How to Further Your Education with Online Classes
With a growing number of online education platforms available, it’s easier than ever to earn college credit or simply learn a new skill online. Tech Talker covers the basics of getting started with e-learning in this week’s episode.
Have you ever thought about taking a class online? Maybe you wanted to earn college credit or just learn a new skill? If so, stick around because this week I’ll be going over the best ways to take online classes.
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As many of you know, I’m a fairly recent college graduate, having completed my civil engineering Master’s degree at California State University, Fresno. If you had asked me two years ago if I was interested in taking a class for fun, I would have just started laughing! Call me nostalgic, but now I miss college and going to classes, not to mention learning some pretty awesome things every day.
That’s why I started taking classes online to learn about subjects I didn’t take (or didn’t give my full attention to) in college. This included economics, finance, and cryptography to name a few.
How to Take Online Courses
My two favorite websites for courses are edX.org and coursera.org. These websites host classes from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley. Granted, you won’t get any credit for taking these classes other than a certificate of completion, but they are great ways to get a high quality education at little or no cost.
I’ve personally taken a number of these classes and they are excellent. You can watch videos of lectures, ask questions, and become a member of the community. It’s as close to a classroom experience as you can get without actually sitting there.
Another awesome part about taking these classes is the breadth of material that is covered. Just taking a glance at edX.org, I found these classes starting soon: Robot Mechanics, Principles of Written English, Evaluating Social Programs, Introduction to Biomedical Imaging, Introduction to Baseball Analytics, and Introduction to Linux. There are about 150 more in the list, but you get the idea.
The curriculum stretches into nearly any field and skill level and is free to audit. This means you can view the entire course for free, but if you want to take it for a completion certificate you’ll have to pay a fee for the class.
Personally, I just take the classes for free because I’m interested in the topics. If you wanted to pad your résumé, though, these classes couldn’t hurt. One thing that I absolutely love about these classes is that you can rewind and re-watch a lecture if you want. That way you can learn at your own pace and don’t have to worry about falling behind.
Now that you know that all of these great free courses are out there, it may be tempting to sign up for a whole bunch of them at once because they all sound so good! I’d caution you not to do this. Instead, start with just one. I know from personal experience that if you commit to too many off the bat, it’s easy to get in over your head and not follow through. Then you will be wasting your time.
Here’s a How It Works video from the edX website if you want to get a quick overview of the process.
Now let’s look at online courses that give you college credit upon completion.
How to Take Online Courses for Credit
Supplementing a Traditional Degree with Online Courses
In my case at California State University, Fresno, I was enrolled in a traditional degree program, which allowed me to transfer credit from another accredited school within the system.
Before each semester I would peruse the course offerings from other schools in the system and use my school’s website to filter by “online” or “distance learning.” I would select which classes I needed to fill certain criteria, and then I would take it to my advisor to double check.
Once I established which courses were applicable to my needs, I would register for a full roster of classes at my school, plus one additional class online. This strategy saved me a bunch of money and allowed me to graduate much earlier than most of my classmates. This, of course, is my own personal experience, and it worked out great, but I’ve heard of situations in which students completed online courses only to learn later that the credit would not count toward their degree or could not be transferred to their school. However, if you do your homework and get clearance from your school, it’s a great way to expedite and reduce the costs of your education.
Just know that the rules are completely different for every school system out there, so talk with your academic advisor or dean before signing up for any online classes to supplement your semester.
Online Degree Programs
There are also a ton of online degree programs out there. I have had no experience with these, but I have heard my share of horror and success stories. All of the successful ones did research ahead of time. They took a close look at the program, what it offered, and whether it was accredited.
If you’re looking to get an online degree (be it bachelor’s, master’s, MBA, MFA, and so forth), start with the end in mind. Know why you are going to school and what you want to achieve. A friend of mine thought it would be great to get an online education, only to find out when she went to apply for professional licensure that her state did not accept her school as an accredited degree program.
For some professions, this may not matter a whole lot, but if you’re looking into any professional certification, or to move on to get an advanced degree, be 100 percent sure that your degree program is legitimate and qualified for what you want to use it for. All in all, I love online learning, whether it is just watching an informational YouTube video or taking night school class online for a degree. Just make sure you do your research!
Well, that’s it for today! Be sure to check out all my earlier episodes at techtalker.quickanddirtytips.com. And if you have further questions about this podcast or want to make a suggestion for a future episode, post them on Facebook QDTtechtalker.
Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
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About the Author
Tech Talker demystifies technology and cutting edge devices so that even the most tech illiterate can understand what’s going on with their computer or gadget — and what to do when something goes wrong.
