Many people consider furthering their education to advance in their careers. If this is you, perhaps you should try a MOOC – a Massive Open Online Course. Offered by an increasing number of universities worldwide, these free and easily accessible online courses allow you to gain knowledge in a broad range of areas. Also useful for developing a new career skill, preparing yourself for other education, and exploring an area of interest.
Ways you’ll learn are by engaging with a wide range of online media and interactive tools with a group of other learners from all around the world, sometimes numbering into tens of thousands per course. Hence why they are known as ‘massive.’ Learning materials can include video lectures, interactive quizzes, academic articles, educational content, assignments, and social network interaction with other members of the course participant community.
Although you won’t necessarily interact with a tutor as you would in a traditional university degree, assessment for completion occurs via many different means, including computer-generated and marked tests or learning peer-reviewed assignments.
The course content for MOOCs developed by staff from prestigious universities and delivered on major online platform providers:
There are hundreds of MOOCs available across many disciplines, including computing and IT; environmental studies; business and management; education and training, humanities, and social sciences; communications; agriculture.
You won’t receive academic credit from these courses. However, many MOOC providers charge a small fee to gain a certificate of completion to officially recognise your participation if you wish to get this on completion of the course.
One of the significant benefits of completing a MOOC is that it’s free! You don’t need to meet entry requirements, and you’ll learn from some of the foremost specialists in their field. They also allow you to experience an area of study before investing the time and money into a traditional university degree.