Education has Already Changed
A Brief History of Online Education Platforms
Whether you always wanted to understand Buddhism or get the basic skills to handle photoshop — the internet has given us the key to an incomprehensibly large amount of knowledge that we can access at any given time. Over the last ten years it has also played a crucial role in the development of online education possibilities.
But even before the digital age, already in the 1840s, learning over distance was practiced in the form of postal correspondence courses and later radio and television broadcasts. Finally though, the internet paved the way for increased online presence and larger scale online education opportunities.
In the early 2000s the so called Open Education Resources (OER) movement started in the US. The first known university to make courses available on the internet was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with dozens of MIT courses available online via OpenCourseWare.
Ten years later, in 2011, MOOCs (massive open online courses) became widely known, when Sebastien Thrun, Professor at Stanford and Peter Norvig, Research Director at Google, made their course “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” available for free on the internet with over 160.000 attendants (source).
Today the online learning industry has an estimated market growth of $325 billion until 2025. There are various providers to choose from with a wide range of topics that are often available for free or at very low costs compared to other education programs. Students can choose to do their classes at a time that is convenient for them — whether they want to complete a full education program or just specialize in a specific skill.
The online learning industry is here to stay. And it is not only a useful option for personal development, most of the online platforms also offer pricing models for companies by now to provide unlimited training access to their employees.
Enough good reason to use our time at home constructively. Therefore we prepared an overview of 6 online learning platforms you can use for training:
OpenClassrooms
The online education platform OpenClassrooms has a strong IT & development focus. The Paris based company offers simple and quick online courses for free on the one hand and on the other hand students can follow a complete career path such as a Android Developer on a bachelor’s degree level — all online. The career paths classes include weekly, one-on-one mentorship sessions with a dedicated professional in each field with a curriculum designed around job competencies. The programs are project-driven without tests or exams, which means you won’t obtain a university degree. But OpenClassroms is registered with the Board of Education in Paris in order to grant its own diplomas. Career Path classes are 300€ per month with flexible duration depending on your pace.
Coursera
A pioneer and one of the first MOOCs out there. Coursera offers thousands of certified online courses by high class university professors and renowned companies such as Google or IBM. The topics range from tech and business related classes to science, history, psychology, design, etc. You can even complete a full master degree 100% online e.g. from the Imperial College of London or the University of Illinois. A lot of the courses are free to take and give you access to on-demand video lectures, homework exercises and community discussion forums. Paid courses additionally include quizzes and projects and most importantly provide you with a shareable Course Certificate. Companies pay $400 a year per user to get full access to all courses.
Udemy
The online platform Udemy was launched in 2010 and — despite failed attempts for funding — managed to have 1,000 instructors creating about 2,000 courses and nearly 10.000 registered users just within a month. Today over 50 million students use Udemy and 57.000 instructors teach courses in over 65 languages. The classes are mainly around software, IT and digital skills but also about soft business skills and personal development. The platform model is open, meaning everybody can become a teacher and upload a course — it is then up to the student community to rate the courses. The video courses are mostly project based without a certificate and cost around 10€ to 40€.
Domestika
Domestika offers online courses for artists, creatives and all those who just want to explore their artsy side a bit. From adobe creative suite and design software skills to drawing classes, fashion design and even woodworking. Any imaginable creative activity is on here. The concept is similar to Udemy with an open model, where anybody can upload video courses. You can purchase single courses around 10–20€ and watch the videos whenever you find the time.
MasterClass
Learn from the best — the concept of Master Class to stand out is to offer classes taught by world famous artists and professionals. Learning to cook from Gordon Ramsay, acting classes by Natalie Portman, Photography classes by Anne Leibovitz. Big names of the industry give online courses on Music, Entertainment, Writing, Art, Culinary, Business, Politics & Society and for a reasonable price. The subscription based platform model starts at $16 per month.
Skillshare
Skillshare is an american online learning community with a focus on digital skills. The main course categories are creative arts, design, entrepreneurship, lifestyle, technology, and other subtopics. The courses don’t include a certificate but are prepared as educational videos where students learn a skill by completing a project. Skillshare offers subscription model pricing plan with offers for smaller teams and corporations starting from 99 USD per user per year.
There is many more platforms to choose from depending on your focus and desired learning curve. Make your pick and keep learning. 💪
Education is a privilege. Anything that contributes to making this privilege more accessible is a meaningful purpose. That is also why we at Malt opened the Malt Academy to everyone. Previously an internal Peer-to-Peer Learning program between Malters, we now offer free webinars & trainings held by freelancers, Malters and experts in their respective field. The webinars are open and accessible to everyone who is interested in expanding their network online and using their time at home constructively. Let’s stay connected!
