Utilising the best online courses available: Part 1

Thanks to the internet, self-learning and training has been made easier in the last few years for a wide group of people. Today, there are online courses for almost anything and everything that you want to learn. The courses from ivy-league schools and other reputed institutions like MIT, Stanford, etc. have been made available online for people like us sitting a thousand miles away. There are intensive courses on computer science, engineering, programming languages, machine learning, digital marketing and any sort of technological skill development needed for the vastly changing demands in the job market.

According to Raghib Noor, a third-year undergraduate student of Dhaka University, online courses offer you an amazing experience through which you get to explore different regions of interests you never knew you had the chance to. He said, "It's a very humbling experience as a whole." Self-learning through these courses can help fulfil the predominant gap of skill mismatch. In this article, we will introduce you to a few courses from the ivy-league schools and other reputed institutions that are available online.

Stanford Engineering Everywhere

SEE offers software and other courses that are free to both students and teachers/instructors. The materials include course syllabi, lecture videos, assignments and even online exams.

MIT Open Courseware

MIT Open Courseware, also known as the OCW, initiated the Open Education Consortium. This project was launched back in 2002, and offers the full content of about 50 real MIT courses online. Later, it included most of the MIT course curriculum absolutely free of cost, along with hundreds of other higher education institutions with their own OCW materials.

MIT Video

This is another MIT online learning project that offers over 12000 talks/lecture videos for free. This project has 100 channels in total, which include theoretical as well as practical courses on architecture and planning, biological engineering, robotics and many more.

Stanford Online

This is a compilation of free courses available for anyone, anywhere, anytime. These courses address topics of engineering, software and various aspects of skill development including language, writing, etc.

However, making the proper use of these courses to ensure effective learning is another business. From this vast range of courses, finding your strengths and actual interests is the key to ensure effective learning. Raghib Noor said, "My opinion is that not everyone is built for everything. Just find something you like, and try out the free introductory courses related to it. Then just build on it gradually."  Procrastination will be a huge obstacle in your path towards effective learning. Consistency should not be a problem once you find something that you are truly interested in, and it will take you way ahead.

Nahaly Nafisa Khan is an Economics major currently studying in Dhaka University. She procrastinates a lot, yet is obsessed with meeting deadlines. You can reach her at nahalynafisa@gmail.com.