Online Summer Courses: Worth the Time?

All along, I have been wanting to take online courses throughout my summer to, first, make my summer productive since I can no longer travel, and secondly, and most importantly, to help me find what I love. School isn’t the place for discovery, it’s setting the foundation for all that’s to come in life, so it’s up to me to be proactive and find my dreams. So today, I’m here to share with you all my experience so far with online courses, what’s to love about each course, and what’s not to love.

1. Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills by University of Michigan

Coming towards the end of the school year, I had researched about the few best course-taking websites (Coursera, EdX etc) where they had offered well-structured courses made by prestigious universities. As it was the first course I had taken, I didn’t have a general direction as to what I’d wanted to learn, and how, due to the overwhelming amount of subjects I could deep dive into.

When I chose this course, my thought process when enrolling was simply because I knew that negotiating and speaking to lots of individuals was crucial in the future, and demonstrating my EQ (emotional quotient) would help me level up in whatever field I decide to go towards. Initially, I ‘d really appreciated how well-structured the website (Coursera) was, there would be a video on the top, transcript on the bottom (the sentence the professor is speaking would be emboldened) and the course overview on the left. It was very clearly laid out, and Coursera itself would encourage me to set goals for myself every day to complete a set amount of lessons and I could mark it on my Google calendar. Personally, felt that I was able to connect with the courses better this way, really well-made website!

As I went along the course, I kept taking notes because it’s always been a habit of mine, and also because there were a LOT of materials needed for me to grasp. However, this also meant that I would pause every few seconds and jot down a few notes and had to organize it in a way so that they were clear, which eventually resulted in me spending hours just organizing notes and not actually understanding the course material. Moreover, I felt that this course on negotiations was not made for a rising high schooler in the first place, the course itself introduces lots of strategies/steps approaching or at a negotiation, and made me realize that actually I enjoy interactions between people and I definitely would incorporate that into my career. But the course certainly did not fulfil my hopes to find what I would like to do as a career. Would I recommend? 5/10 Well organized, but harder to apply

2. Macroeconomics for Business Management by Fundação Instituto de Administração

Starting from the beginning of Year 9, I had felt that I had a growing interest towards macroeconomics and the ever-so-often discussions I have with my dad about business caused me to lean towards markets and entrepreneurship, therefore I enrolled in this course, hoping to further develop my interest and see if I could see myself learning more about economics in general.

In the first few courses, I really liked how short the course videos were, introducing what GDP is, how it’s calculated etc. and it allowed me to get through each module rather quickly, and I could make notes quickly. But the downside of this is that the professor is talking very fast and, for a beginner, it’s difficult to grasp every word and concept that he is trying to express. Moreover, I had noticed that the transcript was often out-of-time with what the professor is saying in the video or the transcript was inaccurate and very difficult for me to refer to when making notes. So unfortunately, I had dropped this course after 1 module because I felt that this didn’t help me develop my interest in any way and moving to another course would benefit me more. Would I recommend? 3/10 Simple videos, but doesn’t pique my interest

3. Finance Essentials by ImperialBusinessX

The more people I spoke to and the more researched I did on my own, I discovered that Coursera was more of a website for people seeking degrees and professionals trying to enhance a skill, so I switched to another website where I had a better experience finding all the different subjects I had wanted to try.

Initially, the course starts off really gently, introducing us to very simple finance tools like present, future values which I have learned before, but slowly gets into the harder formulas for net present values and rate of returns, which I wasn’t able to understand and apply because it had involved maths more advanced than what I have learned. With that being said, however, this course was taught well, the professor had maintained a good pace and all the concepts were pointed out clearly. To add to that, my favourite part about this course that I think every finance course should incorporate somehow, is a family simulator. Essentially, it’s a family where they make different financial decisions, and you’re able to apply all the different tools learned into the examples of decisions they are faced to make. Makes the whole learning experience more fun, too! Would I recommend? 6/10 Yes I would, if you had finished all of high-school maths

4. Learn HTML by Codecademy

Coming into this, I had never heard of this coder’s paradise of Codecademy, which was recommended by my brother as I asked for the essential skills I should be diving into; and to be honest, I had never really considered coding, because the stereotypical “coding” seemed to me as a bunch of words organized in a very specific way which was really challenging, which, is completely wrong! I know now that there are LOADS of coding languages that you can learn, so I started with the most popular and seemingly one of the easiest, HTML.

Unsurprisingly, this website made by a bunch of coders is the best course website out of all that I have tried, it’s clearly organized, the courses are designed to dare I say, perfection because of its interactive coding, allowing you to code according to the example, and won’t allow you to continue if you don’t get your code correctly, and best of all, you get summaries of everything you’ve learned in one, simplified document. Never thought I’d say this, but this got me excited to learn more codes! Not sponsored, just a wonderful website! Would I recommend? 9/10 Definitely!

5. Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles

After enrolling into the first course I have ever done, successful negotiations, it made me realize that I did enjoy interacting with people and so wanted to incorporate that into my career.
Hence, I jumped at the opportunity to discover whether I’d like to take on leadership roles and how to become a good leader. It’s unsurprising to say that this course was very time-consuming, as it was the few that I had finished the whole course on, and to become a good leader, it’s not a short-term problem with a short-term solution, I realized, but more of a long-term problem, requiring experience.

Right off the bat, the course went in depth about defining what leadership is, because a leader is something we’re always taught to be, and we always associate leadership with their characteristics etc, but turns out, being a leader is actually defined by one’s work, than one’s characteristics. By identifying the technical problems and the adaptive challenges, I feel more at peace and clear in my head, when approaching a problem, instead of freaking out and not knowing where to begin, I’ve now been introduced to a few methods when responding to conflicts. Last but not least, my favourite part about this course is the community posts and the amount of writing to be done, it challenges me to think about scenarios of me taking part in a group previously and for me to break down my actions, what I did well/not so well.

On the contrary, I also believe that this course wasn’t made for incoming high schoolers, there were terminologies like factions and constitutions where the professor didn’t go in depth into what they are, so a high schooler like myself, would have to go ask my trusty friend: Google. This would often times cause confusion on my part and a feeling of boredom, because certain things they would discuss for 10 minutes straight would not be relevant to me. Would I recommend: 7/10 Lots of reflections, but can get boring

6. Finance for Everyone by University of Michigan

Saving my favourite course of the summer till the last moment! Ever since the finance course by Imperial College, I continued to look for finance courses and although this course didn’t catch my eye at first, I couldn’t go back after the first few lessons. The professor seemed like such a nice person that had truly designed this course for beginners, so he would be constantly reminding us of the concepts and keywords with clear, explained terms shown on the slide. The positive energy radiated by the professor and how he kept reminding us the reason why he loved finance so much slowly grew on me, and although finance involves lots of numbers and some terms were still harder to get my head around them, I had been proactively participating in the examples the professor gave and calculating using Excel spreadsheet in my own time as well.

I was well-surprised by how much I was interested in finance and dealing with all the numbers and trying the real life problems the professor assigns in the practices, really motivated me to keep going. If there was one thing I’d hope to change is that I wish there could be worked solutions to the practices assigned, since I would get a few questions wrong and couldn’t fully understand them. All in all, if you think you’re even remotely into finance, give this a try, it really is finance for everyone. Would I recommend? 9/10 Yes. Yes. Yes.

I truly hope sharing these courses that I have done so far in my summer has motivated some of you to try the courses out. But if there are any takeaways, it’s that courses are worth your time, if you’re able to find one that connects with you well and encourages you to pursue something similar in the future. I wasn’t able to find one I liked until quite after, and I thought summer courses were meaningless when they were boring, but I hope you know that the searching process is what’s often the most time-consuming! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or hopes to discuss any of the above with me!

Thanks for reading and see you all in a bit

-Winnie 13/08/2022