Online courses, online universities, online education, MOOCs

July 06, 2017   courses , education , mooc , online education , university

One year of studying in a language school in New York taught me that not that many people know about online education and MOOCs. Even if they heard about it, they know neither where you can find it, nor how it works. Therefore, in this article, I will try to explain what online education is, what types of online education you can find, how it works, how much it cost, and do you really need it.

In my opinion, online education as a whole can be divided into, roughly, four categories:

1. Online degree programs;
2. Professional development online programs & courses;
3. MOOCs;
4. Online courses & lectures.

Online degree programs

Online degree programs are ordinary Associate, Bachelor, and Master's degree programs which you can obtain online. Of course, not all universities provide online degree programs and not all programs can be obtained online.

Here are a few links to online degree programs:

1. https://www.usnews.com/education/online-education
2. http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates
3. https://www.onlinestudies.com/Bachelors/Switzerland/
4. https://www.onlinestudies.com/Masters/Switzerland/
5. The one that I participated in: http://www.ansys.com/products/academic/online-masters-degree

As you can see, there are options to study in American and Europian universities. Of course, you can easily notice the difference in prices: American education is extremely expensive and online education is not an exception, the total education can easily reach $150,000. On the other hand, European online education is much cheaper and rarely exceeds $10,000, although it also happens and can go up to $50,000.

Personally, I applied and was accepted to Technical University of Madrid for an Online Master's Degree in Numerical Simulation in Engineering with ANSYS program. From what I experienced, I can say that online degree program is an online platform which is provided by a university, where you can find reading materials, presentations, videos of lectures, home assignments, exams, and all other necessary for education stuff. Like in an ordinary university, you have deadlines for submitting home assignments and tests. 

At the end of the education you receive a normal degree certificate, which confirms that you were awarded a Bachelor or Mater's degree in the program of your choice.

Professional development online programs & courses

Professional development online programs & courses can be either individual courses or a set of courses (programs). This type of online education is almost the same as the previous one with a difference that the program itself is shorter (only a few courses, or even only one), cheaper, and less valuable.

This type of education is perfect for those people who already have degrees and they just want or need to improve or broaden their knowledge in some fields.

Here are a few links to online degree programs:

1. http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/directory/undergraduate/certificates
2. http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/directory/graduate/certificates
3. http://online.purdue.edu/online-programs/not-for-credit-professional-development
4. I was planning to take one of the programs from this link (http://online.purdue.edu/online-programs/graduate-certificates), but, unfortunately, the education in America is so expensive that I wasn't able to afford it.

In my opinion, this is the most important type of online education, but, unfortunately, it's not that much developed yet. Mostly people are concentrated on MOOCs and online courses, because they can be created by almost any person in the world, whereas professional development courses require validation, due to the fact that at the end of the course or a program you receive an official certificate of professional education which has the same value as any other document from a university. Therefore, only universities or research labs have resources and abilities to create this kind of programs. 

MOOCs

The two following types of online education are the most famous ones. In my opinion, MOOCs became popular even earlier than simple online lectures. Each MOOC is a structured online course which consists of a set of lectures, reading materials, and sometimes assignments. All these courses are stored on specialized websites. There are a lot of websites which store MOOCs and, even, provide you their own certificates for completing each course. The price for each course varies between $20 and $200.

Here are a few links to the most famous websites:

1. https://www.coursera.org
2. https://www.edx.org
3. https://www.udacity.com
4. https://www.udemy.com
5. https://iversity.org
6. http://novoed.com
7. https://www.futurelearn.com
8. https://www.canvas.net

I personally used the first four websites and took courses from them. In my opinion, coursera and edx are the best MOOCs platforms nowadays. Not only do they have good quality courses, they also provide a lot of different types of courses for everyone, not only courses for programmers or businessmen.

Online courses & lectures

The simplest type of online education: either a set of video lectures or any other types of materials. Perfect representatives of this type are:

1. https://www.youtube.com
2. https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
3. https://www.khanacademy.org
4. http://nptel.ac.in

Although you will not get any certificate or evidence that you listened to a course, you can get a lot of very valuable information from these sources, which will definitely help you with your field of interest.

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