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Posted Aug. 29, 2014

Free Online Educational Resources for Postgrads

It has never been more expensive to be a Masters or PhD student in the UK. Fees have skyrocketed and bursaries seem harder to come by; however, there are ways that hard-pressed postgraduate students can get some of the best educational resources online at no cost. With this guide, you can find recent, relevant and reliable sites which won't set you back a subscription - or, indeed, anything at all.

There are often fully-online courses set up by charities, not-for-profit organisations and NGOs which are experts in their fields.

Coursera is a database with 110 professional partners, where you can easily search for 725 of the world's best free online courses. Through Coursera, courses in physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business and computer science - amongst others - can be found, and it has some seven million current users who have done just that.

Another provider, which runs not-for-profit, is the Khan Academy . Its aim is that anyone should have access to free, online learning in almost anything; duly, 10 million students per month access the Khan Academy's tutorials and videos, which are also available via YouTube, on a range of topics spanning the sciences, mathematics and humanities. Registered users can find 100,000 practice questions and over 6,000 lessons - whatever the subject, this impressive site can give the top-up to your knowledge that you might need.

For specific qualifications, a little searching can uncover ways to gain knowledge, experience and qualifications for free. The Code Academy qualify their users to code HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other coding languages, free of charge. They also have a strong presence on Facebook where their students regularly advise (and question) on one another's work.

A good starting point for research methods is Methodspace . It is an online network for researchers, from students to professionals, to network and share research, resources - and to debate. Methodspace users have free access to selected journal articles and book chapters on the site. Similarly, using Researcher ID , it is possible to search for specific research topics or researchers and broaden your field of expertise - you can also create an account to track your own published work, when the time comes! Finally, Pat Cryer, the writer of The Research Student's Guide to Success, has created the Postgrad Resources database, intended for students and supervisors of research methods students.

Newspaper supplements relating to higher education have a strong online presence, meaning that there's now little need to buy particular papers on certain days - you can find the latest news and advice free of charge, online. The Guardian and The Independent are both regularly updated with content from the paper.

Finally, informal blogs and forums can be an invaluable way of gathering ideas, and can often provide information you wouldn't find elsewhere. One such site is Postgrad Forum , which includes tens of thousands of posts to give inspiration and funding opportunities. For those further down the process, PhinisheD is a forum for postgrads close to completing their doctorate dissertation - or who have already done so. The last word goes to PHD Comics , or Piled High and Deeper, who not only have a forum, but comic strips to remind you that no matter how absurd you might feel the world of postgraduate study can get, someone else has been there too - and survived!

Of course, this only scatches the surface - but by stepping outside your own universities' access to journals and learning resources, free online resources can provide an up-to-date, knowledgable and honest alternative. Searching for - and sharing - free online resources has never been easier, or more beneficial for UK postgraduate students.

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