How To Start The Online Classes: The Definitive Guide
Learning is a gift. Learning is the power that can help us solve many problems in our life. With COVID-19 many people started to study and work remotely. Technologies allow us to do so. We can visit different libraries or museums by staying at home. We can even gamble as in a real casino by joining live betting. Though, sometimes we get some problems with choosing the right online courses.
Enrolling in the wrong course can result not only in a waste of money and time but also in disappointment in a new profession and in online learning in general.
Online Education
Think about what content you most often consume in everyday life: short videos or hour-long interviews, long reads or notes, podcasts or articles. Based on your preferences, choose the format that will be closer to you: synchronous or asynchronous.
Synchronized learning takes place in real-time. Most often, this format uses long videos, such as webinars, and during training, it is important to follow the schedule and schedule of the course. But you can plan the time in advance since the schedule for the entire course is usually known immediately.
With an asynchronous format, access to educational materials is bought, and students study at a convenient time for them. In this case, short videos and texts are most often used in the course program.
What format synchronous or asynchronous is used on the course? You can understand from the description on the landing page or check with the manager.
The Right Goal
It is important to clearly articulate expectations from training. This will make it clear what to look for when choosing a course. Even within the same program, you can close different personal goals. For example, to improve knowledge on a certain issue, find a new job, or just get a crust for the employer. Goals should be determined before the start of training. If it is important to get a job in a new field after completing the course. It is better to immediately look for a course with career support, and if you need a diploma, pay attention to whether they are issued and under what conditions.
There are many different goals to achieve. We have prepared the most popular.
“Study a new field from scratch to understand if I want to work in it”. You should find a course with a systematic presentation of knowledge, where there is both theory and practice. Teachers do not have to be practitioners with many years of experience. It is more important that they are able to explain well and infect with freshness and interest in the field.
“After graduation, find a job in a new field”. Courses with strong career support will help, and the school should emphasize that it seeks to employ as many students as possible.
“Learn a specific tool: Tilda, Word, Excel, and so on”. The course should contain as many practical exercises and tasks as possible for self-practice skills and, of course, constant feedback from teachers.
“Explore an additional field, understand something new”. Sometimes you need to master an adjacent field to broaden your professional horizons: for example, a marketer can learn analytics to better interact with colleagues from the analytics department, or an editor from an IT company can learn to program to better understand the language of the target audience.
“To take a fresh look at your project or business”. You should pay special attention to teachers: what kind of background do they have, where did they work, what cases showed whether they have experience in the field that interests you. It is also important to clarify whether the course allows you to work on your own project instead of general tasks. If the course involves working only on pre-approved projects, it is better to look for other training. Now there are many schools on the market where work on your project is encouraged.
Motivation And Time
Motivation and goal are related, but they are not the same thing: the goal is the final point where you want to get to, and motivation is those internal and external circumstances that will help you on the way to the goal.
Think about what will support you: it could be an agreement with the employer that after training you will be able to take on new tasks or move to a higher position; it could be co-education with a colleague. A new schedule of the day, where it is convenient to integrate studies; pre-planned time for rest, so that learning remains a joy. There are many options.
Learning is most often a long and labor-intensive process, so it is better to create supportive conditions for yourself in advance that will help you achieve your goal and not give up.
Plan when you want to reach your goal and determine what time and financial resources you are willing to spend on it. For example, you want to learn a new profession to become an SMM manager. The course can last several months and cost several of your salaries, which means that you need to determine the deadline by which you will collect the required amount to start training, and the deadline when you want to start a new job. The deadlines will support your motivation.