Keep learning all summer long with 35 free MIT courses

Summer’s here, and it can be the perfect time to gain career-boosting skills, dive into a fresh topic, or simply feed your curiosity. We’ve rounded up the latest online courses and resources from MIT Open Learning to grow, discover, and get inspired this season.

Try a social sciences course

• Game Theory: Investigate equilibrium and non-equilibrium solution concepts and their foundations as the result of learning or evolution.
• Field Seminar in Comparative Politics: Get an introduction to the field of comparative politics through research design and research methods, exploring topics such as political culture, social cleavages, the state, and democratic institutions.
• Industrial Organization I: Try a PhD-level course in industrial organization, and learn the basic building blocks of the field.
• Principles of Microeconomics: Grasp the fundamentals of microeconomics, including supply and demand, market equilibrium, consumer theory, production and the behavior of firms, monopoly, oligopoly, welfare economics, public goods, and externalities.
• Microeconomics: Use economic models to understand how prices and markets allocate resources in the face of scarcity.
• AP® Microeconomics: Get an overview of introductory microeconomics, from the key principles of economics to how to apply them to the real world.
• Microeconomic Theory and Public Policy: Gain an understanding of microeconomic research and apply this understanding to public policy.
• Good Economics for Hard Times: Discover how applied economics uses data to tackle some of society’s toughest challenges.
• Data Analysis for Social Scientists: Learn methods for harnessing and analyzing data to answer questions of cultural, social, economic, and policy interest.
• Tools for Academic Engagement in Public Policy: Master the policymaking process and practical tips for engaging with the policy community.

Fulfill your curiosity with a science, engineering, or urban planning course

• Introduction to Biology — The Secret of Life: Master the basics of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, recombinant DNA, genomics, and rational medicine.
• General Chemistry I: Explore chemical structure and bonding from a quantum mechanical perspective.
• General Chemistry II: Experience the world at the molecular-level, by learning about spontaneity, equilibrium, and mechanisms and rates of reactions.
• Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Properties of Materials: Discover the physical principles behind diodes, light-emitting devices, and memories.
• Power Electronics: Dive into modeling, analysis, design, and application of circuits for energy conversion and control.
• Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Part 1: Explore materials from the atomic to the continuum level, and apply your learning to mechanics and engineering problems.
• Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Part 2: Understand concepts relating to stress transformation — including equivalent stresses, principal stresses, and maximum shear stress — and learn how to solve mechanics and engineering problems.
• Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Part 3: Develop an understanding of concepts and master problem-solving skills relating to viscoelasticity, plasticity, and high temperature creep of a crystalline solid.
• Advanced Fluid Mechanics 1: Learn the fundamental principles underlying fluid dynamics, as well as applications of control volume analysis.
• The Iterative Innovation Process: Experience the iterative innovation process and learn how you can use this process to develop your own innovative ideas.
• Defining Real-World Problems With the D.I.S. Method: Understand the “Describe, Inquire, State” (D.I.S.) method to structure and define real-world problems.
• Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale: Examine holistic and interdisciplinary pathways to prototype a locally specific, culturally acceptable, and socio-economically viable reusable energy source.
• Advanced Thermodynamics: Explore general thermodynamics concepts, multicomponent equilibrium properties, chemical equilibrium, electrochemical potentials, and chemical kinetics.
• NEET Ways of Thinking: Discover cognitive approaches for tackling complex challenges, valued by industry, for thriving in an uncertain and rapidly changing world.
• Innovations in Textile Engineering: Get an overview of engineering, manufacturing, and innovation principles used in textile production.
• Supply Chains for Manufacturing: Capacity Analytics: Get acquainted with various models, methods, and software tools to help make better decisions for system design in manufacturing systems and supply chains.
• Structural Materials: Selection and Economics: Learn how, why, and when billions of tons of structural materials, such as steel, aluminum, and titanium, are used every year.
• Science of Learning and Memory: Explore how we learn, classical conditioning, and amnesia, and test your own memory with fun activities.
• Advanced Topics in Cryptography: Explore the evolution of proofs in computer science.
• Transformative Living Labs in Urban Climate Action and Transportation Planning: Get an introduction to sustainable and equitable solutions in urban mobility and to the “living labs” model, a method of co-development among public and private actors, researchers, and civil society to accelerate innovation in climate action and sustainable urban planning and development.

Expand your understanding of the world with a leadership, humanities, or cultural course

• Leadership in Planning: How to Effectively Advance Great Urban Planning Initiatives: Master skills and techniques for applying technical and legal skills effectively in a complex and shifting public arena.
• Facilitative Leadership in the Public Sector: Tune into a series of videos focused on leadership skills attuned specifically to the needs of public sector professionals.
• Reading Poetry: Social Poetics: Discover the historical relationship between the social lives of everyday people and American poetry.
• Liberalism, Toleration, and Freedom of Speech: Understand the theories and principles that underlie the concept of free speech in the United States.
• Heavy Metal 101: Learn everything you ever wanted to know about heavy metal music.

These courses and materials are available through MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx, which are part of MIT Open Learning. MIT OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. MITx offers high-quality massive open online courses adapted from the MIT classroom for learners worldwide.

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