The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) movement is well underway, but professionals, particularly entrepreneurs and small business fellows, may find them to the perfect way to learn some new skills or brush up on existing ones.
Popular delivery platforms like ItunesU, Coursera, Edx offer free or low cost curriculum.
Moochia.io is one such way to find course offerings. Think of all the things you want some education on: public speaking (429 courses!), project management (1284 courses!), marketing (181 courses!), Excel (46 courses!) – the list goes on.
Training and development costs are often the first to get cut, so even big company employees can find some value in MOOC’s as online providers of content.
Also, given the great challenge of finding enough hours in the day, online delivery platforms typically offer self-paced, media heavy learning that you can consume as time becomes available.
With mobile and tablet applications for most providers, there are plenty of options. All that it takes to get started is usually just the will and the plan.
#TakingCharge of your learning goals starts with some self-assessment and review. Ask yourself – what are your strengths (which you want to keep developing, and feel good to develop) and where are your gaps – the skills you need to accomplish your goals.
Ask yourself what is needed to accomplish that to-do list – maybe you need to learn how to program, maybe you need a crash course on how to handle small business taxes – what’s going on?
Challenge: one of the biggest disadvantages of online courses is that in general – people don’t’ finish them. So one of the ways you can get more benefit is by committing a specific goal to complete a course: set a date, outline how much you need to get done per day/week, and track it.
Owning your own professional development is important both for your success, but also for your satisfaction: learning makes us more satisfied about our careers.
There are an abundance of good resources to utilize, not only MOOC’s, but books, podcasts, YouTube, and of course – good old social media. So, make a plan, get studying, and #ownthatlearning.
Kam has a Master's degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and is an HR professional. Obsessed with food, but writing about virtually anything, he has a passion for LGBT issues, business, technology, and cats.
