They say if you want to become a real expert at something, you need to dedicate 10,000 hours of continuous hard work.
There’s always more to learn. Fortunately, you’re in a unique position where although there is so much to learn, there is also a wealth of information and learning tools available to you online. We’ve compiled a list of five different online skill building resources you can use to help take you to that “expert” level.
The Importance of Improving Your Skill
It’s important to improve your skills for a number of reasons. First, if you want to excel in your own role, there are often other complementary skills you don’t currently have, but would help you do your job better. Secondly, if you ever decide to move to a new company, it can work to your advantage if you show that you’ve built habits and processes of independent learning.
1. Free Microsoft Training Delivered by Experts
Microsoft has their own knowledge base that anyone can use to improve their skills in some core areas. It goes without saying, the key skills are all based around Microsoft products. Whether you’re a developer, IT Pro or Data Pro, there will be a course available for you to use. The courses are free and video-based.
2. Skillshare
Skillshare is an online learning hub with a range of different courses within different industries. They have over 23,000 classes on their system. This makes them a valuable resource for anyone who wants to expand their skills outside of their normal job role.
3. EdX
EdX is a platform that offers classes from top professionals in top universities like Harvard. Each course has a description as to whether or not it’s self-paced. Alongside this, it gives details as to how much effort you’ll need to put in in order to complete the course as well as whether you need to have any prerequisite qualifications in order to take it.
4. MIT
The MIT courses range from topic to topic, but as you can imagine, they all have an engineering and computer science focus. Each course consists of a mixture of lectures and labs. Alongside this, there are a wide range of assessments that enable you to assess whether or not you’ve understood the course content. Although there are a range of course materials, they also have a link to a range of other related resources to help you grasp the content in the most effective way possible. As a free course platform, using MIT is great for those who want to improve their knowledge using course materials from one of the best schools in the world.
5. Udemy
Udemy is one of the most popular online learning resource hubs. They have content and courses across a wide multitude of different topics. Their categories cover almost everything you might want to learn about. All you need to do is choose the topic or sort of content you want to learn about and you can pick your course.
Takeaways
Regardless of your role, you may be actively looking for resources that can help you improve your existing skills or develop new ones.
We’ve provided you with five online resources you can use to build your skills. Some of these are paid and some of these are free. The resources you use will largely depend on what level you’re currently at, how much budget you have and what specific skills you’re hoping to learn.