Silver Lining Ideas

Inspiritional ideas to reach your goals & find the silver linings of your clouds

Lifelong Learning in the 21st Century

Live and learn. It is familiar to all of us, and in our fastly changing world it’s crucial to learn continuously. This is the theory, but sometimes it’s hard to put it into practise. What if despite all of your efforts, you can’t insert that photography course you dream about into your busy calendar? First of all, you can try to change your time management habits.  However if the problem is related to something else, for example you can’t find the course nearby, you may consider the MOOC possibilities on the internet!

MOOC means massive open online course. It’s name explains the meaning as well. It is an online course where anyone can participate and learn. You need to watch videos, read articles, prepare tasks and often interact with other students as well. It is a unique and very exciting way of learning. I strongly believe these methods will be the future.

There are hundreds of sites which offer you online learning possibilities. And a lot of them are free or at least have free options as wells. I collected 3 popular sites, where you can learn about a lot of interesting topics.

Coursera

Coursera offers courses and specializations from various universities in various topics and various languages. Business, physics, art, social sciences, just to mention a couple of examples. All the courses are free, however if you want to deepen your knowledge and receive a certificate as well, it’s better to pay the 49 usd fee. This way all the materials and tasks will be available for you and you can add your results to your Linkedin profile as well.

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Udemy

You can choose from more than 80,000 online courses starting from a very affordable price (€ 11.99) on Udemy. You can learn about IT, personal development, marketing, business, photography, music, languages etc. Courses are offered by instructors from all over the world with videos, articles and often include a certificate as well if you finish it.

Duolingo

If you want to learn a language in a fun way, you should try Duolingo. It provides you easily understandable lessons and also quizzes and games to test your knowledge. You can check your progress continuously and receive rewards if you keep on track. All the courses are free and if you speak English for example you can choose courses in Spanish, French, Japanese, Turkish, Polish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Arabic and so on. Don’t forget to sign up for the Klingon course.

8 tips for MOOC courses

  1. Take them seriously
  2. Check who is the instructor
  3. Read carefully the course introduction, requirements
  4. Read the feedbacks from previous students
  5. Schedule time for learning
  6. Use all the given possibilities of learning: peer discussions, extra articles, learning journals etc
  7. Make your own notes just like at regular courses
  8. Think through what you learnt at the end of the course, try to summarize it to a friend

If you really dedicate yourself to learning, you can learn a lot with online courses. The rule is very simple: the more you put in, the more you can get out.

Do you know any sites where you really liked the courses? Share them with others as well.

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2 Comments

  1. Helpful piece – we need to read more like this, as most info on this topic is unhelpful. You give real insight to people.

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