I have been getting an education recently
It cost me nothing and was the most effecting teaching I have ever had.
I studied html5, CSS and php online with
- Codecademy
- Codehero
I learnt in 10 mins what took me 5 hours of elapsed time on a traditional course at a uni.
Why?
Firstly the tutors were really good. They can be because the market for online trainers is worldwide and you only need one for a topic.
The tutorials were very focused because they are tweaked and improved over time as opposed to a tutorial where every tutorial is different.
Second I did not have travel to get there
Third– they made learning fun and addictive by using game theory.
Forth – there is competition driving up quality. They have to add value otherwise they won’t get paid
5 years ago I paid $1200 for a java course at swinbourne university. It took me 1 hour to get there 2 hours of tutorial and 1 hour to get home. The course was difficult to follow and the tutor had poor English.
Hi Paul,
Totally agree with your sentiments and my experiences are not that different (except for the poor english thing). However the challenge for this online learning thing is that it does need to find a way to earn similar academic respect as the bricks and morter institutions. The future of learning will be online, be it real time interaction or recorded tutes/lectures.
Thanks for your response and the feedback. On your point of “academic respect” I think there are two things happening at the moment
1. Respect for degrees in general is on the decline. There is a growing perception they are getting easier.
2. As the economy worsens I think people will be more pragmatic and may start to look upon people that have spend tens of thousands of dollars on further education as not a wise way to spend their time and money.
3. Work experience generally trumps education. However the degree was often the only way to get the first job. I think things have changed now and there are quite a few ways someone can get an in to most professions without formal education.