Online Courses

Want to Take an Online Course?

Here are 4 tips to make sure you get the most out of it for your career

By Anne Trumbore

The “Great Resignation” has left a lot of people with time on their hands. And while this time may be a welcome respite from the daily grind, most folks will need to get back to work eventually. For many, this period is a time of reflection and a chance to pursue a new career.

But how do you make the switch? And even if you plan to return to the same field, how do you show that you have kept current with the changes and trends that affected most industries during the pandemic?

Traditionally, the answer to these questions has been to go back to school. But rising tuition costs over the past few decades, and the time commitment of traditional degree programs, makes this route prohibitively expensive for a lot of people.

That’s where short online courses in business, technology and other fields come in. Over the past 10 years, these courses from providers such as Udemy, Coursera and edX have become more popular, and approximately 75 percent of learners who take them report gaining career benefits from completing them.

As a researcher and practitioner who develops these education technologies, I also study the behaviors that make online learners successful. Here are four key actions that studies have shown will help online learners make the most of a short online course to reap the career benefits they desire.

1. Identify the goal

Learners who begin a course with a clear idea of what they want to get out of it are more likely to complete their course and earn a certificate. A goal may be, for example, to learn a new skill, gain more knowledge about a topic, improve job performance, get a new job or advance in a current one.

In my study of over 4,000 learners who completed an online course in business topics, I found that learners who enrolled in their course with the intention of improving their job performance, starting their own business or getting a

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