Sidra Batool wanted to have a career in videography and photography but she had no money to get proper training to polish her skills and compete with experienced photographers. She contacted the National College of Arts and some other private institutions to enroll in short related courses but could not make to them because of odd timing and higher charges. Sidra, being a schoolteacher, hardly found time and energy to reach the NCA at 2pm to attend the class when her school would be over at 2pm. She gave up the idea of becoming a videographer and photographer.
This
was back in 2008.
In
2018 she learnt advanced techniques of videography and photography from famous
videographers of the world and also has earned a certificate.
Sidra
did so without spending even a single penny, and the completed courses at her
own pace and convenience.
“If
you have a computer and an Internet connection and can read and write English,
you can have access to free online courses from world’s renowned universities,”
says Sidra, who is now a multimedia director with a news website, and earns a
salary in six figures.
Sidra’s
niece Fatima is an O level student. While her class fellows would spend almost
Rs 40,000 to Rs 60,000 per month on tuition of math, chemistry, biology,
physics and even history, Fatima found plenty of tutorial material on Khan
Academy, a free online course website, where lessons on school subjects are
offered free of cost. She did all elusive math problems with the help of Khan
Academy video lessons.
During
the lockdown stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, people all over the world had
plenty of time for being at home, and they took such courses to grow their
knowledge as well.
While students and adult learners may find a good number of
educational and vocational videos, the basic difference between the course
websites and Youtube lessons is that dedicated online courses offer a complete
package – course material (reading, videos, assignments, interactive discussion
forums, interaction with teachers and combined projects, etc.) whereas Youtube
videos only offer a one-way lecture on a topic with a limited scale.
In 2013, I met Bilal Musharraf, the son of retired General Pervez
Musharraf in Doha at one of the world’s biggest annual events on
education — WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) 2013 where he
delivered his presentation on ‘Education for anyone, anywhere’. At that time,
he was the Dean of Translation with US-based Khan Academy. This is the time I
came to know about this a not-for-profit website that aims at changing
education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone
anywhere. Since then, I have been tracking online course programmes and have
completed more than 100 online courses on language, journalism, parenting,
history, online marketing, public speaking, research and so on. These courses
were offered by US universities.
Based on my consistent chase of the online education world, here I
offer a list of recommended high
quality sites that offer free courses.
KHAN ACADEMY
Since 2004, the site has uploaded more than 100,000 lessons
on mathematics, history, healthcare, medicine, finance, physics, chemistry,
biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, macroeconomics,
microeconomics, computer science, and even history and art. These videos have
been watched more than 1,000 million times. More than 10 million learners use
the website every month from 200 countries and more than a billion practice
exercises have been solved on the platform. The website has translated and
uploaded more than 1,000 videos in Urdu on YouTube.
COURSERA
The
website with American and European universities and organizations offer four to
six weeks courses on a wide variety of topics.
OPEN
CULTURE ONLINE COURSES
The
site has thousands of lectures, videos and podcasts from universities around
the world, such as England, Australia, Wales and many state universities around
the United States.
UDEMY
Udemy’s
free courses offer access to customized courses where learners can work with
top professors and schools. The content is of top quality which can be accessed
free as well. Advanced courses are offered on payment.
There
is a long list: Academic Earth, edX, Alison (highly recommended), iTunesU
Free Courses, Harvard, Open Yale Courses, UC Berkeley Class Central, MIT
OpenCourseWare, Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, Codecademy, Code,
University of London Podcasts, University of Oxford Podcasts, BBC Podcasts,
TED-Ed, LessonPaths, Memrise, National Geographic Kids, and Fun Brain.
Pakistani
online influencer Rehan Allahwala (http://www.rehanschool.com/) and Pakistani-American
entrepreneurial guru Muhammad Siddique (https://gsefoundation.org/) have also brought
about great changes to many lives through their Pakistan-only programs.
Once
you have read this piece, browse a couple of sites mentioned above, enroll in
one program of your interest and take your first step towards online education.
Good luck!
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