As a teacher, it can be hard to juggle teaching while taking professional development courses coupled with how high the cost can go if your district doesn’t support it. I have curated a list of free online courses for teachers professional development to tackle both issues. This way, teachers can take their professional development courses online and still teach at the same time without spending a dime.
You will agree with me that online learning has to be one of the best things that has happened to the education sector. Being able to learn from anywhere is truly a dream come true for many, the convenience and flexibility of it is undoubtedly unmatched. Whether you are the CEO of a huge company, an employee, or a small business owner you can still make out time in your busy schedule to take an online course.
Online courses help refresh your memory, polish your existing knowledge and skills, equip you with fresh new skills, and beefs up your resume. If you want to switch careers, taking an online course gives you the advantage to test the waters instead of diving head-first into that new field. There are so much more advantage that comes with taking an online course but that is not what you’re here for, is it?
This blog post shares information on free online courses for teachers professional development to help teachers get access to courses that will enable them to improve from the way they teach to how they relate with students in the classroom and so on. If you want to be a better teacher and improve on your teaching skills you shouldn’t joke with professional development courses such as the ones listed here.
The courses are online, thus offering flexibility and the convenience to learn from anywhere and complete them on your own time. It is also free, thus, no need to spend a dime in order to take any of these courses whether you get financial support from your district or not.
The skills and knowledge you gain from an online teachers professional development course will help shape the future generation so, endeavor to take them seriously and complete them. Without any further ado, let’s get into the main topic.
Free Online Courses For Teachers Professional Development
The free online courses for teachers professional development discussed here are offered by top universities and organizations around the world such as Coventry University, British Council, UCL, and the University of Glasgow through online learning platforms like Future Learn, Alison, Coursera, and edX. Some of the courses offered a paid or free certification that you can get after completing it.
Having said that, the following are the free online courses for teachers professional development:
- Teaching and Assessing Core Skills
- Educational Leadership: Improving Schools through Effective Leadership
- Uncommon Sense Teaching
- Introduction to Data Wise
- Teaching Writing Process
- Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms
- Child Mental Health Course
- Counseling in the Workplace
- Educating Deaf Children: Becoming an Empowered Teacher
- Assessment in Higher Education: Professional Development for Teachers
- Understanding Classroom Interaction
1. Teaching and Assessing Core Skills
This online teachers professional development course is offered for free on Future Learn and provided by British Council to teachers anywhere in the world who want to improve their teaching skills. Taking the course develops your ability to measure the development of your student’s core skills. No prior knowledge is required to take this course. With a weekly study of 3 hours, you can complete the course in 4 weeks.
2. Educational Leadership: Improving Schools through Effective Leadership
If you aspire to become a leader in the education sector like a school principal or board of committee then you should probably enroll in this course. This free online course helps you develop effective leadership skills that will help you take on leadership roles in the education sector. It is offered for free by Coventry University on Future Learn and takes 2 weeks to complete.
3. Uncommon Sense Teaching
Uncommon Sense Teaching is one of the free online courses for teachers professional development provided by Deep Teaching Solutions on Coursera. The course equips teachers with skills to approach teaching in a whole new way and their teaching skills to a higher level irrespective of the subject that they teach. It takes approximately 15 hours to complete the course.
4. Introduction to Data Wise
Introduction to Data Wise is a free online course for teachers’ professional development that equips them with the ability to use data to improve learning and teaching and to make it part of an effective collaborative process. The course is offered on edX by Harvard University and taught in English and Espanol languages. The duration is 10 weeks.
5. Teaching Writing Process
Teaching Writing Process is a free online course designed for current or future teachers who use or want to use writing with their students. The course is provided by Johns Hopkins University on Coursera and takes approximately 19 hours to complete.
6. Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms
This free online course for the professional development of teachers and educators explores major ideas of positive psychology and demonstrates how great teachers apply those lessons to maximize student engagement and accomplishment. Through this course, educators will develop skills on how to integrate character-based objectives into their own teaching.
7. Child Mental Health Course
As a teacher, it is important to keep track of the mental health of your students and if you don’t know how to do that, don’t worry, this course will teach and equip you with appropriate skills. The course is fully online and sponsored by the UK Government. Unlike the other courses above, this course is free only to residents of the United Kingdom. The course takes 6 weeks to complete.
8. Counselling in the Workplace
If you are aspiring to be a teacher, just know that you will do a lot of counseling and if you don’t exactly have the skills, this course will equip you with appropriate abilities. The course is offered online and sponsored for free by the UK Government. It is accredited by NCFE CACHE. The aim of the course is to equip educators with counseling skills and help them identify the different approaches involved in the use of counseling skills.
9. Educating Deaf Children: Becoming an Empowered Teacher
As an educator, you can take it upon yourself to extend your teaching practices to deaf children, many of whom complete school as illiterates. Although the teaching style for such handicapped children is different with this course, you will learn all there is to teaching such kids effectively and putting them on an equal scale as their peers.
The course is offered in Coursera by the University of Cape Town. It takes 15 hours to complete. The language of instruction is English but there are subtitles in French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
10. Assessment in Higher Education: Professional Development for Teachers
This is one of the free online courses for teachers’ professional development offered on Coursera by Erasmus University Rotterdam. The course will guide you, teacher, through the different phases of preparing, creating, and evaluating the assessments in your course. This course is designed for those who are already teachers. You can complete the course in 17 hours.
11. Understanding Classroom Interaction
If you want to create a more engaging and lively classroom with your students but don’t know how to do that, this course is what you should probably take. By taking this free online course, you will be one step closer to becoming a professional teacher as you will learn the techniques to operate a lively and engaging classroom that students will enjoy.
What qualifies as professional development for teachers?
Online or in-person courses, workshops, education conferences or seminars, observation visits, and qualification programs are activities that qualify as professional development for teachers.
How do teachers get professional development hours?
Teachers can get professional development hours by engaging in college-level coursework, seminars, conferences, or online classes.