Mistakes To Avoid While Taking Online Courses

When I was in my third year of my graduate course in engineering I joined this fleeting trend of signing up for multiple online courses from various disciplines to make my CV stand out. Online courses, now, are a real boon and I absolutely recommend taking them. But how you take them is what decides whether it merited investing your time and money in.

Eager to learn more and a lot quicker, I joined every course that I came across. A few were recommended to me by my peers and a few by my seniors. I signed up for courses from a lot of fields, some I wasn’t even principally keen on, however I settled on them out of dread of passing up a great opportunity. Because of the mindless and spontaneous approach, at the end of my third year, I was left with no skills and ridiculous number of pending courses. In my entire year of stumbling through courses I did not master any particular skill. By taking such a callous approach, I eventually lost the direction I wanted my career to progress in. I was exhausted and felt guilty for so many incomplete courses. But at the end of it I did learn quite a lot from these rather silly decisions of mine.

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Here are the mistakes I made and how to avoid them.

1.“I think I should join this course, too”

In my endeavor to improve my CV, I was on spree of signing up for every course I came across. I needed to find out about an excessive number of things too rapidly. Now, what happened was I would start with a course, get bored within five to ten lectures and then jump onto a next one. Because I had so many courses to pick from, I abruptly switched from one course to another. This left me with no knowledge at all. An excessive number of courses depleted me of energy and did not give any profits. The most excellent way is to take up only three to four courses in a year and do them religiously. In this way you can master three to four skills, and that is a good number of skills to have.

2.“I’ll do it tomorrow maybe, I guess”

The biggest advantage of online courses is the accessibility. But that is what we misuse the most. The convenience of accessing the course any time I wanted to made me extremely lethargic. I would randomly start it and then not follow up for days or even weeks. I had a lack of discipline and hence, no dedicated time for it was created. The favorable way is to commit certain number of hours to the course every week. Create your own schedule and stick to it. Likewise, do not try to finish it too quickly just for the sake of certification. Go through every module at your learning pace. Take your online courses seriously.

3.“Maybe I should note this down too”

Making your own notes while studying is one of the most effective ways of remembering things. But online courses have their resources, do not waste your time taking down extraneous and verbose notes. The best way to do this is to take only five major points per video. These will be the most important points followed by two or three subpoints. Jotting down too many points will create unnecessary clutter and is time consuming. Also, the best way is the practice you get by solving the assignments. They will help you analyze what you have understood from the lessons. Do smart work not hard work.

By outlining the mistakes I made, I hope you take a superior approach, make better strategies and successfully complete your online courses.