform is dedicated to creative courses. There are literally thousands of options for crafts, tech skills, illustration, and so much more.
I’ve written a full guide to Domestika that explains everything you need to know, but here’s the lowdown.
A platform for creatives first and foremost
As mentioned above, Domestika is filled with creative courses, but there’s more to it than that. It also serves as a kind of social media platform.
You can think of it as a cross between Behance and LinkedIn. You can share your portfolio, list yourself as open to freelance work, and even search through an integrated job board.
Most of the users are in the Spanish-speaking world (as we’ll get to in a moment), but it’s a great way to connect with other creatives.
Great course selection, with one major setback
Domestika has an incredible selection of creative courses (check out my favorites here), covering a variety of topics. Here’s the full list of categories:
- Illustration
- Marketing & Business
- Photography & Video
- Design
- 3D & Animation
- Craft
- Architecture & Spaces
- Technology
- Calligraphy & Typography
Each course is taught by a qualified professional with the help of Domestika’s in-house production team. Courses run anywhere from two to 12+ hours, and cost around $10 when on sale.
Once purchased, you can watch courses whenever you want, forever. No subscription fee required.
There is an optional subscription service called Domestika Pro, which has a few benefits for avid learners. It’s extremely affordable at just $30 a year, but honestly it’s completely unnecessary to get the most out of the platform.
The catch is that the vast majority of these courses are in Spanish with subtitles in English. There is a growing list of English-language courses, but you will inevitably need to do some reading.
In my experience, this hasn’t been a big deal. Most courses are very visual, so it’s still easy to follow the content. Plus, there’s a fairly generous 14-day refund policy.
If you’re not sure subtitles are for you, check out a few of the rotating free Domestika courses on offer. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Udemy
Pros:
- Huge quantity of courses
- Lifetime access to courses
- Highly qualified teachers
- Frequent course sales
Cons:
- No professional certificates
- Course quality varies
- High non-sale prices
If you’ve spent any amount of time with online course platforms, odds are you’ve encountered Udemy. It has an astounding amount of courses uploaded by teachers all over the planet.
As one of the largest online course platforms around, it has something for everything. That includes not just creative courses, but also courses for business skills, leadership, programming, and more.
Quantity and quality
When I say that Udemy has an astounding amount of courses, I mean it. The platform boasts more than 130,000 online courses in 2021, with new options added every week.
With that many options, the odds are good you’ll find something that interests you. However, not all categories on the site are directed at creatives. Here’s the basic list:
- Development
- Business
- Finance & Accounting
- IT & Software
- Office Productivity
- Personal Development
- Design
- Marketing
- Lifestyle
- Photography & Video
- Heath & Fitness
- Music
- Teaching & Academics
Of these, the most popular are related to business and programming. Still, there are plenty of options for creatives if you search for them.
I’m also happy to report that the course quality is overall quite high. Although they’re user uploaded (so technically anyone can create a course), Udemy does run quality control to keep low-effort content off the platform.
That said, it doesn’t quite match up to platforms with in-house production like Domestika.
Confusing price structure
Although Udemy courses and the platform overall are great, there are some issues with the pricing structure in my opinion.
Retail pricing can reach $100 or even $200 per course, but frequent sales and discounts reduce those prices by as much as 90%.
That’s all well and good, but it leaves you with the feeling that anything less than 90% off is overpaying. Even if the price is still perfectly fair for what the course offers.
And to be clear, this isn’t entirely on Udemy. Instructors can set their own pricing, so by listing the price as permanently 90% off it feels like a bargain.
Still, if you do your research before buying you can find some real gems. There are also a variety of free courses available, although they tend to be much worse than their paid counterparts. Treat them as a test of the platform, but not indicative of the overall quality.
Skillshare
Pros:
- Huge quantity of courses
- Short, focused courses
- Some free courses available
Cons:
- No professional certificates
- Course quality varies
- Requires persistent subscription
Skillshare is yet another online course platform that needs little introduction. With about 2000 free classes and tens of thousands more available for a single subscription fee, it’s one of the largest and most popular platforms out there.
Previously Skillshare also had an extremely generous two-month free trial, but now that’s been reduced to a two-week free trial.
That’s still enough time to enjoy a lot of content before shelling out $19 a month (or $99 a year) for a subscription.
I’ve written a full guide to everything you need to know about Skillshare, but here’s the brief version to get you started.
Hit or miss course quality
One of the defining aspects of Skillshare is the fact that courses can be uploaded by just about anyone.
In the past this lead to an overwhelming amount of low-quality content, but nowadays the platform has put more curation into place. It still doesn’t match up to other online course platforms, but overall the experience is much better.
In a way, this is also one of the platform’s strengths. Even if you don’t want to become a teacher, you can watch courses about the same topic from different teachers to gain a bit more perspective and insight.
All you can eat creative courses
The other truly defining element of Skillshare is that everything is unlocked with a single subscription, called Skillshare Premium.
In total, there are about 30,000 courses available covering a variety of topics. These are mostly creative, with a few tech courses and foreign language courses, too.
Here’s the full list of categories:
- Animation
- Creative Writing
- Film & Video
- Fine Art
- Graphic Design
- Illustration
- Music
- Photography
- UI/UX Design
- Web Development
- Business Analytics
- Freelance & Entrepreneurship
- Leadership & Management
- Marketing
- Lifestyle
- Productivity
There’s a lot on offer here, but if you’re looking for just one type of course or topic, you may be better off sticking to single-payment platforms instead of subscription services.
But if you want to learn tons of different skills and become a Jack of all (creative) trades, Skillshare is probably the best subscription there is.
Conclusion:
If you’re an educator, you know how important teaching tools are. They should be engaging, visually appealing and they should capture the audience’s attention. And if you teach online classes, you probably have an even bigger challenge ahead of you — not only do these tools have to be engaging, but they also have to be created keeping in mind that your students can’t physically see you.