Investing in yourself

In a book I have been reading from Brian Tracy, there is a section dedicated to Self Discipline and Personal Excellence, and in that section, I found a little piece of advice that I think is very valuable.

He says “Invest the 3% of your income back into yourself”, in practical terms he says that you should invest 3% of your desired earnings (not your current earnings) in books, courses, seminars, and other educational materials that allow you to increase your expertise, in terms of skill and knowledge and grow in your field.

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Personal Goal Achieved

A month ago, I started 3 simultaneous Online courses, on subjects that are currently on top of my interests list (Nutrition, Entrepreneurship and Writing on the web)*

This is quick summary on how I did, kind of a self-evaluation/post-mortem analysis:

The Good (What I liked)

– Enrolling process was quick and easy
– I am satisfied with the quality of the courses and the instructors
– I did perform very good the first week (Module 1), watching videos and taking assessments within suggested time frames
– I scored above 93% in all three courses (either they were too easy or I am good)
– I did review the additional materials for each of the courses and acted on the questions that were formulated.
– I learn many useful concepts on all three subjects
– I got all my certificates of completion

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More about MOOCs see who offers them

In my last post I talked about what MOOCs are and what are some of their advantages and disadvantages. Here is the link should you want to read it: www.bubblews.com/news/2385483

However, for the sake of brevity I did not include those sites and institutions offering MOOCS.

For those of interested, here are some of the poviders currently offering MOCCs. As you can see there is a diverse variety of topics. If you have the time, by all means, take a look at them and who knows; maybe enroll in one or two of those courses.

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MOOCs or how to take free online courses with 30,000 classmates

MOCCs can become the perfect alternative to current higher classroom education offerings. But as discussed below, MOCCs still have some issues that need to be resolved, before being adopted as a viable option for online education.

MOOC which stands for “Massive Open Online Course” describes free ( or almost free) courses taken massively (in theory, an unlimited number of students can attend) over the internet.

Unlike the previous courses and efforts on this field, that were basically videos made at a live class for the student to watch, with no interaction with the instructor, MOOC is a course whose content is made for online students specifically, with assessments and other resources aimed to facilitate the learning experience.

There has been courses with 160,000 students enrolled, and it is not uncommon to see classes with 30,000 to 40,000 students. That’s a lot of networking possibilities.

Furthermore, just last month TED Talks, published a video recorded in June 2013 where Anant Agarwal, president of EdX (one of the sites that offers MOOCs), talks extensively about how this type of courses are still a viable possibility for education.

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