In the field of education, the era of technological and informational boom has come: now it is not necessary to go to the US or Europe to gain knowledge of the world level. Lectures of eminent professors of universities can now be enjoyed sitting at home on the couch. Moreover, you can discuss, ask questions and share your thoughts with lecturers. Such opportunities are provided to people by a number of online training courses.
A laptop, Wi-Fi and a couple of hours of free time a day – that’s all it takes to study the history of the bloodiest wars, deadly diseases, and fevers, get acquainted with the operation of your human organs, learn the culture of other people, learn marketing or SMM, learn programming languages, improve foreign language skills and much more. The main thing is to enroll in a chosen course and systematically do assignments and learn about grade replacement policies.
Educational platforms offering training courses do not care either about your physical location, your social status, gender, age, or physical abilities. Everyone there can learn at their own pace performing a lot of interesting tasks and deepening their knowledge through quizzes, mini-essays, and thematic tests. On the overwhelming number of online training sites, multimedia materials such as video lectures, presentations, infographics and others are provided. The duration of courses, as a rule, varies in connection with the chosen program and the university: some are designed to be completed in only two weeks, whereas others require at least several months of studies.
At the same time, a significant number of educational sites not only provide access to their lectures and such but also issue certificates (for a fee), confirming that the person has completed their course. Looking at such rapid development of online courses and their increasing popularity, there is a reason to expect that these platforms in the future will become a very serious alternative to traditional education. At least, this judgment is quite true for the following five websites:
Coursera
Three years ago, a group of professors specializing in computer science at Stanford University launched an online platform for mass education, which at the moment, is the largest in the world. The site constantly publishes announcements of courses on various topics and in different price categories. Last year, the most popular series of lectures were “Social Psychology”, “Game Theory” and “Fundamentals of Programming”.
Coursera has hundreds of fans around the world who love the site for the philosophy of affordable education, the quality of teaching, and course grade policy.
MIT Online
The fact that MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is the best technical college on Earth is constantly confirmed by students around the world, and university students insist that Google Glass was invented there 20 years ago. Obviously, it’s almost impossible to get into this educational institution: you need to be not only wealthy but also brilliant. Despite this, the MIT teachers are not that unavailable: the online training program has been working on the Institute’s website for a long time. The courses are mostly focused on such topics as how modern wheelchairs are created, how mathematics is used in toys for children. Despite the specific nature of the lectures, one can find something suitable for a specific academic purpose. For several years, MIT has not only provided video lectures but also PDF-copies of their abstracts, which are also available.
Evolver Learning Lab
The project is different from many others with a pleasant and intuitive design and an unusual selection of topics. Here scientists explain how people open their minds to parallel worlds and what the secret of eternal love is from the physiological point of view.
The platform came about in 2007 becoming one of the pioneers in the field of online lectures, and its philosophy lies in a thorough selection of experts. In addition to the lectures themselves, the platform is producing an online magazine called Reality Sandwich, where after some time, it duplicates its video materials in a condensed and written form.
This online resource, where millions of people learn new languages, has existed for many years and has collected a whole database of speakers of Arabic, Polish, Catalan and several dozens of other languages. Everything is built on standard flash programs for learning a particular language. Vocabulary, grammar, and listening are combined into lessons that users take and consolidate knowledge with tests and quizzes. They differ from many other resources for learning languages because once a user has taken a lesson, the site asks the student to write an essay in the language that they are studying, and then a volunteer will check the text and point out mistakes. Speaking of writing, students may be interested in checking out http://edubirdie.com/critical-thinking-writing to learn about critical thinking writing. The final stage of the lesson is a short chat with a native speaker.
New York Institute of Photography
The New York Institute of Photography started distance learning several years ago. Now the network of students of the Institute has grown and become global. In order to gain access to materials and lectures given by teachers, it is necessary to apply for training, and after acceptance, you will need to pay for the first semester. Tasks, lectures and other materials are given to the students. In response, students send their photos that meet the requirements of the homework.
Since it is an official institution, the New York Institute of Photography issues a certificate of completion coupled with university grades, which is recognized in most countries of the world.
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