12 Best Online Teaching and Education Courses, Schools & Degrees

Education is the cornerstone to improving one’s life. However, without great instructors, learners often cannot reach their full potential. As a teacher, administrator, or even education policymaker, you can make a serious impact on a student’s learning in meaningful, rewarding ways. If you are interested in becoming a teacher or looking to gain additional teaching credentials and skills or looking to become an administrator or policymaker, you might want to consider a Master’s degree in Education.
Learning how to teach doesn’t stop in the classroom. Teaching skills are invaluable when trying to train coworkers or employees, effectively articulate a vision or presentation, or need to determine what is truly important within a project. As a parent, too, it’s important to understand how your children learn and how they can increasing their learning abilities. Taking an online course can help you augment or supplement your child’s learning and help them become better learners. Furthermore, if you are looking to become a education administrator or education policy maker, gaining first-hand education experience will be important in knowing how to lead and what issues or concerns are important in education.
If you are looking to jump start your career in education or are looking to become a more effective teacher, check out the courses we have compiled for you!

College Degrees

Self Guided Courses

MOOCs / Open Courses

If you want to make the shift to becoming a teacher, you’ll more than likely need to get trained, certified, and experienced before you can begin teaching. However, if you have a 4 year degree, this can tremendously help you in your search, as well as allowing you to specialize in your previous field of education. Within public education alone, one may teach elementary education, secondary education, special education, and many topic oriented areas, such as Biology, English, or Physical Education.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, educators make a median pay of about $55,000 per year, though oftentimes there are other incentives teachers are given, such as student loans reimbursement after a certain amount of service. Additionally, earning a Master’s degree will typically increase your wages significantly. Principals and other administrators earn, according to BLS, about $87,700 a year. The average wage for policymakers is a bit more elusive, though they have the potential to make a significant amount of wages and the ability to shape how education functions on a state-level or national-level platform.

Coursework for a Master’s in Education is somewhat similar, though is often tailored to what you want to make of it. You can expect courses in education theory and application, education policy, leadership and administration in education, teaching standards and practices, productively using evaluations and assessments, as well as many other important core courses concerning teaching and issues in teaching. Specializations often are contingent upon the trajectory of your learning and desired outcome and typically take up about 12-18 credit hours of your degree to complete.

If you want to make a difference in someone’s life, check out some of the top courses in education to help you on your way to becoming an educator, administrator, or a policymaker!

 University of Illinois: Consistently ranked as one of the best online teacher training programs in the United States, the University of Illinois offers diverse options in its Master of Education degrees. Illinois offers 7 teaching areas and specialties (not all of which are in the Master of Education program), including: Diversity and Equity Issues; Global Studies; New Learning; Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform; Teaching of Biological Studies; Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment; and Teacher and Education Leadership. These options, coupled with a strong commitment to assuring students succeed, make the University of Illinois’ program a top choice for those looking to further their teaching abilities, get a raise, or want to become teachers, educators, or policymakers. If you want to earn a degree that will help you stand out from the crowd, a degree from Illinois will carry huge weight when applying for teaching jobs!

 University of Florida: Are you looking to receive a world class education from one of the leading research institutions in the United States? The University of Florida offers an incredible online Master’s of Education degree that will be sure to equip you with the leadership abilities you need to successfully lead in the classroom, as an administrator, or allow you to do educational research. With Florida’s Master of Education program, you will learn the fundamentals of teaching, as well as the complexities of education systems, education policy, and education research. Florida has an amazing program that follows strict teaching through Florida education standards and is perfect for those looking to teach in Florida. However, if you don’t live in Florida, don’t be dissuaded! Florida’s program is an incredible program that will allow you to transfer your learning and skills to become an incredible educator wherever you end up!

 University of Southern California: The Rossier School of Education is one of California’s premier education programs. In addition to offering an incredible traditional degree, Rossier has made its resources available online in an academically rigorous platform. If you are ready to make a difference in the classroom, USC’s program will equip you with the relevant coursework and skills to allow you to lead by example within the classroom or school administration. This is a perfect program for those that are currently working or teaching full-time and still want to make a impact in changing the lives of young people. Rossier students are supported by dedicated staff and a thriving student community, which will help you navigate any issue you may have in your online learning. Additionally, you will have the opportunity to complete field experience as part of your degree program, which will give you a leg up on those without much teaching experience. At the very least, Rossier’s program will prepare you to enter the classroom and become an excellent leader! Furthermore, career services will help you get placed at a school perfect for you, wherever that may be!

 Indiana University: Ranked as one of the top education programs in the United States, Indiana University also offers a phenomenal Master of Science in Education degree that will be sure to bring out the best educator you can be and teach you how to command the classroom with poise and grace. If you are looking to either become a teacher or an administrator, IU’s program will help tailor the perfect fit of coursework and experience to help you thrive. IU’s program is unique in that it covers educational leadership as well as a unique education law and policy track. Furthermore, IU offers more than 90 master’s, specialist, and doctoral programs that are sure to challenge and engage the areas of education you are most interested in whether it be something like Education Policy Studies, Elementary Education, Literacy Education, or Art Education. Additionally, if you are looking for a license, IU offers Building Level Administrator, Director of Exceptional Needs, and Superintendent licensures. If you want to learn from some of the top education faculty as well experience a rigorous preparatory program in education, IU will be sure to impress!

 Central Michigan University: According to US News and World Report, Central Michigan has one of the best, if not the best, overall online education platform. If you are looking to broaden your experience and become more involved in teaching, Central Michigan offers a competitive program that will be sure to enhance your teaching abilities, connect with other educators, and learn new techniques and ideas. Coursework will challenge you to become more involved in the theory and practice of teaching, as well as allowing to articulate your vision for teaching more clearly. If you are looking for an affordable opportunity to advance your career, you should definitely consider Central Michigan!

 ed2go: Do you want to learn how to better teach core concepts like math, writing, and science to your students? Are you looking to help empower students with disabilities to allow them to learn to their full potential? edX offers a variety of classes that will teach you the basics of how to improve curriculum so as to better manage your student’s educational development. These courses are great for paraeducators, teachers looking to hone certain teaching abilities, and parents.

 NovoEd: Common Core standards can be tricky to decipher and translate into applicable teaching materials. NovoEd, in conjunction with Stanford Online, aims to make that transition much easier. Offering a variety of courses that aim to simplify different elementary, secondary, and evaluative measures, NovoEd is perfect for educators and school administrators looking to incorporate elements of the Common Core into usable, effective instruction and curricula. If you want to better utilize student performance data to assist your students in becoming better learners, definitely check out these courses! A must for instructors teaching in mathematics, language arts, history/social studies, and science.

edX: This summer edX is offering a tremendous course called Leaders of Learning, that will equip you with foundations and theories about how we learn and lead. Taught by Harvard Graduate School professor Richard Elmore, this course will help you define and develop your own theory of learning and help you maximize your potential when you do learn something new. This course will also examine the shifting landscape of learning technologies and platforms so as to better be able to lead, organize, and administer classroom and professional interactions. If you are interested in learning about learning, or are looking to become a more productive leader, this course will be perfect you!

 MIT OpenCourseWare: Learning how to teach can be a difficult thing to… well, teach. MIT OpenCourseWare makes becoming an effective educator much more simple with amazing, archived courses designed to make you think about and understand how to become a successful educator. MIT’s courses range from undergraduate to graduate-levels, though each course uniquely tackles and presents a problem many educators face, whether that be understanding and evaluating education, to learning core principles of education theory and practice. These courses will, however, be certain to challenge how you think of education and its practices. If you are looking to become a teacher, an education administrator, a policymaker, or simply want to gain a better understanding why we learn the way we do, MIT’s courses are an excellent jumping off point for learning more about education.

 Coursera: Do you want to supplement your learning or your student’s learning by taking an informative class? Coursera offers a variety of courses that will challenge and equip you with the skills and abilities to effectively lead in a classroom. Offered through top institutions and nonprofits, these courses introduce important theories, learning applications, and much more. If you are looking to bolster your scientific or common core curriculum, these courses will be of particular interest to you—implementing and adapting curriculum will be much easier by taking these courses! Furthermore, many of these courses offer a verified certificate open completion that may use to boost your credentials! Many of these courses are offered during the summer, which is perfect timing for those teachers wanting to take professional development courses but may not have time during the school year.

 Open2Study: Education has many applications. Open2Study recognizes this and offers a variety of different courses for various levels of education. If you want to learn how to become an effective early childhood educator, become a confident trainer, or want to lead and educate adults, Open2Study has some amazing courses just for you. These courses not only present cogent, challenging information, they will quiz you on what you have learned, as well as give you the opportunity to potentially get a certificate (in Australia). Open2Study offers one of the only courses to evaluate why we learn and how that has changed over time, which is important for understanding the need to adapt and promote our education today. These course are not to be missed!

 African Virtual University: African Virtual University is an incredible text-based resource for those who don’t have great internet access but still want to learn. Offering most courses in both English and French, AVU provides comprehensive courses with links to all required course material—at the very least, AVU’s education courses are a great place to find open source publications and ancillary education resources to supplement your learning. AVU’s courses provide step-by-step instruction and challenge learners to various self-guided essays, analyses, and tests. If you want to learn about education and teaching theories, but don’t have access to a reliable internet source, these courses will be perfect for you!