If you believe in self-directed, flexibly scheduled learning to upgrade your skills, this post is for you. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are online interactive learning courses, which significance in recent years has boosted. Thanks to MOOCs anyone and everywhere can experience learning from world top class universities on broad, or industry-specific issues.
What’s more, MOOCs in the most of cases are free of charge, however require real time commitment for pre-readings, watching learning videos, and solving quizzes. In exchange for this you can satisfy your curiosity, enrich your resume, and with investment of small amount of money get certificate of completion.
MIT Open Course Ware provides portfolio of MOOCs, which entrepreneurs and start-ups might particularly derive from, ranging from finance and law to operations and strategy. You can also find technology development oriented MOOCs of MIT, including course on circuits and electronics, which considered as pretty popular. You can learn from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania on launching your start-up, growing strategies, digital marketing, social media and e-commerce. One of the most entrepreneurial colleagues in the US, Babson College provide you with course on leading like entrepreneur.
I find MOOCs as cost-efficient learning form for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and teams they develop in scaling-up stage. You can inspire your team to self-directed learning by sharing your insights from MOOCs, which you have just finished, or encourage for starting a new one together. In the end who would not like to go to MIT, Wharton or Babson with you?
MOOCs also provide you with safe environment of testing interest in defined topics with no serious financial commitment before a deep-dive decision on starting immersive form of education like full time studies.
Even if MOOCs don’t provide you with real interaction, and networking opportunity, as traditional teaching methods, participation in them is considered as more than studying a textbook, or reading a specialized blog. Therefore all you need to do now is to pick up your MOOC, and share your learning reflections with us.
If you are not sure MOOCs of what university you’d like to enter, you can use Coursera, or edEX to browse worldwide resources of MOOCs by entering key-words for topic you are interested in. This approach I particularly recommend for industry-specific start-ups. Event relatively narrow topics related to life sciences, or energy don’t belong to something MOOCs could not cover.
Dzida!