Free Software Engineering Courses Online, Programs, Fees, Reviews 2026

Software Engineering Introduction: edX

• Software Engineering Introduction is a part of the Software Development MicroMasters Program offered by University of British Columbia through edX platform.
• This is a self paced course for 6 weeks at suggested pace of 8-10 hours per week and is instructed by Reid Holmes.
• Agile development, REST and async programming, software specification, design, refactoring, information security, and many more are the topics covered in the course.
• Students will be grouped into teams and work on applying an agile software development process in order to specify, design, and test multiple versions of complex software systems after the end of the course.

Learning Outcome

• Learn the methodology of building a non-trivial software system using an agile approach in a pair or team.
• Learn the techniques for specifying the functional as well as non-functional aspects of a software system.
• Learn the techniques used in designing and testing a software system.
• Learn the importance of refactoring in building a quality system.

UML Class Diagrams for Software Engineering: edX

• UML Class Diagrams for Software Engineering is a course offered by KU Leuven on edX which is Instructed by Monique Snoeck.
• This is a self paced course which can be pursued free of cost and is 3 weeks long at suggested pace of 4-5 hours per week.
• The course will provide an in-depth knowledge of Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagrams, which is one of the crucial skills in today's world and how to visually represent the conceptual design of a system.
• The course covers a total of 3 topics: Introduction and UML Class Diagram Basics (part1) in week 1, UML Class Diagram Basics (parts 2 and 3) in week 2 and UML Class Diagrams Advanced Topics in week 3.

Learning Outcome

• Gain UML skills which are in demand.
• Learn UML class diagrams in-depth.
• Learn the basics of domain modeling and its importance
• Learn the basic building blocks of a class diagram i.e. the concepts of "class", "attribute" and "association"
• Learn advanced concepts of "inheritance" and "AssociationClass" in order to learn and read a model.

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Software Engineering Essentials: edX

• Software Engineering Essentials is a course available in edX instructed by members of Technische Universität München- Bernd Bruegge, Stephan Krusche, Andreas Seitz and Jan Knobloch.
• It is an instructor paced course with an estimated time of 10 weeks at a pace of 5-7 hours per week.
• It is an interactive course and will learn the basic concepts of object-oriented software engineering.
• The syllabus for the course includes Project Organization and Management, Software Configuration Management, Object-Oriented Programming, Requirements Analysis, System Design, Object Design, Testing, Build and Release Management and Exercises.

Learning Outcome

• Learn what Object-Oriented Programming is.
• Learn about Agile Methods and Prototyping.
• Learn in detail Software Configuration Management.
• Learn about Unified Modeling Language (UML).
• Learn about Project Management and Organization.
• Learn the patterns for different phases of a software project.
• Learn the application of UML modeling, patterns and project management techniques.

Software Development Process: Udacity

• Software Development Process is a course offered as CS6300 at Georgia Tech where it is a part of the Online Masters Degree (OMS). However, this course in Udacity does not earn any credit towards the OMS degree.
• The course can be taken up free of cost by enrolling on Udacity.
• This course is approximately 3 months long and is self paced. This course is equipped with Rich Learning Content, Interactive Quizzes and is taught by Industry Pros.
• This course contains 15 lessons in total to teach you to select and implement the ideal software process for development projects.
• Moreover, skills which are necessary in defining requirements, setting up an integrated development environment (IDE), learning Git (and Github!) and using Unified Modeling Language (UML) for designing and building an Android application.

Learning Outcome

• Learn about Importance and discipline of Software Engineering, The Software Crisis and Software Phases.
• Learn about Life Cycle Models and Integrated Development Environments.
• Learn what Version Control System and Requirements Engineering are.
• Learn OO Software, UML and Software Architecture.
• Learn about Analysis and Design Patterns.
• Learn Unified Software Process and General Concepts.
• Learn about Black-box and White-box Testing.
• Learn Agile Development Methods and Software Refactoring.

Understanding Systems Analysis: Alison

• Understanding Systems Analysis is a course by Global Text Project available in Alison.
• This course has a duration of 1.5-3 hours and is a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) accredited course.
• This course will teach you ways to meet organization’s informational, operational, and management requirements while reengineering a process.
• This course has a total of four modules namely System Development, System Survey, Structured System Analysis and Course assessment.
• It will guide you through system development and in determining a reported problem's existence and nature.

Learning Outcome

• Learn to list the different meanings of systems development lifecycle.
• Learn in-depth Business Process Engineering.
• Learn to describe a system survey and its goal.
• Learn Structured System Analysis.
• Learn to understand system analysis.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Microcontroller Interrupts: Alison

• A Step-by-Step Guide to Microcontroller Interrupts is a course on Alison by Ashraf Said AlMadhoun.
• This course has a duration of 3-4 hours and is a CDP accredited course.
• This course is designed for helping one in understanding PIC microcontroller interrupt hardware and mastering advanced PIC microcontroller programming techniques which are essential.
• This course will teach you the step by step procedure of designing a circuit for a microcontroller using Proteus.
• This course will prepare you to start working on complex multi-functional projects.

Learning Outcome

• Learn about interrupt and coding using MikroC Pro.
• Learn to design circuits using Proteus software.
• Learn about different types of interrupts.
• Learn to download and install software.
• Course assessment including a step by step guide to microcontroller interrupts.

Java Programming and Software Engineering Fundamentals Specialization: Coursera

• Java Programming and Software Engineering Fundamentals Specialization is a course offered by Duke University in Coursera.
• The course can be enrolled for free and the audit course is free of cost. This course is designed for teaching core programming concepts and writing programs to solve complex problems.
• The course is 5 months long at a suggested pace of 4 hours per week and has a flexible schedule.
• This course contains a total of 5 sub courses namely 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 and Java Programming: Build a Recommendation System.
• This course provides skills such as Html, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CCS), Java Programming and many others.

Learning Outcome

• Learn foundational programming concepts such as functions, for loops, conditional statements and ways for solving problems like a programmer.
• Learn basic web development using HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
• Learn coding in Java, improve your programming and problem-solving skills, design algorithms to develop and debug programs.
• Learn new data structures and build complex programs.
• Learn to create programming solutions and solve real world problems using Java.
• Learn to write a program in order to answer questions about the data.

Engineering Practices for Building Quality Software: Coursera

• Engineering Practices for Building Quality Software is a part of Software Development Lifecycle Specialization offered by University of Minnesota in Coursera.
• The duration of the course is 3 weeks containing a total of 18 hours of materials.
• This course can be pursued for free and is suitable for learners with a background in software development.
• The topics included in the courses are- Quality Software, Quality in Architecture, Quality in Implementation and Quality in Testing and Deployment.
• The course curriculum of week 1 contains 8 videos and 12 reading materials and a quiz while that of week 2 contains 7 videos one reading and 1 quiz.
• Week 3 and 4 contains 7 videos, 8 readings, 4 quizzes and 5 videos, 15 readings, 1 quiz respectively.

Learning Outcome

• Learn to measure quantitative design quality attributes.
• Learn to establish feasible and testable scenarios for evaluating quality attributes in software architecture.
• Learn to develop skills which are needed in ensuring quality in developing code beyond correct functionality alone.
• Learn to understand quality approaches in post-development stages of the lifecycle.
• Gain skills such as Application Security, Software Architecture, Software Testing, Software Design and Software Quality.

Software Engineering for Beginners: Udemy

• Software Engineering for Beginner is a course created by Bina Nusantara University, Syaeful Karim on Udemy.
• The course is available for free and has a rating of 4.5 on Udemy. It contains a total of 5 sections, 20 lectures and 1h 18m total length.
• There are ten topics, each topic has a duration of six to seven minutes, which means the total time needed for finishing all topics is around one hour.
• The course has various topics, ranging from overview of software engineering, the nature of software as an introduction to software engineering and project management for software development.

Learning Outcome

• Learn the definition of software engineering.
• Learn the difference between software engineering and computer science.
• Learn the difference between software engineering and system engineering.
• Learn Prescriptive Process Model and Agile Development.
• Learn about Software Testing and Metrics.
• Learn Software Project Management.

Software Engineering: NPTEL

• Software Engineering is a course on NPTEL offered by IIT Kharagpur taught by Prof. Rajib Mall.
• The course is available for free and 12 weeks long and is a postgraduate level course.
• It is intended to expose the students to the challenges of large scale software development and in overcoming them.
• The course has about 60 lectures which can be accessed after enrollment.
• The course curriculum is laid out as below Week 1: Introduction, Week 2: Life Cycle Models I ,Week 3: Life Cycle Models II, Week 4: Requirements analysis and specification, Week 5: Basics of software design, Week 6: Procedural design methodology, Week 7: Object-oriented concepts, Week 8: Introduction to UML: Class and Interaction Diagrams, Week 9: Object-oriented analysis and design, Week 10: Testing I ,Week 11: Testing II and Week 12: Testing III.

Learning Outcome

• Exposure to the challenges of large scale software development.
• Learn to overcome the challenges of software development.
• Learn the basic life cycle model concepts.
• Learn about requirements specification, design, and testing issues.