The Best Online Resources for Self-Education

Higher education is the first step to enter the labor market and the foundation on which to build a future career. Studying at a university or academy provides a theoretical basis along with the first project experience at specialized internships and work placements. Most of the applied sciences and humanities are constantly evolving, to which the education system does not always respond quickly, often not having time to supplement or update the training program.

This also includes the emergence of new professions that appear along with the introduction of new technologies or new market demands. Sometimes the standard approach to education cannot provide the skill set, and university graduates become less valuable as a result of a lack of specialization. Nevertheless, new technologies also affect the emergence of new ways to obtain the necessary knowledge. Over the past 4 years people's interest in online education has grown significantly, as evidenced by the entry into the "market" of many popular online schools.

Users have become interested in the new format of education along with training programs that are not available at the usual universities and colleges. At the same time, most of these educational projects offer training in "hotter" professions, whose salaries are an order of magnitude higher than the general market ones. Such rates are influenced by the usefulness of the information, its freshness, as well as the correct addition of practical experience and work with real cases.

Gradually the sphere online education has begun to expand, and you can see programs online not just for graduates and aspiring experts. Some of these projects are aimed at experienced employees who want to move up the career ladder. For example, schools offer free distance learning courses and retraining programs. This includes materials for accountants, personnel inspectors, and project managers. Thus, the sphere of distance education has become directly related to the development of business and the labor market as a whole.

The benefits of distance education

Almost all profile projects are a catalog of programs as in online stores. The student can read the description, compare the service with others, and study current reviews. But despite the introductory lessons or trial sessions, you can only find out about the usefulness of the course when you learn the material. If the company doesn't have a refund or cancellation option, the student could lose money and be left without the knowledge and experience they need. Therefore, before enrolling in an online university or enrolling in a course, a student needs to determine the criteria for choosing a learning portal correctly.

First, the student needs to clearly identify a set of personal requirements and expectations for the planned study. If he wants to learn about the proper construction of a sentence in the Present Perfect tense, it is not necessary to apply for a comprehensive course. These little snippets are publicly available, and a general understanding and study of such material won't take more than a day. Many experts started learning languages with the help of YouTube videos and short free lectures on social networks.

Such content can be seen on popular platforms in the form of indie games, interactive cartoons, cuts from movies and music. If a student wants to communicate with a direct native speaker of a foreign language, there are applications and services like chat rooms and forums. Users actively interact with each other and at the same time learn new words together with the turns of live speech in a conversational form. All these ways will help "tighten up" the student and bring him closer to the right level of knowledge, but without a specific structure and basic construction of word forms.

This approach to understanding the importance of online learning applies not only to foreign languages. A novice IT expert in a new job may be confronted with an uncommon task where knowledge of a specific code is required to solve a problem. Open sources can be used to find a pattern or information on the general methodology of making its skeleton. For example, on the popular service GItHub, enthusiasts from different countries share their experiences and give useful recommendations on working with the software. Retouchers, along with graphic designers, can also browse thematic communities, search for answers in discussions, and read guides.

However, for further employment or consolidation of the theoretical base the student needs feedback along with support from the mentor. Expert practitioners will help to properly structure the acquired knowledge and direct it to the project work to apply the knowledge in the future. For this purpose, distance learning courses were developed in which all the necessary information was compiled into a "single" program along with homework assignments and quizzes.

Educational portal search criteria

Finding a school is an important step for future employment, since most of them compose authoring courses according to their own methods. Often commentators leave negative reviews online, complaining about the "water" and low level of teaching in specific classes. This includes outdated materials, superficial study of specific instruments, and inflated expectations of students.

Beginning with the latter, many participants leave the course without the desired experience and practical knowledge at the end of the course. This, in turn, is directly related to the job search and future career. Therefore, before applying to a school, you should check the "fresh" rating of online courses.

Training format

Some educational portals are stuck on one training format, which can be affected by technical and human factors. If the representatives of the school decided to teach a foreign language in the format of webinars, then the overall quality of the material will be significantly reduced. Live broadcasts often encounter problems on the type of loss of connection, the saturation of the listeners' chat, as well as the teacher's general preparation for live communication.

This method is more suitable for personal consultations, while for working with a whole audience it is better to use the format of recorded lectures. Thus, the student should look for a school with a combined approach to the presentation of the material. A high percentage of learning is observed when using ready-made literature, recorded lectures, and open webinars.

Warranties and documents

Some students mistakenly think that it is possible to find free online courses with a certificate, where training is no more than 2 months. However, almost all popular projects provide only free trial classes or introductory lectures. The homepage of the school should not have many "screaming" headlines or empty promises from the "100% jobs and high salaries" category. Usually such companies try to attract more students by hiding behind false guarantees for the sake of profit. For example, on the Sirius online course project, the user will not see selling theses and loud statements. And upon completion of the course, the student receives a certificate, which is considered a useful addition to the resume. Such documents are issued by rating schools with a name, such as GeekBrains (go online), Skypro (online) or accounting courses Contour (https://school.kontur.ru).

Structure, organization of the learning environment

An online learning platform greets students with a class schedule and module composition. Experienced educational projects describe each lesson in detail and attach a test or homework assignment to it. The student needs to get acquainted with the material, make sure he or she understands it with a mini-exam or a profile project.

At the same time, it is necessary to make sure that personal counseling is available or that tutors are accompanied by them. Tutors must have practical experience as well as skills in presenting and explaining the material correctly. Information about the faculty should be publicly available, including their achievements and excerpts from their lessons. Online course sites can vary in design, but the content should always be considered.

The financial side of companies

If a user encounters a thesis about studying "English online for free"If there is a chance of buying material of dubious content, then there is a chance of buying it. Structured and prepared courses cannot be freely available or in full for free, because this is the work of subject matter experts. Exaggerated expectations or the desire to find the best offer can affect the final result of the training in a negative way.

It is easier for the student to check information about the school, find trial lessons, or investigate possible refunds at the start of the course. Most educational portals provide such a policy for students who decide to drop a course after 2 lessons and request a refund. However, there are also non-profit projects. For example, Khan Academy, provides free educational resources without reference to age for students and their parents.

The school's reputation, feedback from former students

When a student looks through the catalog of educational resources, some of them talk about the customer reviews that are on the project pages. Usually you can read in them only about the strengths of the school, about competent teachers and interesting lessons. However, each of the published comments is moderated and also checked by a content manager. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about the reliability or objectivity of such reviews. There are many thematic platforms on the web where users talk about their experiences and share their impressions of the company. Such sites do not refer to online schools and do not have a commercial component. The student can look at the overall rating of the portal on independent sources, and form their own opinion without pre-prepared "prepared" reviews. If the site of the school is filled with comments like "training from scratch" or "job guarantee", it often may not match the reality.

The target audience of educational programs

Sometimes users search for classes with the basic queries "online courses for adults" or "distance learning classes for children. There are schools online aimed at training only one category and mixed-format projects with this information. However, you need to consider the general audience of a particular training area, as group classes are often provided. If an experienced expert attends lectures together with a novice student, the program will be useless for one of them.

All current classes at online schools should be accompanied by a description along with initial knowledge requirements. A practicing English tutor does not need to know the basics of Present Simple, and a beginner is too early to learn the morphological structure of the verb. All of the factors described above can be supplemented by more "narrow" sub-paragraphs, which are also important to consider when searching for an online school. The student needs to approach the search thoroughly, as really useful educational programs are expensive and designed for a long time.

Trends in the labor market, the prospect of professions

With quarantine restrictions, many students and company employees spend most of their time at home. Distance learning along with workplace organization contributes to the adaptation to the WFA market model, as well as its development. Websites with open jobs are regularly supplemented by offers with a remote format of work, where the Digital sphere prevails. In one year core employees decided to change careers, move toward freelance work or even self-employment. Many HR and teamleaders conduct remote interviews, set up catered conference rooms, and employees work on a project only online.

Given the level of personal skills along with career desires, aspiring experts are looking for promising professions. Many popular publications talk about the dynamic development of the IT field, including specializations without knowledge of coding languages. In 2021, according to LinkedIN, the number of specialized jobs has increased by 25%, as full digitalization is trending. This also includes areas in digital marketing, graphic design, 3D modeling. High salaries are provided for experts in PPC advertising, SEO (website promotion, work with Google Ads), as well as SMM.

Digitalization has touched the medical field as well - developed clinics use Data Science technologies to process large amounts of data. This is evidenced by the appearance of new courses on the GeekBrains or Skillbox (online), as well as regular mentions of the profession on topical resources. There is a separate category of QA-engineers for testing the interfaces or the correctness of the software, whose work was previously done by the staff programmers.

Along with the emergence of new jobs, companies began to need subject matter experts in human resources. Most educational portals offer courses for HR or novice IT recruiters with a basic knowledge of coding. Such programs are suitable for graduating economists or technical specialists who want to apply practical experience in a different field.

In 2022, these specializations will remain popular because most of them are in the active development stage. Organizations are gradually coming to automate the usual working moments, so the number of open vacancies on thematic portals will grow. Along with this, the labor market is always in need of translators, sales managers, engineers, architects, as well as managers. Parallel to the growing demand for experienced employees, the demand for specialized educational programs is increasing. On the platforms of online schools, students will always find courses in the specialties whose graduates are needed by Russian and foreign companies.

Conclusions

Taking an online course or learning a new profession is a responsible decision that will affect your career goals. Unlike university education, online platforms offer trial classes and get to know your professors before you enroll. At the same time, the average course price for popular projects on 60% is lower than public education programs. Nevertheless, you may encounter "loud" promises or a lack of usefulness of the prepared material when you search for courses.

This is evidenced by complaints on review sites or negative reviews on thematic portals. This article tells about the main criteria for the correct search of distance learning courses, which will help novice experts not to make a mistake and reduce the possible risks. You should also not rely on the high price threshold of many educational portals. The sphere of distance education has not received a unified price regulation, so more does not mean better. At the moment of search, a future student should rely on the analysis of facts, study of ratings and impressions after trial classes.