It's been just over a month of taking courses online and I've learned a lot! I went into this past month trying a bit of everything. Not everything worked out, but overall I really enjoyed the majority of the courses I took.
I've discovered I'm really an auditory and visual learner. Just reading about a topic doesn't have the same affect for me as watching a video. For example, I've been wanting to learn more about the stock market for years. I have previously invested my money into stocks and had some luck, but I never quite understood how to make better choices. So I started with a very basic course to get an overview of the stock market, then advanced into technical trading, and I just bought a third course about options trading. I haven't started the third course, but after the course on technical trading I have a better understanding about risk management (I think anyone interested in the stock market really should start with risk management), how to invest, how much to invest, when to invest, and when to sell. Of course there is much more to learn, but being able use and read charting software has made learning about the stock market much less intimidating.
Another skill I've always wanted to learn is how to use Photoshop. I decided on adding a free Photoshop course to my Udemy classes and was pleasantly surprised about how useful the course is. I've been taking Photoshop & Lightroom For Beginners and I like that the instructor, Yanik Chauvin, has broken up the topics by the end result rather than go over what each tool does. I had a separate course on Adobe Illustrator where the instructor just went over the tool panel, but that was nowhere near as effective as learning how to use the tools together while having an end result in mind.
That brings me to an observation. I found the courses that taught tangible skills to be more interesting and useful than courses that focused on theory and idea. I had a whole three and a half years in university that just went over theory, which is a great foundation to have, but now I'm much more interested in learning skills.
Another observation specifically related to choosing courses on Udemy is that a lot of the free courses are actually good, sometimes better than the paid courses. I took two different logo making courses and I found the free course to be much more useful and relevant than the paid course. This is also true of the high priced versus low priced courses. The higher price doesn't indicate better quality, but rather those courses employ the marketing technique of creating more perceived value of their information by placing a higher cost. The same goes for reviews of a course, I've noticed a lot of "friends" of some instructors create fake reviews, so as with any user generated review site, use your judgement. Better yet, if the course offers a free preview, watch those videos to see if the course style, topics, and instructor make sense for you. There have been courses I returned because I just couldn't get myself to pay attention to the instructor's teaching style.
Udemy had another $10 sale, which was a perfect opportunity to add more courses to my list. It's really addicting learning new skills!
I've discovered I'm really an auditory and visual learner. Just reading about a topic doesn't have the same affect for me as watching a video. For example, I've been wanting to learn more about the stock market for years. I have previously invested my money into stocks and had some luck, but I never quite understood how to make better choices. So I started with a very basic course to get an overview of the stock market, then advanced into technical trading, and I just bought a third course about options trading. I haven't started the third course, but after the course on technical trading I have a better understanding about risk management (I think anyone interested in the stock market really should start with risk management), how to invest, how much to invest, when to invest, and when to sell. Of course there is much more to learn, but being able use and read charting software has made learning about the stock market much less intimidating.
Another skill I've always wanted to learn is how to use Photoshop. I decided on adding a free Photoshop course to my Udemy classes and was pleasantly surprised about how useful the course is. I've been taking Photoshop & Lightroom For Beginners and I like that the instructor, Yanik Chauvin, has broken up the topics by the end result rather than go over what each tool does. I had a separate course on Adobe Illustrator where the instructor just went over the tool panel, but that was nowhere near as effective as learning how to use the tools together while having an end result in mind.
That brings me to an observation. I found the courses that taught tangible skills to be more interesting and useful than courses that focused on theory and idea. I had a whole three and a half years in university that just went over theory, which is a great foundation to have, but now I'm much more interested in learning skills.
Udemy had another $10 sale, which was a perfect opportunity to add more courses to my list. It's really addicting learning new skills!
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