A couple of months ago one of my friends on Facebook posted about MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), a website offering FREE online courses! Of course I had to check this out since I've been wanting to study for ages, but either not knowing what I wanted to study or just not had the money to actually study a chosen subject.
I got a bit too excited about all the interesting free courses and signed up for 5 at once! Normally each course is only supposed to take up a few hours of your time each week, I have been stuck inside on my laptop every free minute I've had! So take it from me: don't sign up for more than one or two courses at a time!!
Although studying has been taking up most of my time for the past 4 weeks, I am absolutely loving it! It's been really nice to have something to do other than veg out in front of the TV when I'm at home.
The great thing about these courses being free is that if you find that the course isn't for you, or that you don't have time to finish it, you haven't lost anything. You haven't wasted a chunk of your money and you haven't wasted time because time spent learning something new is time well spent.
I only signed up for one course at first, one that didn't offer a certificate of achievement. I just wanted to see if I was even able to study at home on my own. Then, after I had spent one day doing the first module of that course, and loved it, I signed up for another 4 starting the next week... A tad too ambitious, but when I saw a course I liked the look of I just wasn't able to leave it and wait for the next time it would start.
I am now in the last week of my courses, I need to finish them all by Tuesday. So far I have finished 3, I've only got 2 left, the "problem" is that I've got 2 weeks of catching-up to do on both and they are the toughest ones, I think anyway. I still love them though.
The courses I signed up for are:
I got a bit too excited about all the interesting free courses and signed up for 5 at once! Normally each course is only supposed to take up a few hours of your time each week, I have been stuck inside on my laptop every free minute I've had! So take it from me: don't sign up for more than one or two courses at a time!!
Although studying has been taking up most of my time for the past 4 weeks, I am absolutely loving it! It's been really nice to have something to do other than veg out in front of the TV when I'm at home.
The great thing about these courses being free is that if you find that the course isn't for you, or that you don't have time to finish it, you haven't lost anything. You haven't wasted a chunk of your money and you haven't wasted time because time spent learning something new is time well spent.
We are never done learning.
I only signed up for one course at first, one that didn't offer a certificate of achievement. I just wanted to see if I was even able to study at home on my own. Then, after I had spent one day doing the first module of that course, and loved it, I signed up for another 4 starting the next week... A tad too ambitious, but when I saw a course I liked the look of I just wasn't able to leave it and wait for the next time it would start.
I am now in the last week of my courses, I need to finish them all by Tuesday. So far I have finished 3, I've only got 2 left, the "problem" is that I've got 2 weeks of catching-up to do on both and they are the toughest ones, I think anyway. I still love them though.
The courses I signed up for are:
- Fairy Tales: the origins and evolution of princess stories - Finished. This is the one I started with that offers no certificate, very interesting
- Climate Change - Finished
- Writing for the web - Finished
- The art of photography
- Food, nutrition & your health
They are all very interesting subjects, I might write more about some of them in a separate blog post.
Take my advice though; although I know I will be able to finish all 5 courses before Tuesday I would (hopefully) not sign up for 5 at a time again, I need to limit myself to 1 or 2 so that I can also have a social life as well as be able to have some "me" time.
We can never learn too much.
The courses might not offer academic credit but it might help you find out a bit more about what you like, what you might want to study for academic credit, what you might want to work with... Or it might just be a bit of fun learning.
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