This article is a follow up to my “25 free online courses for learning iPhone and iPad programming” post, for those who are interested in developing for Android. These online are in many cases the Android counterpart to the courses listed in the iOS post above.
What these courses have in common, aside from the focus on Android development, is that they are all 100% free.
You should be able to get yourself started off on developing your first app, and those who have some development experience will find advanced topics covered as well.
Why 25? Just to be consistent with iOS article, to be honest ;). The quality of these courses will vary as will the prerequisites and time required for completion. Browse through them to see which one is most suited for you, as this post does not attempt to do a critical evaluation of these.
1. CSSE490 Android Development Rose-Hulman Winter 2010-2011, by David Fisher
1. The iOS version of this came highly recommended, so we thought we’d start off by listing the Android course, which is a good place to start off with.
- Video podcasts
- Course offered by Rose Hulman Institute of Technology
- This course also available here, in a more structured presentation
2. Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps
This is a serious course that given by instructor Lawrence Angrace of the University of Illinois on the Coursera website. It is designed to take the absolute beginner on a journey into Android programming up until creating their first app. The sessions haven’t started as of this writing so hurry up and sign up.
Oh, and some of you might be glad to hear that you can actually get a certificate upon completion of this course.
3. Write and Publish an app for your Android Smartphone
A very brief, 32 minute free course of video lectures published on Udemy. It will introduce you to the notion of publishing your very first Android app.
4. Android Development for Absolute Beginners by mybringback
Video lectures from Mybringback. A lot more tutorials from where this one came from on every platform you could think of.
5. Fundamentals of Google Android Development, from Alison
5. This one offered by Alison (who are focused “certifiable standard” of proficiency). A good one for absolute beginners, with “High School / Secondary School age 16+” being the prerequisite.
6. Google Code University
This site has a handful of Android courses/tutorials, most of which we are listing below, so I have to list it here 😉
7. Android Application Development, by David Janzen & James Reed (TA), Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo. Winter 2010
Consists of lectures in Powerpoint, assignments, and ‘labs’, which seem to be little practical projects. This course is open source and offered under a Creative Commons Attribution License (if you use these in your own classes, you need to attribute them.)
8. Android Real Team Systems (North Carolina State University)
8. First offered in Spring of 2009, this is an advanced course on “advanced research issues in real-time systems”. It covers such topics as “schedulability theory, resource handling, timing analysis, real-time operating systems, real-time system design, embedded architectures, soft real-time systems, middleware, quality-of-service, power-awareness, distributed real-time systems and sensor network.”
The lectures are offered in Powerpoint format. The good news: there’s only three of them and they are relatively brief.
9. Harvard Extension School’s Computer Science E-76: Building Mobile Applications
This one mentioned previously in the iOS article. Sludes, source code, and video lecutres. Covers Android and iOS apps, including using Eclipse and the Android SDK.
10. App Inventor for Android with Studio-Based Learning
This course from Ball State University is geared learning to use ‘App Inventor for Android’, which is a visual, drag and drop platform for creating Android apps, which was first created by Google and is now maintained by MIT.
11. Vogella.com Android Tutorials
11. Very well put together Android Tutorials that you can read rather than watch as video lectures or podcasts. Vogella’s Android tutorials are comprehensive and very well laid out
12. Introduction to Mobile Application Development. Fall 2010, Cornell University
12. Cornell Course from 2010 that focuses on Android development. Lectures are available as PDFs, and readings link out to relevant places all over the internet. The assignment links are reserved for Cornell students that were originally enrolled in the course.
13. Developers.Android.Com’s Android Training
13. I simply have to mention this site, which is a tremendous resource on everything related to Android development. If you seriously want to develop Android apps you will find this site very useful.
Anyway, the ‘Android Training’ section will get you on your way to creating your first app, step by step.
14. Marakana Android Bootcamp Series 2012 Video Tutorials
14. Marakana holds a series of paid courses on all sorts of technology related topics in a number of US cities. The Bootcamp video tutorials series are free and are well worth watching. You can also view them on YouTube (here).
Aside from that, check out their Android-related stream posts, which are excellent.
15. Marakana AnDevCon Screencast series (“Android for Java Developers”)
Good stuff, eastern European accent or not. Video lectures, for free. Can also be viewed on YouTube (here).
16. Android Programming Video Tutorials for beginners in English
Couldn’t have described it better ;). Over 2 hours of video lectures.
17. Android Game Programming tutorials
17. Video lectures for those interested in creating games for the Android. At about an hour and a half in total, you can zip through it without too much of a commitment.
18. Mastering Android Programming
18. A comprehensive set of lectures spanning 15 hours of video lectures. This course promises to have a proven teaching methodology behind it, and is designed to get you writing multiple programs and applications before you’re done with it!
19. Android Application Development Tutorials from ‘The New Boston’
19. We featured these guys on the ‘iPhone tutorials’ post. The course above consists of a massive 200 video lectures covering everything you need from installing the JAVA SDK all the way to putting your app on the market.
Curiously, there were many competing Android tutorials from these guys, albeit done by different instructors. The one above seems to be the most comprehensive and up to date though. Here’s another version if you’re curious.
20. Google IO session videos
20. Google IO is an annual developer’s conference organized by Google and held in San Francisco. The range of topics varies widely but is very high quality and cutting edge. The seminars are not to be missed.
- Google I/O – The Android Sessions 2012
- Google I/O – The Android Sessions 2010
- Google I/O – The Android Sessions 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
21. Android Developers YouTube channel
This YouTube channel has a lot of overlap with #20 above (Google IO sessions), but has a lot of great stuff besides.
22. How to Prototype Web and Mobile Apps in 30 Minutes
2We mentioned this one in our iOS programming article. This is not an Android or iOS programming course but a course on prototyping your app using Apple Keynote or MS Powerpoint + Keynotopia User Interface Libraries.”
23. Mobile Technology and Research by GVSU School of computing and Information Systems
This is a 2010 course given by instructors Hans Dulimarta and Jonathan Engelsma from Grand Valley State University. It assumes you have a working knowledge of JAVA, and will guide you through building an Android Twitter client app as a demonstration.
More course materials (including source code) can be downloaded from this page.
24. Coresrvelets Android Programming Tutorials
This resource is somewhat different from most of the above, in that it is mainly based on documents (PDFs and sample codee files) rather than video lectures.
25. Android Tutorials: For Apps & Game Development
Video lectures designed for the absolute beginner.
Do you know of a really good Android app programming tutorial that I missed? Please share it in the comments section.
