Learning online is something which was not thought of a few decades before. Previous generations had to go through a lot of struggle to learn what now is accessible on our fingertips. If we take a look and try to understand that we truly live in an era where we have so much resources available to us and that too of good quality. But can learning online be of any benefit to us? Is it worth learning online or paying for a course.
Here in this article I will be sharing with you my experience of learning online and also will I share with you some pros and cons of online learning. Plus the do's and dont's of learning online.
So let's dive in
Why I started doing online courses?
You know there is a lot of competition around you. The basics will not help you in gaining attention. If you are doing the like what others are doing you will end up in a rat race and you will have a similar fate. This is what I saw in the career that I chose. In India every year around 20 lack engineers graduate each year but the opportunities are quite a few. And if you intend to catch a big fish, the waters are rough. This way all most of the B.Tech graduates end up having a bank job or work on very low wage. Other go for M.tech but that only evades the problems for sometime. So in brief there is this need to be different from others. There is this need to have unique or special skills. This is why I started doing online courses.
Why is there a need to do online courses?
For time being think like a recruiter. You are a person form a reputable firm finding right person with adequate skills to run a position in your company. Let us assume you want to hire a software engineer so you log on to monster.com and search engineers computer science. To your surprise you will find not hundreds or thousands but about a million of computer science engineers. What procedure will you adopt to find the right candidate for you job. You cannot try your luck on some random guy but you cannot either see all 1 million candidate profiles. So what is a solution?
It is simple you apply a filter on your search to shortlist the candidates with particular skills. Lets say you need a candidate who has a good hold on AI so you apply the filter and see the number reduce drastically to just thousand or ten thousand. Now it may seem easier to check these but the numbers are still higher. So you apply another filter, the candidate should also know project management. Now what happens is that the number drops more significantly and you only get ten or twenty people that meet your criteria.Out of these ten or twenty candidates one will thus get the job but the competition for him is now the other nine or nineteen.
This is what happens in real life. You need to think and do something out of the box. Thus to secure an opportunity you will need to have more skills than whosoever is their in the competition. You will have to do online courses for that purpose.
What online courses should I do?
In general there is no limit on what you can learn or what you should learn. You just need to tap few keys and explore the online world. What online courses will be of a benefit to yo will be those related to your career. For example I am pursuing Engineering then I am doing courses related to my field mostly coding or web development. This way not only are you keeping it related to your field and growing skills but also adding repute to your CV. So in my opinion it will be best to do courses related to your field. However it is a good practice to do one or two courses not related to your field and something that you have interest in. For example if a person wants to learn Arabic language then he should do an online course to learn it. This is something that is appreciated and it adds to your value.
Not forgetting to mention that if you are not sure to what courses should I do then first look for what the demand is like in current scenario programing languages like python is in demand, AI, ML and IoT is something that companies are incorporating in their business. So you should do courses in these fields if you are pursuing computer science. In business studies digital marketing is a demand and for arts digital art is an emerging topic. This is how you find most relevant things to learn according to your career.
What are some pros and cons of Online Learning?
- Learn at your Pace and Place
- Learn what you love.
- It has a huge impact on you CV.
- Helps you upgrade yourself.
- Open various doors of opportunities.
- No age, gender, cast or religion barrier.
- Some courses offer paid resources for free.
Pros:
- You need to manage your time for offline and online work.
- You do not have a direct connection with the tutor.
- You need to be responsible for what you do.
- There is least interaction among students.
- You need to fulfill some technological requirements (like having a Smartphone or Laptop or PC and a good internet connection).
Cons:
What are the do's and dont's of Online Learning?
Remember to follow these do's and dont's
- Prefer doing courses with certification.
- Keep a schedule of your learning.
- Check the course outline and know the skills you will gain.
- See course features and reviews.
- Making notes is not important but understand well.
- Give full attention while learning.
- Remember to practice often.
- Do the projects and assignments of the course.
- Remember to check course progress.
- Give exams.
Do's:
- Don't purchase or do course you are not interested in.
- Do not purchase courses from non reliable websites or programs.
- Don't forget to check reviews.
- Don't leave the course incomplete.
- Try to be regular and do not miss your classes.
- Do not overbuy i.e. try to do more than enough courses.
- Do not get too deep into only one topic.
- Do not miss assignments or projects.
- Don't try to cover everything at once. Learn slowly but efficiently.
- Don't despair if you fail in exam or if you do not get a certificate.
- Don't get involved in any marketing activities (offered by some platform after a student completes a course).
Dont's:
Whare the best websites to do online courses?
There are a lot of websites to explore and most popular among them are Udemy, Coursera, Edx and Udacity. I am not here to promote any particular one so I would suggest you to follow a general rule that just go for the reviews about the course and you will find what is better for you.
But if you are a student from India I would suggest Swayam NPTEL as a good online course platform.
Consider reading this for more details
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