Are Online Courses (MOOCs) Worth the Time and Effort?

Online courses and MOOCs have begun to gain extreme popularity among young professionals and college students. There are some good reasons behind gaining such rapid popularity.

At the end of 2016, over 7000 MOOCs were listed online, with over 57.3 subscribers. And the numbers keep growing.

MOOCs or massive open online courses are online courses that are aimed at unlimited participation and giving easy access to quality education for a developed and healthy global society.

They have gained tremendous popularity in the past decade because of their accessibility , flexibility and low offering prices.

Top universities have begun to offer online degrees and specializations through MOOC platforms as the MOOC platforms are seeing a significant increase in paying users.

But the question now is, are online courses and MOOCs worthwhile? Are they truly effective? How do employers perceive MOOCs? How to find the perfect MOOC? All of these areas will be looked at in this article.

Reason for The Widespread Popularity of Online Certification Courses 

Accessibility

Since these courses are highly dependent on technology, a wider audience has access to it. To take an online certification course, all you need is an Internet connection and a computer, tablet or phone.

Also, this process makes learning “Stress-free”. You do not have to sit on a chair and write everything down and worry about the things you missed while writing.

You can always go back to the content if you have a doubt and clear them out. Students can absorb more knowledge by these methods.

University Associations

MOOCs have begun to see an increase in academic integrity as they have begun to collaborate with different universities across the globe. The faculties of these universities are now developing these courses.

Most of the certificates offered by these courses are directly coming from the universities . Not from the MOOC platforms. This is a tremendous advantage for many students.

Cost-Effective

Online certification courses, unlike traditional classrooms, do not need investment in infrastructure and maintenance.

Therefore, MOOCs are very cost-effective to create. For learners, the cost of taking a class online is far lesser than going to a traditional classroom. Most online platforms are offering financial aid for students.

And it seems that these platforms are more serious about providing knowledge than earning money from it. If your financial application is reasonable, they always tend to approve of them. Therefore, you can follow the courses with verified certificates for no cost or for extremely small cost.

Industry Focus

These MOOCs are usually focused on filling industry gaps.

These make them rather dependent on the demands and requirements of the industry, unlike traditional classroom degrees that are dependent on curriculums that may be outdated or out of touch with the current demands.

Benefits of Online Certification Courses

Skills Enhancement

Online courses might not have reached the elite status of traditional degrees, but they serve as an excellent means to enhance your skills for progressing in a particular industry.

Self-Paced

Since online courses are developed to be self-paced, you are allowed to continue your own education on your own schedule.

In case you missed some lectures and could not submit quizzes and participate in exams, you can always change the schedule and take those exams ahead of time. This flexibility is a great advantage when taking a part time course.

University Credit

Several online courses offer university credits towards your degree in your school.

Taking MOOCs from an accredited college and transferring gained credits to their primary college can be beneficial for college students who want to attend summer classes but live too far away from their college and/or summer working places.

Students can earn college credit while still relishing their vacation or accomplishing their seasonal job responsibilities. Additionally, if a college or university does not offer sufficiently open sections of a specific course, students at another college can take the course online and pass the credits.

 Even more, you can now do your master’s degree online. This credit transfer process is new in academia. But getting much popularity. This clearly shows that the MOOCs are going to be the next big thing in the academic world.

Customized Learning

Online courses afford you the means of customizing your learning. They help you treat your education as you desire instead of just being another degree for the books.

Also, you can always choose what you want to study. There are specialization programs which include a specific number of courses. Some of these courses included in a specialization are included in another specialization as well.

So, if you do not mind getting a certificate for another specialization, you do not have to do all the courses all over again. You already did some of them along the way.

This is extremely practical and logical. And at the end of the day, it will ease the things and reduce your time to learn something new and earn a certificate for it.

Perception of Online Courses and MOOCs Among Employers

There have been several types of research that have been carried out to measure the perception of employers as regards online certification courses. Here are some key takeaways

• Before 2010, hiring managers preferred job candidates with traditional degrees.
  This is because online certification courses are generally known as “skill gaps filling” courses, which is usually not measured during the recruitment process.
  But, with the popularity of online courses in the last decade, the overall quality of these courses rose drastically. Therefore, there is a tendency to consider online courses as value additions in both industries recruiting as well as in academia.
  Micro -masters courses provided by edx are the best example for this.

• Also, MOOCs targeting “narrow objectives” are more likely to attract the attention of the employers. Most of the online courses are focusing on narrow subject or study areas.
  Narrow learners are recognized as more valuable than broad learners in the industrial sector and also in academia. This enhances the fact that MOOCs are worth the effort and time.

How to Choose the Best MOOC?

Choose the right provider

Choosing the right provider determines the value of the certificate or reputation you are getting from a MOOC.

There are some online platforms who provide certified certificates for successful completion. Coursera and Edx are the best choice so far to gain a certified certificate. But getting a certificate should not be the ultimate goal of doing an online course.

There are extremely good courses in online platforms that will not provide a certificate at the end.

Taking these courses is also worth the effort and time. Because, at the end of the day, gaining skills and ability to evaluate them matter more than a bunch of certificates you earned from MOOCs.

Choose the right industry

Since the MOOCs are cheap and easy to follow with flexible deadlines, students tend to take courses that are not relevant to their study area or industry.

Most students do this at the beginning of their academic career. This is not to say that taking non relevant courses are not worth the effort. But they would not be worth the time.

As an example, if you are following two courses that are extremely relevant to your field of study or industry, it would be fine to take a mini course (Maybe 4-6 hours) along the way. But, if you have an extremely tight schedule, avoiding these types of courses might be a good idea.

Doing your research first before starting a MOOC is extremely important.

Choose the right course

Even if you are focused on a specific area of study, and you choose it wisely, choosing the right course would be a bit of a challenge.

As an example , if you want to follow a course on data science , and if you are totally new to the field of data science , you should have a better idea about the programming languages , softwares used in data science .

Most of the data science courses offered by top online platforms focused on a specific software package. Most common packages are ,(1) R and Rstudio (2) Python .

The fundamentals of data science can be learned from any of these courses provided but the problem is , what is the best choice for you to take  considering your future goals .

If you are willing to go on an academic path , data science courses focused on R might be the right choice .But if you are willing to work in industry , Python based data science courses might be the best choice .

Again, doing your research before starting a MOOC is important.

Conclusions

Choosing the right provider with the right course in the right industry sector will definitely worth your time and effort. Furthermore, earning a certificate should not be the ultimate goal of pursuing an online course

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