List of Free Online Software Engineering Courses

There are a few different options for free online software engineering courses. We've listed some of our top picks below.

1. IBM

Introduction to Software Engineering is a beginner-level course offered by IBM. It provides foundational knowledge in the software development lifecycle and software development methodologies.

It's part of two different series of courses offered by IBM: the Applied Software Engineering Fundamentals Specialization and the IBM DevOps and Software Engineering Professional Certificate.

This course takes about 14 total hours to complete. There are four modules:

• SDLC - The Software Development Lifecycle
• Introduction to Software Development
• Basics of Programming
• Software Architecture, Design, and Patterns

Students can begin this course at any time and can finish at their own pace. This course is free to audit on Coursera. You can sign up for a seven-day free trial, after which it's $49 per month until you finish.

This course is also offered on edX as Software Engineering Basics for Everyone. It's free to audit and costs $99 for the course upgrade.

2. Duke University

North Carolina's Duke University offers the Java Programming and Software Engineering Fundamentals Specialization through Coursera.

This beginner-level specialization is made up of five courses:

• Programming Foundations with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
• Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software
• Java Programming: Arrays, Lists, and Structured Data
• Java Programming: Principles of Software Design
• Java Programming: Build a Recommendation System

The entire specialization takes about two months to complete on average. Individual courses are free to audit, or students can have a seven-day free trial to the specialization, after which it's $49 per month.

3. Technical University of Munich

Software Engineering Essentials is an instructor-paced, beginner-level course from the Technical University of Munich (Technische Universität München).

The course is interactive, with videos and online activities including quizzes and exercises. There are eight modules, which include course topics such as:

• object-oriented programming
• requirements analysis
• software configuration management
• system design

This course is free to audit on edX, or students can pay $49 for full access to the course benefits.

4. KU Leuven

UML Class Diagrams for Software Engineering is offered by KU Leuven, a research university in Belgium. It focuses on how to read Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams for software engineering.

The self-paced course contains three modules:

• Introduction and UML Class Diagram Basics
• UML Class Diagram Basics
• UML Class Diagrams Advanced Topics

The course is free to audit on edX, or students can upgrade to the verified track for $49.

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Foundations of Software Engineering is a graduate-level course that focuses on modern software development techniques offered on MIT's OpenCourseWare.

OpenCourseWare is a free, publicly accessible collection of teaching and learning materials offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

While it's a foundational course, the instructor expects students to have preexisting knowledge of an object-oriented language.

The course is broken into four phases:

• C++ and OOP
• Algorithms
• Java
• Project

Students have access to lectures, assignments, quizzes and a final project. There is no option for professional certification with this course.

MIT also offers Software Engineering Concepts, a graduate course that takes a more in-depth look at software engineering.

There are no prerequisites, but the professor suggests that students have some knowledge of programming before beginning.

The course includes a mixture of lectures and discussions. Students are given carefully selected papers instead of textbook readings. There are no assignments.