Learning Tools

Free Resources to Help with Remote Learning in 2022

If you're looking for software and services to augment online and blended instruction, start here.

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 08/30/22

(Updated Aug. 30, 2022) As the pandemic continues bringing change to higher education through the academic year, faculty, instructional designers and IT professionals are being more selective about the technology they choose for instructing and engaging students. While hundreds of education companies, nonprofits and other organizations made their software and services free during the immediate switch to remote learning, many have become more thoughtful about how they help educators master online and blended instruction. We've sifted through their offerings to bring you this updated set of free resources to help with online, hybrid and face-to-face learning in 2022.

If your organization has a resource that should be added to this list, send a brief message to [email protected] with "free resource" in the subject header and include a link to your offer's website.

Adobe has developed a resource hub for education with free templates, links to free software (including Adobe Acrobat, Sign and tools for Google Drive) and videos with instructions for how to use the programs. https://acrobatusers.com/edu-resource-hub/educators/

Agora.io is offering a free online classroom application to support remote teaching and learning at nonprofit educational institutions. The app enables one-to-one tutoring, small classroom work, lecture-hall class streaming, whiteboard collaboration, chat and a management console. The company is providing onboarding support. Registration required. https://www.agora.io/en/free-online-classroom-application

The American Writers Museum has brought exhibits online, including "My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today," "Hisaye Yamamoto: An American Story," "Ray Bradbury: Inextinguishable" and "Frederic Douglass: Agitator," among others. Educational materials are available for each. https://my-america.org/

Annenberg Learner is offering free access to dozens of lessons for college students on Learner.org, the Annenberg Foundation's education division, covering numerous topics from the Arts to World Languages. https://www.learner.org/classroom-resources/

Arizona State University is working with Complexly's Crash Course on a series of entry-level course videos, covering composition, chemistry, data literacy, algebra and other subjects. (Complexly and Crash Course are an initiative of the Green brothers, hosts of a popular vlog and best-selling fiction.) The content in "Study Hall" won't offer credit or replace any degree programs, but rather will serve as a supplement for high school or college learners. https://www.youtube.com/c/arizonastateuniversity

bartleby is making free digital self-tutoring and writing services available to college students. Students can ask homework questions, which subject-matter experts will answer, or post a paper to have grammar and spelling checked. https://www.bartleby.com/

Belouga and the #SameHere Global Alliance are making recorded versions of events with leading mental health organizations from around the world available for viewing. Basic access is available free. https://belouga.org/mental-health-month

BetterLesson and Adobe have compiled teaching strategies from a group of Adobe "master teachers," to help students develop their creativity and tool skills. Applying them requires the use of Adobe Creative Cloud. https://betterlesson.com/browse/learning-domain/24/adobe-learning-domain?from=instructional_strategies_browse

Blackboard offers the File Transformer, a free resource enabling students to convert digital course content into alternative formats, to meet their unique learning needs and preferences. An outgrowth of the company's accessibility checker, Blackboard Ally, the new resource lets students personalize their learning experience and choose from several format types (PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX and HTML) to work better with mobile devices, assistive technologies and study tools. https://ally.ac/covid19/

Blackmagic Design makes a free version of DaVinci Resolve software available. The company calls this "Hollywood's most popular solution" for video editing, visual effects, motion graphics, color correction and audio post production. It runs on Mac, Windows and Linux! The paid version includes more video and audio tools. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/

BombBomb is offering free accounts for its video messaging tool to teachers, professors, counselors and administrators in the United States and Canada. The program allows educators to communicate with students and families face-to-face (virtually, of course) and provide feedback with the help of a screen recording. Registration required. https://bombbomb.com/education/

Canva for Education is offering teachers forever-free access to the pro edition of its online design platform. The program, which is optimized for Chromebook, includes drag-and-drop tools to simplify visual communication. Students can create and co-create presentations, infographics, websites, reports, worksheets, posters, flyers and signage. The program includes access to a multitude of templates, images, icons, illustrations and fonts. Once teachers fill out the form, the company will verify the application. Registration required. https://www.canva.com/education/

Cisco Webex is offering free accounts for education. Those meetings can have up to 100 participants, high-definition viewing, screen sharing and personal rooms; however, they're limited to 50 minutes. The company has also developed a collection of resources to help instructors and students use the online virtual conference program. Registration required. https://www.webex.com/webexremoteedu.html

Code with Google provides free lessons, to help students pick up computer science skills. https://edu.google.com/code-with-google/

CodeGym has made its gamified Java course with more than 1,400 practical tasks free for high school and college students. Company contact required. https://codegym.cc/edu

Cornerstone, a workforce management company, has developed a series of "playlists" to help people — including teachers — adjust to pandemic stresses. Topics, including making the transition to online instruction and learning, stress management and working from home, are covered in "bite-sized" videos and downloadable guides. Access is free. Registration is required. https://hr.cornerstoneondemand.com/cornerstonecares

Course Hero is making free study guides available for business and accounting, humanities, STEM and social sciences. Each includes links to additional study resources submitted by students and educators from their own courses. https://www.coursehero.com/sg/

Coursera is offering a number of free Google professional certificates to high schools and community colleges, covering data analytics, IT automation, IT support, project management and user experience design. Registration required. The offer is good through March 1, 2023.
https://www.coursera.org/google-certificates-community-colleges-cte

Coursera is also still making auditable courses available from a number of universities, covering health, social sciences, business, arts and humanities, physical science and engineering, computer science, personal development, data science and math and logic. Registration required. https://www.coursera.org/

Dropbox offers free "digital care packages," 25 different folders containing a compilation of activities curated by creators, including artists, designers, foodies, musicians, writers and others. You can send them not just to others but to yourself too. https://www.dropbox.com/care-package

The Economist's educational foundation is producing "Topical Talk," classroom resources meant to engage students in critical thinking activities and provide topics for interesting conversations in the classroom. Registration required. https://economistfoundation.org/resources/

EdSights has built a free text message bot that universities can use to support students. The bot allows schools to send "clear and immediate" information to students on evolving university operations. According to the company, the chatbot takes about two hours to set up, can be launched remotely and does not require help from IT. Registration required. https://www.edsights.io/covid-19

Eduflow is making its lightweight learning management system free. The program allows educators to set up online courses that facilitate discussions, peer review, feedback and other learning activities. Registration required. https://www.eduflow.com/

edX continues making its university-produced courses free for audit in numerous subjects. https://www.edx.org/

eMathHelp offers a variety of free calculators covering math topics such as calculus, algebra, geometry and more, with no registration or personal data required. https://www.emathhelp.net/

Every Learner Everywhere, a network of 12 partner organizations with expertise in education technology and pedagogy, provides free resources to support higher education faculty and leaders who need advice to support their students through online and hybrid learning. Registration required. https://www.everylearnereverywhere.org/

Exploring Emerging Technologies for Lifelong Learning and Success is a free learning opportunity sponsored by the State University of New York that helps instructors stay current in today's rapidly changing teaching and learning environment. Participants learn how to effectively use emerging technologies to engage students, develop a personal e-portfolio to showcase their skills and accomplishments, and earn digital badges and a Coursera Certificate of Completion. http://suny.edu/emtech

FeedbackFruits is offering free access to tools that make online courses more engaging. Functionality includes letting instructors add practice questions or discussion topics to their videos, documents, presentations and audio recordings; enable peer evaluation; provide inline feedback; and deliver automatic grading on any student interaction or assignment. The tools can be integrated into the learning management system. Once the instructor signs up, the company will get in touch to set up access. https://feedbackfruits.com/get-started

Flipsnack is offering its classroom plan for free to educators. The program enables student groups to collaborate on the creation of digital magazines. Besides text, those can include videos, audio, links and other interactive elements. Registration required. https://www.flipsnack.com/classroom-plan-apply/

General Assembly, which develops technical and business courses, has produced a free short course on how to teach online. Registration required. https://generalassemb.ly/blog/how-to-teach-online/

Good Calculators is providing a variety of free online calculators, to do math and statistics, engineering and conversions. The website also offers specialized calculators for financial, date and time, logistics, sales, sports and health. https://goodcalculators.com/

GoodNotes, a note-taking app for Apple devices, is now free to download. Users can create up to three digital notebooks at no cost; a full unlock, priced at $7.99, offers unlimited notebooks, handwriting recognition and the ability to search handwritten text. https://www.goodnotes.com/

Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals provides access to Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Classroom, Assignments, Sites, Groups, Drive, Admin and Tasks. Registration required.
https://edu.google.com/products/workspace-for-education/education-plus/

GreyCampus offers free access to OpenCampus, its resource library on professional certifications with practice questions and flashcards; and codelabs, which allows the student to run code in a browser. https://www.greycampus.com/opencampus/downloads

Hallo is offering free Android and iOS apps to help students practice English. Hallo is a live-streaming community for English learners and teachers. Students can learn from native speakers through live videos 24/7 and practice speaking in seconds with people all around the world. Registration required. https://hallo.tv/athomelearning/

HelioCampus has released the LMS Explorer Kit, a free tool that allows institutions to extract and organize data from their learning management system to better inform resource planning and decision-making. Currently, Canvas and Blackboard Learn are supported. Registration required. https://www.heliocampus.com/lms_explorerkit

IBM is producing IBM SkillsBuild (formerly P-TECH), to help students and educators pick up computing and workplace basics in multiple subjects, including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, design thinking and cloud computing, as well as soft skills. https://skillsbuild.org/

iLovePDF is offering a suite of free tools to work with PDF documents. You can merge PDFs; split them; compress them; convert them to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, JPG and HTML (and vice versa); edit them; and more. https://www.ilovepdf.com/

Instructure makes its learning management system, Canvas, free for educators. The account never expires and offers all course creation and importing, "mastery paths" to lead students through personalized learning, native use on mobile devices, a gradebook, quizzing and other features that instructors need to move their students to online learning. Registration required. https://www.instructure.com/canvas/try-canvas

IObit has a free utility to help remote users speed up performance of their Windows devices. Advanced SystemCare 15 Free removes "junk files"; helps increase performance and internet speed; removes privacy traces; and dumps processes that are slowing down startup. https://www.iobit.com/en/advancedsystemcarefree.php

iRubric is a free rubric building and sharing platform with a large gallery of user-generated rubrics. Rubrics are categorized by grade level, subject and activity type, and can be easily copied and modified. https://www.rcampus.com/rubricshellc.cfm

iTop VPN is offering a free screen recorder. iTop Screen Recorder allows you to record any area of your screen, has facecam recording, accommodates unlimited recording time, records HD videos with no lagging, lets you take screenshots while recording, provides for multiple output formats and is available for Windows. https://recorder.itopvpn.com/

Jotform is a free online survey tool for students. Registration required. https://www.jotform.com/surveys/free-survey-for-students/

Kahoot! offers a basic version of its game-based learning software for free. Instructors can have up to 50 players per game. https://kahoot.com/schools/distance-learning/

Kapwing is now offering free subscriptions for education users of its browser-based video editing software, which works on all platforms, including Chromebooks. https://www.kapwing.com/edu 

Kialo Edu is a free platform that helps educators encourage thoughtful classroom discussion and assist them in the teaching of critical thinking. The online service lets faculty start private discussions within their classes, provide students with feedback and ask them follow-up questions, and create teams within the class section. Registration required. https://www.kialo-edu.com/

Kiron has a set of free, interactive online lessons to help instructors globally learn how to better teach students online during school closings. The startup, funded and supported by MIT Solve, focuses primarily on refugees worldwide and underserved communities in the Middle East to provide access to high-quality education. However, the course applies to educators making the switch to online teaching anywhere, covering topics such as getting active participation online and creating a learning environment. https://teach.kiron.ngo/

LabXchange from Harvard University is an always-free resource that provides digital content compiled from multiple sources in the sciences, including lab simulations, which educators can mix into their own learning narratives and share with students. Among the functionalities provided are social networking, class groupings, discussion forums and "mentorship" (to bring learners together with educators and researchers around the world). https://www.labxchange.org/

The Library of Congress has developed a portal where faculty and students can access content that's free to use and reuse, from the library's digital collections. The collections comprise millions of digital items, including books, newspapers, manuscripts, prints and photos, maps, musical scores, films, sound recordings and more. https://www.loc.gov/free-to-use/

Librivox provides access to 16,000 books that have been read aloud by volunteers, including 2,000 in non-English languages. https://librivox.org/

Loom is making its quick-response video software free for educators forevermore. The program captures a person's screen, voice and face and allows for editing, "instant sharing" and controlled viewing. Registration with an EDU e-mail address required. https://www.loom.com/education

Lumen offers open educational resource courses as well as supplemental resources, including slide decks, question banks, assignments and discussion forums. Registration required. https://lumenlearning.com/courses/

Manticore Games has launched "Core Academy," a destination for free online classes for game creation and design. Courses include tutorials, videos and hands-on examples. Registration required. https://learn.coregames.com/

Mathematica has compiled an extensive set of COVID-19 resources, including public databases, tools and insights relevant to the pandemic, which may be useful for academic research. https://www.mathematica.org/features/covid-19-curated-data-modeling-and-policy-resources

Microsoft Office 365 Education provides colleges and universities with a free set of productivity applications: Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Sway, Forms, Stream, Power Automate, Power Apps, School Data Sync and Yammer. Registration required. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/products/office

Money Fit offers a self-guided, scenario-based activity, "My Life My Choices," which leads students through their fictional first month of independent living away from home. After the activity, students receive a free, personalized certificate of completion in PDF format via e-mail (their own e-mail or their teacher's). https://moneyfit.org/my-life-my-choices-students

Musescore offers its community-developed music notation software available free. https://musescore.org/en

New Literacy Project offers "Shakespeare & The Plague," a timely 20-minute mashup of the playwright's creations with a viewer's guide for discussing the performance in class. https://www.newliteraryproject.org/teaching-tools

Omni Calculator is continuing to make its 2,095 (and growing) calculators available free. Each one is targeted to help students and others handle any type of equation or conversion imaginable. https://www.omnicalculator.com/

OnScale, which produces a cloud-based engineering simulation platform, is offering free private accounts with 10 free cloud core-hours per month. Registration required. https://onscale.com/.

The Open Textbook Library offers access to hundreds of openly licensed textbooks, which can be downloaded for free or printed at a low cost. Subjects include accounting and finance, business, computer science, education, math, national sciences, social sciences and student success, among others. The compilation is maintained by the nonprofit Center for Open Education in the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

OpenDyslexic is an open source font developed to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. The free extension overrides fonts on a web page with its own font and formats to make them more readable. There's an extension for Chrome users. https://opendyslexic.org/

OpenStax continues making its open source digital textbooks in core college and Advanced Placement subjects freely available. The collection grows year by year. And now the nonprofit offers digital tutoring for a number of its textbook subjects. https://openstax.org/

Panopto makes Panopto Express free for quick, online screen and video recording. Recordings can be automatically uploaded to YouTube or Google Classroom. https://www.panopto.com/record/

Pantone is offering free access to Pantone Connect through the Adobe Exchange. The tool enables designers and artists to build and share color palettes, convert and cross-reference colors and match Pantone colors through Adobe Creative Cloud. https://exchange.adobe.com/creativecloud.details.103029.html

PBS produces "PBS American Portrait," an initiative that invites Americans to share stories from their lives, about their families and communities, their joys, struggles and triumphs. Instructors are teaching students about storytelling and personal narratives while also allowing them to speak to their mental and emotional well-being, by answering prompts posed on the site, such as, "I never expected ..." and "What gets me out of bed in the morning ...." https://www.pbs.org/american-portrait/

PBS LearningMedia offers a "Ken Burns in the Classroom" hub, making this filmmaker's series available in its entirety. Titles include The Civil War, Jazz, The War and The Dust Bowl and others. https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/kenburnsclassroom/home/

Pearson's Channels is a curated library of educational videos with an emphasis on science, math, and business, which provides supplementary tutorial content for its Pearson+ e-textbook subscription service. The videos are available to all college students for free, even if they aren't using a Pearson textbook. https://www.pearson.com/channels 

Photomath solves math problems for students and instructors, while providing step-by-step guidance to the equations via artificial intelligence-driven photo recognition technology. Serves as a handy support for students who need additional help. Free for educators. https://photomath.com/en/teachers/

Pneuma Solutions, which specializes in developing accessible cloud solutions, offers Scribe for Education free forever to educators with students who need accessible student handouts. The program processes 18 file types into accessible documents, including graphic files. Accessible document formats include HTML, tagged PDF, EPUB, DAISY, RTF, Braille, large print and TTS audio MP3. https://pneumasolutions.com/scribe-for-education/

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) is a free resource for writing tips and assignments, research and citation tutorials, and instructor and tutor materials. Contents include general writing exercises, covering sentence-level writing, grammar and editing; common writing assignments, including book reports, bibliographies and research papers; the OWL YouTube channel, which includes lessons on grammar, rhetoric, and professional and technical writing; and online tutoring for Purdue students, faculty and staff. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization is making primary sources of the Jewish past available, covering "from biblical times to the 21st century." Resources include teaching clips that are free to use in lectures and classes and links to reading selections and images. Registration required for access to some digital content. https://www.posenlibrary.com/teachingclips/

Quality Matters (QM), the global organization leading quality assurance in online and innovative digital teaching and learning environments, has created Bridge to Quality Course Design Guides that provide a road map for designing a higher ed or K-12 course with QM Standards in mind. https://www.qualitymatters.org/bridge It also offers an Accessibility & Usability Resource Site (AURS) for addressing key accessibility and usability concerns in your courses. https://www.qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/resource-center/articles-resources/accessibility-resource-site

Qualtrics offers a free account, which allows educators to run a single active survey at a time, with up to 100 responses. Registration required. https://www.qualtrics.com/here-to-help/

RCampus offers a number of free remote learning tools including a learning management system that is free to create (upgrades required for premium services such as online testing and interactive rubric grading), free learning community builders and free e-portfolios. https://www.rcampus.com

Rocketbook, the notebook maker, has made downloadable PDFs available free for students and educators. The collection includes graph paper, lined paper, music notation sheets and letter dot-grid sheets, among others. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eqnsm164v0sav3v/AAA-cMxpo8BhBH8sLOFbkUe2a

SimTutor offers three free healthcare simulations for infection prevention procedures, covering the use of soap and water, hand sanitizer and personally protective equipment. https://content.simtutor.com/hand-hygiene-and-ppe-procedures

SoloLean is a free advertising-driven platform for learning to code. Topics cover Python, C++, SQL, Java, JavaScript and Ruby among others. The app offers access to 2,000 courses, tailored from people with a range of skills, from beginner to professional. The company also curates lesson tracks, such as "Become a Data Scientist," "Become a Web Developer" and "Become a Full Stack Developer." The app includes quizzes and an online community for help. A paid version removes the ads. Registration required. https://www.sololearn.com/

StoryCorps has a mission of sharing "humanity's stories." Students can listen to stories and also learn how to interview family members, friends and the broader community about their own experiences and share their recordings with the world or on a classroom community page. https://storycorps.org/

Teamplace, a German company, has a free version of its team cloud storage service. Up to 10 members can access up to 5 GB of capacity. According to the company, the more team members that accept an invitation to a "Teamplace," the more Teamplaces can be set up permanently for free. Registration required. https://www.teamplace.net/en/plans-pricing/

TinEye provides reverse-image searching. You can find where images came from or get more information about them, research and track the appearance of an image online, find higher resolution versions of an image, locate webpages that make use of images you've created yourself, discover modified or edited versions of an image, debunk an image and help with image attribution. If you use Chrome, you can download the Chrome extension. https://tineye.com/

Top Hat, a teaching and learning platform, lets faculty add engaging activities to their remote instruction, including live discussions, presentations, quizzing and automated attendance. Free to instructors; freemium for students. Registration required. https://tophat.com/

Toptal, which specializes in helping organizations find freelance talent, has compiled a useful set of links to free e-books about programming, covering Android; C, C Sharp and C++; Git; HTML and CSS; iOS; Java; JavaScript; PHP; Perl; Python; and Ruby and Ruby on Rails. https://www.toptal.com/software/toptal-s-list-of-top-free-programming-books

Unity Technologies is providing curriculum and Unity licenses to education for instructors who want to help their students learn 3D and game development. The learning series Educator Live provides professional development. https://unity.com/education/distance-learning

The University of Washington hosts the Accessible DL website within its comprehensive DO-IT Center (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology). AccessDL includes guidance on how to design remote learning opportunities — including IT (such as videos, documents and web pages) and pedagogy — that are fully inclusive of students with disabilities and other marginalized groups. The best place to start is with the publication "20 Tips for Teaching an Accessible Online Course." https://www.washington.edu/doit/programs/accessdl

UPchieve is providing free tutoring and counseling to students. The nonprofit's service works on any device; students choose the subject they need help with, and UPchieve matches them with a volunteer tutor in a virtual classroom. Students can get as many free sessions as they want. https://upchieve.org/

Upverter Education provides free, interactive curriculum and teaching resources for helping students learn the basics of electronics design. Registration required. https://education.upverter.com/

VEED is an online screen recorder with several recording options (screen plus webcam, webcam only, screen only, etc.). A free version offers 10 minutes of recording time and a maximum file size of 250 MB; paid plans start at $12 per month for longer videos and expanded features. https://www.veed.io/tools/screen-recorder

Vernier is providing instructors with access to a library of hundreds of experiments and sample data. https://www.vernier.com/remote-learning/

VEX Robotics offers VEXcode Virtual Robot (VR), a free web-based tool for delivering computer science lessons for those who don't have access to a physical VEX Robot at home. There are no software installations required, and the program functions on all major desktops and tablets. https://www.vexrobotics.com/vexcode-vr

Voice of Witness is providing a series of free lesson plans covering displacement, racial inequality, activism, gender inequality, immigration and other themes. The latest curriculum, Mi Maria: Surviving the Storm, collected oral histories from Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane María. These first-person stories explore topics relevant to developing social and emotional learning competencies and include strategies to support English learners. https://voiceofwitness.org/education/

Zinn Education Project wants to "introduce students to a more accurate, complex and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. Faculty will find lessons, networking opportunities and teaching activities. https://www.zinnedproject.org/

Zoom continues offering free accounts for education for meetings up to 40 minutes, with up to 100 participants. https://explore.zoom.us/docs/en-us/education.html