How Coursera can help you empower your career: tips from Argentine freelancer
I do believe it is a key tool for learning skills that allow you to enter the job market or develop and improve existing skills.
Highlights
Continuous Learning: Freelancers benefit from regular skill updates, and Coursera offers flexibility for this.
Career Value: Coursera certificates showcase practical skills that appeal to employers.
Affordable Options: Courses fit various budgets and allow for self-paced learning.
Since I started freelancing online, continuous learning and skill development have been crucial to my career. The world of freelancing is dynamic, with constantly evolving trends and client needs coupled with fierce competition. However, one of my biggest challenges was finding a structured way to update my skills while juggling multiple projects and deadlines.
Managing projects appropriately was challenging in itself, and I could not even imagine having enough time to study new skills. Two years ago, both in my day-to-day work and freelance gigs, responsibilities and deadlines were piling up and forming a snowball that would not end well.
At that time, one of my employers provided me with free access to some online course platforms. I decided to try to bring order to the chaos that my work life had become by taking a project management course on Coursera. And it changed my life.
What is Coursera?
Coursera is a course platform that offers online learning with some of the best universities. It has a wide variety of online courses you can follow from anywhere at your own pace. I cannot emphasize enough the enormous variety of courses offered by this platform, from art history courses to programming to medicine to the science of happiness.
Training ranges from short courses (also known as Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs) to specializations in particular subjects and online degrees, so there is a wide range to choose from.
Coursera's professors are experts from top universities, so the quality of teaching is high. Since some of the world's best-known companies use Coursera to train their employees, you can be sure you're also getting the necessary job skills. All courses are delivered online, with videos, text, downloads, and quizzes to test your knowledge.
Freelancing and Online courses: A match made in heaven
Coursera is to universities what freelance work is to a traditional job. Just as freelance work offers flexibility and autonomy compared to the structured environment of a traditional job, Coursera provides a flexible and accessible alternative to traditional university education without enrolling in a four-year course.
Freelancers can select projects that align with their skills and interests, while Coursera learners can choose courses that fit their career aspirations and schedule, allowing them to pursue their goals on their own terms. This adaptability makes Coursera and freelance work appealing to those seeking to balance personal growth with professional advancement.
Are Coursera certificates valuable to your career?
I believe they are. I feel nowadays there is a growing emphasis on assessing competency, especially in technical roles, and online learning is one element of demonstrating your personal interest in continuing to learn and challenge yourself. Too often, graduates are content to have achieved the degree - and then do little more to further their careers.
Being able to show that you are actively learning and growing skills in response to market needs may be what is needed to tip the scales between a 4-year degree-holding candidate and one who has some college but has accrued significant online certificates.
This is not to say that university degrees are unimportant, but in my view in an increasingly competitive job market demonstrating practical and up-to-date knowledge outweighs a traditional degree. Especially in the freelance market.
Keep in mind that you pay a little something for a certificate track to get access to exams and graded exercises.
Is it really worth the effort?
The bottom line is that employers are more concerned with your skill set than your online classes or certification programs list. Coursera does not provide or guarantee job placement. So, take specializations and certificate programs that help you hone the skills you intend to showcase to employees.
I'd venture to say that unless you are very lucky, you can't get a job simply by taking a single Coursera course. Though luck. However, I do believe it is a key tool for learning skills that allow you to enter the job market or develop and improve existing skills.
If you can use your learning to build a portfolio of your own, you can prove to a prospective employer that you have what it takes to do the job.
How much does it cost?
Obviously, one of the big questions is how much this exclusive training will cost you. Well, the price of Coursera varies considerably, depending on what you're studying and how you study it.
You can opt for the graded version of the course and get a certificate on completion. Most of the more content-rich courses I reviewed cost around $50, but the price varies depending on the subject.
For example, among the most popular courses of the platform, AI For Everyone is the most demanded among the technology courses, costing $49 USD.
The Science of Wellbeing, published by Yale University, is also one of the most requested courses on the platform and its certificate costs $29 USD.
Another variant is the Data Science Specialization program, offered by Johns Hopkins University. It consists of a series of 10 courses spread over a period of 7 months. You can access it for free for 7 days, but then Coursera will charge you $50 USD per month to continue accessing the content and give you a certificate upon completion.
Alternatively, another way to gain access is to audit thousands of courses on Coursera for free. This gives you access to most of the course material, but you will not be graded or get a certificate.
What makes Coursera stand out?
Learning on Coursera is a personal experience as you get out what you put in. Some of the features I love are asynchronous learning, controlling the speed of videos, integrated notes and searchable transcripts.
Coursera suggests a time frame for completing each course, splitting them into modules of one week's duration each. But because they are asynchronous and the lessons are either video or text-based, each user can take them at their own pace. You can take more or less time depending on your preference.
My favorite feature however is the searchable transcripts. I found that the best way to internalize the course content is to take my own notes while watching the lessons. The transcripts are an invaluable tool to supplement my learning process, as well as to analyze in more detail complex concepts taught in the video.
Personally, I believe these features can't be replicated in the classroom, and having these capabilities not only improves accessibility for non-native English speakers like me but makes for a better experience for everyone.
Tips and tricks
In short, for anyone looking for advice on how to be successful with Coursera, remember these things:
Consistency is the key to success.
Show up and do the work. Repeat until you get it.
Rewatch the classes if you need to.
Don't be afraid to repeat a course or find another course that takes a different approach. Keep going until it clicks.
My take:
From professional development to changing careers, learning new skills, or even improving my hobby skills, I always find a good excuse to come back to Coursera.
That first course I took on Coursera was a journey. I learned project management skills that I use every day in my professional and personal life. I went on to deepen my knowledge of the subject by taking several courses on project management and project management skills, both certified and non-certified.
To this day, these skills have opened countless doors for me in my daily work and freelance work. I have colleagues who have made huge career changes after studying programming and data analysis on Coursera.
It just takes a little push to learn something new that can change your relationship with your work forever.
