5 Myths about Online Learning at the EPFL Extension School
Late last year, the EPFL Extension School opened its virtual doors, and the first learners started their journey to get applied digital skills. We are part of EPFL, helping to fulfill its mission to ensure continuing education and training for a broad audience. Since then, I’ve been speaking with hundreds of people about this new school, and learned that there are some misconceptions that people have about what the EPFL Extension School is.
These myths, as I like to call them, are related to EPFL as an academic institution, and the MOOCs — the massive open online courses that many universities offer, and that have become synonymous with online education.
Here are the 5 myths:
- ”Learning with EPFL? Impossible for me, I have no academic background.”
FALSE - ”Given EPFL’s academic standards, this is way above my skill level.”
FALSE - ”This is something by EPFL, therefore it’s mostly academic material.”
FALSE - ”This is taught by professors, who know little about the practical world.”
2 x FALSE - ”This is online education, therefore I am completely on my own without help.”
FALSE
If you’ve ever thought one or multiple of these things, you are not alone! There are indeed many good reasons why one would have some of these preconceived notions. Below, I will address each of the myths briefly, and by doing so, I hope to correct some of these misconceptions.
Myth 1: Learning with EPFL? Impossible for me, I have no academic background
To be crystal clear: Anyone can learn at the EPFL Extension School — we do not require any academic credentials whatsoever. Why is that? Simple: Applied digital skills are extremely important for everyone — whether at work, at home, or simply as a citizen in today’s digital reality.
At the EPFL Extension School, we offer courses and programs at different skill levels. Our beginner level courses have the following prerequisites (screenshot taken from our website):
As you can see, the only conditions are that you understand English (a given if you are reading this text), and an internet connection. More advanced courses may have more skill-based prerequisites, but these are self-assessed — i.e. you decide if you have them or not — and if you don’t have them, you can learn them from us in other courses.
Does that mean these are easy courses? Absolutely not. But anyone can do them — which brings me to:
Myth 2: Given EPFL’s academic standards, this is way above my skill level
This misconception is rooted in the high academic standards that EPFL sets for its residential students as a globally top-ranked university. Given that EPFL is a residential school and thus severely limited in the number of students it can accept, it makes sense that it selects based on academic credentials. But at the EPFL Extension School, we don’t have these constrains, and our goal is to get applied digital skills out to as many people as possible.
This is why our courses and programs are offered at many different skill levels, from beginner to advanced. Our courses 50 Things You Need to Know About the Internet, and 50 Things You Need to Know About Data, are accessible to everyone, without any technical prerequisites. Our COS programs Web Application Development, and Applied Data Science — Machine Learning are accessible to those with basic programming experience, and some basic level of numeracy. They start with the basics, but they go far and deep. In the fall, we’ll be launching more advanced courses, including one on deep learning.
None of these are “easy” courses — we go quite far in each course, independent of the level. After all, we want to give you practical skills, and practical skills cannot be learned on a weekend. But what’s important to realize is that the EPFL in our name does not stand for EPFL-level difficulty. It stands for EPFL-level quality.
In short, the EPFL Extension School offers courses at your skill level too, independent of where you are on your digital skills journey.
Myth 3: This is something by EPFL, therefore it’s mostly academic material
If you come to the EPFL Extension School for to learn about grand theories, abstract philosophies, or pure conceptual knowledge, you will be disappointed. We teach applied skills. Our core mission is to give people applied digital skills. Whenever we discuss the content of our courses and programs, the question we ask ourselves is always: does that make a learner more productive in practice at the end of the day? If the answer is no, we are not teaching it.
This is very important to us. We are a school for applied skills, and we want people to come out of our courses and programs feeling like their brains just got a software update, with new amazing skills they can put to practical use immediately.
To be clear, of course there are sometimes a few concepts and theoretical ideas we will teach. We are even developing a new course called “Computer Science Core Concepts”, to be launched this fall. But for us, these always need to serve the practical purpose of making the learners more productive.
Myth 4: This is taught by professors, who know little about the practical world
Having grown up in a non-academic family, I am well aware of the prejudice that academics have little understanding of the real world. Having lived a large part of my professional life among academics, I am also well aware that if you look for this type of academic, you can actually find them easily. However, at EPFL, we pride ourselves to be a technical school that is deeply collaborative with industry, a hotbed for new startups, and an innovation engine for the entire regional economy. The type of “where are my glasses”-cliché professor who knows everything about beautiful theories but nothing about the real world is impossible to find around here.
Having said all of that — the instructors that teach our EPFL Extension School courses are not professors — yours truly currently being the only exception. Our team combines solid industry experience with deep academic experience. Like this, we know what is happening in the real world, and we know what the needs are. At the same time, we also know what is happening in the academic world, and we know what the hot new technology trends are. This combined expertise allows us to create courses and programs that are both practical today, while focusing on future-ready skills and technologies with the most growth potential.
Myth 5: This is online education, therefore I am completely on my own without help
This is a myth that has emerged in the “massive open online courses” (MOOCs) which have become quite popular in the past few years. Not surprisingly, a course that teaches to hundreds of thousands or even millions of people at the same time, as the MOOCs sometimes do, is not a course where you should expect a lot of personalized help.
At the EPFL Extension School, we have a very different approach to online education. We like online education because it offers our learners maximal flexibility, and because we can work every single day to make our courses and our platform better. What we don’t like is for our learners to not be able to get help when they need it. This is why we offer 1-on-1 video-based sessions for those times where neither the course material, nor the forums, nor a Google search (gasp!) provide any help.
Making our learners succeed is at the heart of what we do, and it’s not just a lip service — I am often looking into the emails that are sent to our learners after a project review, and just yesterday I saw this one (reposting with agreement of the course instructor):
As someone observed on Twitter, this is “better feedback than I got in most of my “offline” classes”.
Go get those skills!
If you have been on the fence about learning with the EPFL Extension School because of one or more of the concerns listed above, I hope to have cleared up any misconceptions. If you want more information, please visit our website, reach out to us by email or Twitter, and most importantly: go get those digital skills!
Prof. Marcel Salathé
Academic Director
EPFL Extension School
