In my opinion ‘online education’ is an extremely topical issue these days, especially in relation with IT. I am used to watch a lot of tutorials about programming languages when I am starting to learn a new one. For me it is a very handy way to learn sth new in short period of time. Of course not all of the tutorials are good and sometimes I only waste my time but usually I can find at least one which can explain me the topic in simple way.
I've been a huge proponent of e-learning for a while now. I've acquired most of my skills through some unholy combination of furiously googling around, watching tutorial videos, and lastly; being a student of a brick-and-mortar school. Therefore I totally agree with your conclusion that it's a "really interesting and useful source to learn something new".
For the sake of adding something to the subject though, let me give you two areas where I think internet learning falls short of becoming a viable replacement for traditional schools.
1.It narrows down the number of ideas you're exposed to. How many times have you had a conversation (especially true in programmer circles) where someone made an offhand comment about something they are working on? A new language, new technology, new solution. You might not immediately look into it but it stays with you. It's related to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon - you learn something obsure(e.g. a word) and suddenly you see it everywhere. Which in turn makes you curious about it. E-learning allows you to learn about the things you already want to learn about. It does a worse job of exposing you to new ideas. (inb4 forums)
2.Procrastination. Most of the courses I've encountered do not require you to be conscientious. You watch a video, solve a couple of problems, you move on. It's great because it requires little to no commitment so you can diversify your sources and manage your time. But it's also terrible because it requires little to no commitment. There is something to be said for the traditional approach with homeworks and tests. I know full well that that we, being part time students, are (theoretically:) better at time management than the average Joe but I for one find that it's incredibly easy to spend 2 hours on reddit after being sidetracked while researching something. What do you guys think? Would you go 100% e-learning or is there something that would stop you?
In my humble opinion, without online trainings we wouldn't have been where we are at the moment. I'm using pluralsight and so on to improve my skills. I'm watching a lot of videos from conferences. You can even get your master degree online :) It would be nice to choose whether you want to go to school online or not. I'm adding one more link to nice online courses: http://online-learning.harvard.edu/
I'm very into online courses! The idea is very practical and easy to use. Even in our university there are some subjects realized online. I remember that few semesters ago on some subject there was Ruby on Rails and very nice online courses to get used to it... http://railsforzombies.org/
E-learning creates a lot of possibilietes for everyone. It gave me a lot of good, mind-blowing time which opened my eyes widely and expanded my knowledge about the world we live in. Recently I have been studying about psychology. Knowing some basics I’m able to explain some of my behaviours, be more confident, self reliant and to persevere in positive attitude towards the life! It’s also a good way to stay disciplined, which (trait) is vital in 21st century as well as rapid changes acceptance and tolerance to new conditions of life and situations that meets us almost every day!
I really enjoyed this presentation, because maybe it doesn't expand my knowledge(I have already known every site mentioned) and it's rather short, but the topic is so wide, that it allows me to express my thoughts (and write longer comment). Author didn't want to name all the advantages, because they're mentioned in the video(I'm always surprised how many "live-drawn" presentations there are. I know they keep our attention and they're nice, but they are really hard to produce!), but one thing must be said - some of those online courses are more efficient than "traditional" ones.
I also really like our course - I don't need to sit every Saturday morning and listen to the other's presentation, but I can pay attention to them whenever I want. I can make a research, rethink my opinion and comment it in better way.
And for this presentation I must say that TED it's not an on-line course, but it's worth to see those movies (other students used clips from them in their articles). Other sites are very good to learn, but to be honest, I'm quite surprised that Open University and Alison weren't mentioned.
- Open University - it's not cheap, but the level of education is high and so, in my opinion, this is money well spent. If you pass all the exams you can finish with a degree, which is highly valuated among employers.
- Alison - if you're not sure whether online courses are for you, I recommend you to start with this site. It's for free, you'll only need to pay if you want to get a certificate for finished course.
- Animator Mentor - I'm planning to attend this course, when I finish our school. It's rather expensive, but you work with the best - you get assignments, on which you're working on the whole term with "teachers" from DreamWorks, Disney, Pixar and other big companies. It's really difficult, but you can talk about your work with professionals and maybe they'll recommend you in the future. One guy from our school, got his dream-job while being on this course.
I'm also a huge fan of online learning. Especially for programming and it management. I would like to add another learning platform. It's YouTube. Yeah, I know that it has more cats or funny vidoes there, than valuable courses, but often you can find very interestning stuff. And it's free.
I think that online learning is not for everybody. Not everybody can take 100% from it. You need a specific set of mind, be focused and your goal and you need to have a plan how you want to achive it. Only then online learning can be a very usefull tool. Of course there is a lot of cases where it is almous only way of incresing your knowlege. I think that online education is a powerfull tool but I'm not sure is it the best tool.
I must say I appreciate online courses and online education. I use Tuts+ for couple of years especially Webdesign Tuts+. I like its easy written language and videos that makes course more clear. I can sincereley recommend Tuts+
That might have been one of the shortest articles I've seen on these blogs :p I never used any e-learning services because I'm not disciplined enough to keep myself focused on what's on my screen when I'm home alone. I need personal interaction, someone to anchor my attention. I guess I'm just spoiled by many years of private education and having everything handed to me...
Online education in some countries is much valued - I know an example of a Swedish girl who studies online and lives in Poland. She is able to make a quite nice living here of tuitions she gets from her government. I heard it is popular in countries like Sweden, where the population density is low. In a big country with people living all around it's territory, it indeed makes sense.
To be honest, I've never experienced e-learning myself as I do not have enough self-motivation to attending to the "classes" consistently and by heart. I've learnt programming simply by doing a project myself while reading basic literature, youtube tutorials and problem solving on stackoverflow or forums. My friend took a course on Coursera, but having to check other classmates' works every 1-2 weeks in order to progress seems like a nightmare to me. For me it's kind of a waste of time and I feel that I couldn't learn much by checking others' work. I prefer to learn by tackling the issue myself.
In my opinion online education is a very interesting form of learning. It gives us a great opportunity to acquire knowledge from every place in the world. It's obvious, that online education will be a future of learning. It's a good alternative for people who want to study and work at the same time. Soon it may be more popular way of studying
This particular english course is absolutely perfect for me :-) I can improve my writing and reading skills. This is what I was looking for, because I think my accent is good enoguh lolz... sorry for that but.. :P And during normal classes it was more about talking and hearing than reading. But I have experienced some bad e-learning courses for example, training materials for ERP systems and stuff like that. It was totally horrible and then I switched to a normal book. I consider elearning course really bad when I can't choose what exactly I'd like to learn and then I have to watch 2 hours video in which only 15 minutes is the interesting part for me. There always should be agenda and information about chapters and how to switch to specific chapter.
That is a very interesting topic. I think e-learning can be as effective as traditional one. The biggest advantage of e-learning is possibility to choose what, when and how you learn. That is really cool! Unfortunately most of e-learnings in Poland are not available in Polish, which can be a big problem for people who don’t speak foreign languages. But my for my generation it is not an issue. Young Poles are well educated and open minded and they are happy to take every opportunity to become more successful and competitive.
In my opinion ‘online education’ is an extremely topical issue these days, especially in relation with IT. I am used to watch a lot of tutorials about programming languages when I am starting to learn a new one. For me it is a very handy way to learn sth new in short period of time. Of course not all of the tutorials are good and sometimes I only waste my time but usually I can find at least one which can explain me the topic in simple way.
ReplyDeleteI've been a huge proponent of e-learning for a while now. I've acquired most of my skills through some unholy combination of furiously googling around, watching tutorial videos, and lastly; being a student of a brick-and-mortar school.
ReplyDeleteTherefore I totally agree with your conclusion that it's a "really interesting and useful source to learn something new".
For the sake of adding something to the subject though, let me give you two areas where I think internet learning falls short of becoming a viable replacement for traditional schools.
1.It narrows down the number of ideas you're exposed to. How many times have you had a conversation (especially true in programmer circles) where someone made an offhand comment about something they are working on?
A new language, new technology, new solution. You might not immediately look into it but it stays with you.
It's related to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon - you learn something obsure(e.g. a word) and suddenly you see it everywhere. Which in turn makes you curious about it. E-learning allows you to learn about the things you already want to learn about. It does a worse job of exposing you to new ideas. (inb4 forums)
2.Procrastination. Most of the courses I've encountered do not require you to be conscientious. You watch a video, solve a couple of problems, you move on.
It's great because it requires little to no commitment so you can diversify your sources and manage your time.
But it's also terrible because it requires little to no commitment. There is something to be said for the traditional approach with homeworks and tests.
I know full well that that we, being part time students, are (theoretically:) better at time management than the average Joe but I for one find that it's incredibly easy to spend 2 hours on reddit after being sidetracked while researching something.
What do you guys think? Would you go 100% e-learning or is there something that would stop you?
In my humble opinion, without online trainings we wouldn't have been where we are at the moment. I'm using pluralsight and so on to improve my skills. I'm watching a lot of videos from conferences.
ReplyDeleteYou can even get your master degree online :)
It would be nice to choose whether you want to go to school online or not.
I'm adding one more link to nice online courses:
http://online-learning.harvard.edu/
I'm very into online courses! The idea is very practical and easy to use. Even in our university there are some subjects realized online. I remember that few semesters ago on some subject there was Ruby on Rails and very nice online courses to get used to it...
ReplyDeletehttp://railsforzombies.org/
E-learning creates a lot of possibilietes for everyone. It gave me a lot of good, mind-blowing time which opened my eyes widely and expanded my knowledge about the world we live in. Recently I have been studying about psychology. Knowing some basics I’m able to explain some of my behaviours, be more confident, self reliant and to persevere in positive attitude towards the life! It’s also a good way to stay disciplined, which (trait) is vital in 21st century as well as rapid changes acceptance and tolerance to new conditions of life and situations that meets us almost every day!
ReplyDeleteMy comment will be divided into parts, because for some reason it's being deleted:
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this presentation, because maybe it doesn't expand my knowledge(I have already known every site mentioned) and it's rather short, but the topic is so wide, that it allows me to express my thoughts (and write longer comment). Author didn't want to name all the advantages, because they're mentioned in the video(I'm always surprised how many "live-drawn" presentations there are. I know they keep our attention and they're nice, but they are really hard to produce!), but one thing must be said - some of those online courses are more efficient than "traditional" ones.
DeleteI also really like our course - I don't need to sit every Saturday morning and listen to the other's presentation, but I can pay attention to them whenever I want. I can make a research, rethink my opinion and comment it in better way.
And for this presentation I must say that TED it's not an on-line course, but it's worth to see those movies (other students used clips from them in their articles). Other sites are very good to learn, but to be honest, I'm quite surprised that Open University and Alison weren't mentioned.
Delete- Open University - it's not cheap, but the level of education is high and so, in my opinion, this is money well spent. If you pass all the exams you can finish with a degree, which is highly valuated among employers.
Delete- Alison - if you're not sure whether online courses are for you, I recommend you to start with this site. It's for free, you'll only need to pay if you want to get a certificate for finished course.
Delete- Animator Mentor - I'm planning to attend this course, when I finish our school. It's rather expensive, but you work with the best - you get assignments, on which you're working on the whole term with "teachers" from DreamWorks, Disney, Pixar and other big companies. It's really difficult, but you can talk about your work with professionals and maybe they'll recommend you in the future. One guy from our school, got his dream-job while being on this course.
DeleteI'm also a huge fan of online learning. Especially for programming and it management. I would like to add another learning platform. It's YouTube. Yeah, I know that it has more cats or funny vidoes there, than valuable courses, but often you can find very interestning stuff. And it's free.
ReplyDeleteI think that online learning is not for everybody. Not everybody can take 100% from it. You need a specific set of mind, be focused and your goal and you need to have a plan how you want to achive it. Only then online learning can be a very usefull tool.
ReplyDeleteOf course there is a lot of cases where it is almous only way of incresing your knowlege. I think that online education is a powerfull tool but I'm not sure is it the best tool.
I must say I appreciate online courses and online education. I use Tuts+ for couple of years especially Webdesign Tuts+. I like its easy written language and videos that makes course more clear. I can sincereley recommend Tuts+
ReplyDeleteThat might have been one of the shortest articles I've seen on these blogs :p I never used any e-learning services because I'm not disciplined enough to keep myself focused on what's on my screen when I'm home alone. I need personal interaction, someone to anchor my attention. I guess I'm just spoiled by many years of private education and having everything handed to me...
ReplyDeleteOnline education in some countries is much valued - I know an example of a Swedish girl who studies online and lives in Poland. She is able to make a quite nice living here of tuitions she gets from her government. I heard it is popular in countries like Sweden, where the population density is low. In a big country with people living all around it's territory, it indeed makes sense.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I've never experienced e-learning myself as I do not have enough self-motivation to attending to the "classes" consistently and by heart. I've learnt programming simply by doing a project myself while reading basic literature, youtube tutorials and problem solving on stackoverflow or forums. My friend took a course on Coursera, but having to check other classmates' works every 1-2 weeks in order to progress seems like a nightmare to me. For me it's kind of a waste of time and I feel that I couldn't learn much by checking others' work. I prefer to learn by tackling the issue myself.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion online education is a very interesting form of learning. It gives us a great opportunity to acquire knowledge from every place in the world. It's obvious, that online education will be a future of learning. It's a good alternative for people who want to study and work at the same time. Soon it may be more popular way of studying
ReplyDeleteThis particular english course is absolutely perfect for me :-) I can improve my writing and reading skills. This is what I was looking for, because I think my accent is good enoguh lolz... sorry for that but.. :P And during normal classes it was more about talking and hearing than reading. But I have experienced some bad e-learning courses for example, training materials for ERP systems and stuff like that. It was totally horrible and then I switched to a normal book. I consider elearning course really bad when I can't choose what exactly I'd like to learn and then I have to watch 2 hours video in which only 15 minutes is the interesting part for me. There always should be agenda and information about chapters and how to switch to specific chapter.
ReplyDeleteThat is a very interesting topic. I think e-learning can be as effective as traditional one. The biggest advantage of e-learning is possibility to choose what, when and how you learn. That is really cool! Unfortunately most of e-learnings in Poland are not available in Polish, which can be a big problem for people who don’t speak foreign languages. But my for my generation it is not an issue. Young Poles are well educated and open minded and they are happy to take every opportunity to become more successful and competitive.
ReplyDelete