Educational Resources for Students to Help While Writing College Papers
Many students nowadays are rather busy doing a lot of written assignments. They need reliable resources for getting information from them and to write an original essay. It does not matter much whether these students are native English speakers or ESL students from other countries. Both groups need much more assistance with the materials than they can find on the Internet.
It is commonly known that choosing a reliable source for writing academic papers or learning the necessary information can be challenging. The network sources can be free or paid. However, the quality of such websites does not depend much on this factor. Even the materials from paid resources can be used by different websites. The authors do not bother a lot. They take pre-written or ready-made materials, change them and upload them for sale. That can result in a high percentage of plagiarism and poor quality.
Non-native students, for example, from Asia, do need more materials for their writing essays when they are taking their courses in the USA or other English-speaking countries. However, their mastery of English does not allow them to pick out the most reliable resources. The problem here is not whether they use a paid or free source. The problem is in the established reputation of the website. The sources should help students understand the main concepts better and facilitate their studies instead of distracting and confusing them with contradictory ideas and poorly organized presentation structure.
That is why we have tried here to pick out and offer the students the most reliable and reputable educational resources for colleges and universities. We hope they will be helpful in your studies.
TED Talks
You can find more than 3,500 lectures here on different fields of study and levels of language command. You do not need to register to access the materials.
Famous people are represented on the platform with their live lectures featuring significant achievements, progressive ideas and concepts, and advanced approaches. They are interesting, informative, and useful for completing your written assignments if you need additional data and points of view.
Coursera
This rich and meaningful website with more than 4,000 courses in English partners with such prominent universities as Princeton, Stanford, and Michigan. It cooperates with hundreds of educational organizations and has over 73 million students taking its courses. Registration is required, and there is a special application for iOS and Android to use these resources.
The online organization aims to set up well-proven training centers all over the world. You can find a lot of proprietary courses here, and you can get both prepaid and free certificates after the course completion. Though this is a commercial company, the Financial Aid program ensures the opportunity to obtain their prestigious certificate for free.
Udemy
This is one of the most helpful, straightforward, and user-friendly educational platforms in the global academic community. It offers useful materials and more than 130,000 courses in different languages. Over 35.5 million students and about 57,500 teachers engaged on the platform.
The most well-developed programs here are from such fields of study as IT, business, and economics. The courses are prepaid and free. Free courses do not require doing homework which is beneficial for most students. You can get any information you are interested in here. Still, you do not need to put any additional time and effort into this process. You can also create your course on this website and start making money.
You are required to register on the site to use its courses and materials. There are applications for Android and iOS which are convenient. Some courses issue the certificates of completion electronically, directly from the platform.
How Stuff Works
This platform is an online counterpart of a famous TV channel as Discovery. It is especially useful for those doing (or planning to do) courses in Physics, Biology, Engineering, and Ecology. You will find many articles, videos, infographics, and news on different academic and everyday subjects here.
Popular Science
The information you can find on this highly informative website can make your academic work and abstract written for it more engaging and unique. You can find many articles, news, and other materials on technology, science, environment, and health. There are a lot of little-known examples and facts represented here together with the current news related to these fields.
Google Academy
This is an amazing academic search engine which you can use for free and without any mandatory registration. You can look for scientific publications from any field on the platform. The materials from scientific conferences, research books, dissertations, monographs, theses, technical reports, abstracts, and annotations are available here.
This service is quite popular among students. Postgraduates who are doing their research work also use it often.
Edx.org
This is an amazing joint project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard University. This non-profit organization was founded in 2012 as an important platform for assisting students from different fields of study to obtain their knowledge.
Nowadays, it offers above 2,550 courses in English provided by 140 universities. It also partners with more than 125 educational organizations. The number of students who are taking their courses every year is above 20 million people. The courses are mostly paid ones, and you need to register on the platform to apply for them. You will have to do homework here and the requirements are high. You need to complete all the tasks on time and successfully get a certificate. Some courses can issue the certificate electronically.
You can also use an application for iOS or Android for the platform.
FutureLearn
This is a British MOOC project featuring over 700 courses in English. The platform partners with such prominent organizations as Liverpool, Birmingham, and Bristol Universities, the British Council, the British Museum, and many others. The project is a part of the University of Open Education promoting distance education for about 40 years already.
You need to register on the platform to access to its courses and materials. You can also obtain a prepaid verified certificate after completion of any course.
Refseek
This platform reminds of Google by its minimalistic design, layout, and loads of materials for search. Everything here serves academic purposes. You insert the topic of interest in its search engine, and you will get a lot of reliable information on it. Plagiarism is completely excluded here.
Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)
This is a perfect academic search engine designed and developed by the US Ministry of Education. Here you will find more than 1.4 million books, lecture transcripts, articles, and other materials in any field of study. There are convenient filters on the platform to obtain the results which suit your purpose completely. You can search for resources according to their author, year of publication, country, a field of study, and academic level. If you need materials on highly specific topics, this platform is right for you.
Virtual Learning Resources Center
This academic search engine includes materials from the websites related to various fields of study. The list of resources was compiled by prominent researchers and professors from all over the world. You will find the most accurate, updated, and topical information from your field.
Final Thoughts
Now, you know where to look for the academic information for your studies and writing assignments. However, you may not know what exactly you need to look for. You have to discuss it with your professor.
You can also use help from an expert in a specialized writing service. You will get professional assistance on writing term papers, theses, essays, or any other types of academic work. All you need is to choose a reputable essay writing service.
