Many people in today’s world are wanting to go to college to gain a degree or to increase their knowledge in a certain area. Unfortunately, the busyness of life doesn’t always allow the time (or the money) for desiring people to stop whatever they are doing and head back to school. It might not be realistic to lay aside a career for a few years simply to devote yourself to study. The good news is that online learning has posed itself as a great alternative for anyone who wants to either gain some knowledge to improve business, personal life, or even earn a degree or certification in order to land a job. The most interesting thing about online learning is the convenience factor. You can learn as you go about your daily living. I can say that online learning is arguably one of the best things that the internet has brought to us.
Today, I’m going to outline the benefits of online learning and how you can maximize it to get the most out of it.
Table of Content
a) Learning at Your Own Pace
b) Collaboration
c) Balance Between Cost and Quality
d) Certification
e) Practice Makes Perfect
- Learning at Your own Pace
These days, there has been a strong shift from the traditional learning procedures with static learning approaches to a modern self-paced learning. Digital platforms like learning management systems and mobile devices have made learning the most flexible and accessible option. This means that you can take your lessons at the times that’s most convenient to you, whether you’re on commute to work, during lunch or at weekends. With online learning, you can create a flexible learning plan that’s suitable to your needs and capabilities, which arguably can increase the likelihood of successfully completing the course.
2. Collaboration
Collaboration is one of the best ways to improve knowledge in any field. When a topic is discussed in groups, forums, people ask questions and get answers from more enlightened minds and there tend to be a mutual growth in knowledge. Many online learning platforms have implemented this by creating online forums, discussion groups where students of their courses can ask questions, convey their difficulties and get solutions almost immediately. This makes online learning more effective and interesting to students. This also helps to prepare learners for remote working and collaboration in a professional capacity.
3. Balance Between Cost and Quality
Comparatively, online learning is a cheaper option when compared to the traditional learning or classroom-based learning. This is definitely due to the absence of overheard costs like paying for venues, printing leaning materials or textbooks, paying of staff salaries to name but a few. However, one can be tempted to choose the cheapest online learning course out there on the internet without considering quality.
It’s important that when choosing an online course, the quality of the course should be the first priority. Now I’m not saying there aren’t good courses out there that are cheap, definitely there are, for example, this online course website is one I’ve found to have excellent quality at an interestingly affordable price. Check out the online learning website here
Most of the courses out there often state the curriculum and most have free video(s) demonstration of what the course is all about. This is a good start to determining the quality of an online course before purchasing it.
4. Certification
This is where you need to decide what your goal is. A lot of people take online courses just to gain knowledge to become better entrepreneurs or improve their personal lives, earn a degree or certification in order to get a better job, some other people take online courses just for the fun of learning, yea there are people that just love learning new things.
Whatever it is that is your goal determines the kind of courses you would take. There are hundreds of learning management websites out there that offer world recognized certifications after learning, with probably a separate payment for the certification. It’s important to do your research properly if your goal is to earn a certificate.
5. Practice Makes Perfect!!!
According to statistics from the University of Illinois, only 10% of people learn best by only listening. About 50% of people fall under what is called the ‘’kinesthetic category’’, these are the people that learn best by doing. Take for example, if you’re taking a course on graphics design with photoshop, you can sharpen your skill set by coming up with your own creative designs probably by taking inspiration from what other graphic designers have done and applying the concepts you’ve learned to create it in Photoshop. This will go a long way to strengthening your hands with the use of the software tools.
Therefore, if you want to maximize the impact of what you’ve learned through an online course, it’s important to practice it as much as possible.
Author’s BIO
Prosper Okoye
Prosper is a Nigerian serial entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Eduvicon online learning center.
He’s passionate about taking online education to the higher level and making it virtually accessible with ease. Click here to visit his website to find out about his online learning platform
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