I was talking to someone recently who regretted that, more than 40 years ago; they had never gone on to tertiary education. I couldn’t quite work out if it was because the fees were too high or because they had not made some type of academic grade at the time deemed necessary for university entrance.
I have to admit to having coasted through my first year at University so much so that my second year was spent repeating the year to get a marginally higher grade allowing me to progress to a slightly higher level in my overall degree.
Even then I felt that knowledge and ability didn’t always merit a badge of recognition, a public certificate, for example in swimming or social media or marketing or historical periods or anything for that matter. Knowledge could just be for enjoyment and pleasure.
I got my first computer in 1985 without having the slightest notion about what a computer was or what it could do for me but it soon became apparent that (some) academic qualifications were unnecessary with regards, anyway, to computing. Some people just took off and seemed to have an innate understanding of how computers and their coding languages worked long before both PC’s and Macs introduced their graphical interfaces. A blinking C:>Dir/w on a blank, black screen seemed scary while it became apparent that in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man was king.
It all seems so small and petty now. Jump forward to the present day and there are literally tons of free and open courses offered by a plethora of institutions, academies and universities worldwide. Perhaps the most widely known is MOOC – Multiple Online, Open Courses – which is an umbrella grouping of thousands of courses offered by hundreds of providers. “We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall” Joni Mitchell © 1970 – “My Old Man” from the album Blue. The main idea here being things (education} are free, certification is not.
So, whether you want to learn through watching videos, or through assigned readings and discussions with others world wide studying the same courses or whether you just wish to broaden your knowledge of, for example, Art History or brush up your high school Spanish or delve into quantum mechanics, there is a free course available for you. Rediscover deep interests in things from many years ago and invest time in them now but without the burden of either payment or financial stress by using one of the incredible MOOCs now so easily available.
And therein lies the problem which I call the Chinese Menu syndrome – there is so much on offer that to wade through the various offerings can be daunting in itself. To find something you might be interested in just try MOOC, or to narrow down your search slightly, try any of the following,
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One of the extraordinary things I’ve discovered is that after i signed up for a free course in an area that particularly interested me, but which wasn’t due to start for another month or so, I got an email “recommending” some other courses which were starting soon and which I might like!
I paged down contemptuously (how dare they think they know what I like, sort of thing) and was gratified to find that the first half dozen courses they offered had no interest whatsoever for me until something caught my eye – Trinity College Dublin.
When I went to university in Dublin in 1971, Trinity was pretty much the preserve of the old Protestant Ascendancy. Catholics were not excluded from the university but the Archbishop of Dublin, at the time, would demand written reason why Trinity and not the Catholic university was suitable for the recognised course of study.
Anyway, it caught my eye and I signed on to Trinity for a short two week course in such and such an area – something I knew nothing about and had never seriously considered before – and I thought I would just ghost through. Instead, maybe because of the video lectures or the reading content or provoking questions, I became interested enough to follow the first week of material.
Initially tempted to reply to other participants comments with a curt “well done” or “I agree” type of comments, I found myself engaging with people I had never seen or heard from before. I think that is really the first time I have ever done that. Not anyway since I first got a modem and heard non-global sounding squawks and squeals from cyberspace and logged on to obscure chartrooms where abuse and requests were hurled.
MOOCs, TEDs are all amazing and I wish you well in your explorations.
Red Branch Chronicles 