Get Inspired With These Top 10 Most Satisfying Jobs

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January 29, 2019

The Habits of Successful Self-Employed People

Jan 14, 2019

By Alison Research & Patrick Adcock

What does it take to be self-employed? Many people dream of working for themselves, but worry that they might not have the ability to be a successful entrepreneur. After all, becoming self-employed can be a big leap into the unknown; most people spend a lot of their young lives working for someone else. When trying to decide if becoming an entrepreneur is the right move, you may find yourself asking, “Can I really do this?”

Don’t worry. It turns out, many of your preconceptions about the habits and personalities of self-employed people might be completely false. Patrick Adcock of QuickBooks Self-Employed recently surveyed around 1000 self-employed people in order to gain a better understanding of what makes them unique. He shared his data with Alison, and the findings are fascinating. Apparently, the self-employed aren’t the extroverted rule-breakers many people think they are!

Here’s a summary of some of the key findings from QuickBooks’ research. Have a read, and see if a career as an entrepreneur might be the path for you.

1. Self-Employed People Are Not Experts

One of the most common things uniting self-employed workers is that they are jacks-of-all-trades rather than masters of one. When asked about their strengths, the most emphasised answers were passion, problem-solving, and adaptability. Entrepreneurs don’t start their businesses because they are experts in a certain field, but because they are passionate about their field and want to get involved in every area of it.

2. They Care A Lot About Learning

A huge 94 percent of those surveyed consider themselves lifelong learners. More than a quarter say that they can learn enough to achieve their goals because they simply want it enough. Another 22 percent say it comes down to having enough passion. Nearly 20 percent say the only thing separating “wantrepreneurs” from entrepreneurs is one hasn’t started yet.

3. The Self-Employed Learn Outside of School

According to self-employed workers, you don’t learn how to start a business from school, books, or a business coach. The top five ways they learned how to start their businesses were using online resources, learning as they went along, learning from mistakes, learning from friends and family, and having a natural instinct or talent for it.

4. They Value Time, People, and Hard Work

About 84 percent of self-employed people see their success as a result of their hard work rather than luck. 3 out of 4 value time more than money, 73 percent value people over profits, and 77 percent say they push to do the impossible instead of giving up when they hit obstacles. It’s these values that give them the passion to continue when others would give up.

Ultimately, what all of this boils down to is: find a passion, learn all you can about it, keep learning, keep going, and don’t be put off by obstacles. These are the traits that make entrepreneurs successful and can get you started on a wonderful career path. So whether its hospitality or agriculture, manufacturing or IT, start learning today and become the captain of your own ship.

Source: Quickbooks Self-Employed survey results

Author: Alison Research

4 Reasons I’m Delighted I Learned Carpentry

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January 29, 2019

4 Reasons I’m Delighted I Learned Carpentry

Jan 11, 2019

By Philip S.

It’s simple: carpentry is an amazing skill. A few years ago I was sitting at my desk, doing some work, when suddenly the desk just collapsed in front of me. Everything – my laptop, my books, my papers, my coffee, everything – just went all over the place. I was shocked. I picked up my things, threw out my ruined papers, and started looking for a new desk online.

That evening I told me brother what had happened. He asked to see the desk. “Why are you buying a new desk?” he asked. “Because this one is completely broken!” I replied. He explained to me that the only part of the desk that was broken was the joint between one leg and the top of the desk, and I could fix that easily myself instead of spending money on a new desk. And that’s how my adventure with carpentry began. I’ve loved it ever since. Here’s why:

1. You can easily build almost anything

In the past few years, I’ve discovered that with a few basic carpentry skills you can build almost anything. I used to think that you had to be a professional carpenter to build a shelf or a desk, but it turns out that you only need a few skills and some wood to build anything from a chair to cabinet. My house is now full of things that I’ve built myself, and that’s a real source of pride.

2. Carpentry will save you so much money

When something breaks, or my house needs something new, my first instinct used to be “call someone else and pay them to fix it or make it.” I don’t want to think about how much money I wasted doing that, not realising that I could have done it all myself. After a couple of carpentry lessons, I was able to fix my desk, my creaking doors, my wobbly chairs, even install a window frame. After I bought the initial equipment, my house maintenance costs have gone way down.

3. There is so much to learn

Learning carpentry is like learning an instrument: you will never be done. Just like you can never learn all the songs, you can never finish discovering new and interesting carpentry techniques. This makes carpentry a real hobby for life, full of little lessons and big ones, so you can learn at your own pace and never get bored.

4. Carpentry is a great way to destress

If I’ve had a bad day at work, or a stressful day in general, my carpentry projects always put me back in a great headspace. Whether it’s making a wooden cup or a salad spoon or just a funny looking object to put on the shelf, I always know that I can come home, do a little bit of carpentry, and calm down. This is one of my favourite stress management techniques.

These are just a few reasons to start learning carpentry, there are many more. But don’t take my word for it, try a free online short carpentry course yourself and see if you like it. You never know, it could be the start of a great lifelong hobby.

Author: Alison Marketing

Udacity Sunsets its Mobile Apps

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January 29, 2019

Disclosure: To support our site, Class Central may be compensated by some course providers.

January 13, 2019

3 minute read

Last week we wrote about how 2019 brought the closure of a free course provider with little notice. Now, Udacity has done something similar and pulled its mobile apps from the iOS and Android store. A few students (presumably active mobile users?) were sent an email the same day and informed of the closure. Below is the mail that these learners received (src: Reddit).

Dear xxxx,
When we launched the Udacity app over 4 years ago, we were pleased to offer Udacity students our learning experience from the convenience of a mobile app. Ultimately, ten percent of Udacity students downloaded the app, and many enjoyed using it as an additional learning path.
In 2019, we are prioritizing massive upgrades to the Udacity classroom and service experience. We are focusing our efforts to support, motivate, and drive not only learning and career success for our students, but also to provide a world-class online learning experience.
Because the Udacity app has not significantly advanced students’ ability to achieve their learning and career goals, moving forward we will not support many of these product upgrades on the mobile app and will sunset the mobile app as of January 9, 2019. After this point you won’t be able to download or use the app anymore. The Udacity classroom experience, including Knowledge and Student Hub will remain supported on mobile web as it is today.
If you have questions, view the FAQ doc or reach out by responding to this email.
Your Udacity team

This move might also be related to Udacity’s cost-cutting process. According to a post on Udacity’s Engineering blog back in July 2018, Udacity’s mobile team had employed 9 people. In fact, the author of the blog post is no longer working at Udacity, according to his LinkedIn profile. He stopped working in November 2018, which is when Udacity announced its massive layoffs.

https://twitter.com/n8ebel/status/1083186947969802240

The company ballooned to 500 employees in 2017 and ended 2018 with 330 employees. This past year, Udacity also increased Nanodegree prices and cut the pay for mentors and reviewers. To learn more about Udacity’s 2018, read Class Central’s in-depth Year In Review.

A previous version of the article stated that Udacity was shuttering its career services mentorship program on Jan 31st. Here is a statement from Udacity PR:

The article incorrectly states that Udacity is shuttering its career services mentorship program on Jan 31st. Career services including resume, LinkedIn profile and GitHub portfolio reviews — as well as our 1:1 live career coaching — are live and will continue to be available to Nanodegree program students who have Career Portal access. Engagement with career services like LinkedIn profile and GitHub portfolio reviews have in fact increased in recent months. We notified the small number of students who have used the specific service that on January 31 we are turning off the third party Calendly platform for scheduling 1:1 live career coaching sessions. Online calendaring will only be on hold for a short time as we transition and make adjustments to improve the usability of the service and launch the new service.

In the meantime, enrolled students who would like to book a 1:1 live career coaching session can email career-support@udacity.com for scheduling assistance. Udacity Careers team members will be providing career coaching services during this transition and no services have been terminated.

University of Naples Federico II – Italy | May 20 – 22, 2019. Call for papers now open

2019 Brings the Closure of a Free Course Provider

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January 29, 2019

2019 Brings the Closure of a Free Course Provider

Disclosure: To support our site, Class Central may be compensated by some course providers.

January 8, 2019

2 minute read

Open2Study opened its doors from Australia five years ago and has had nearly two million students. It was one of the few providers still offering free certificates.

The First Clue

A clue appeared about three weeks ago, when a student advised Class Central that she was unable to enroll in a self-paced Open2Study course. When I investigated, the course catalogue was listed on the Open2Study site but I was unable to enroll in any courses, either self-paced or those scheduled to start on January 7^th, 2019.

I sent an email via the Contact page, but received no response. This was no great surprise, as late December is the middle of Australian summer holidays.

In the last day or two, several learners have contacted Class Central asking about access to Open2Study courses, including one student who started a course on January 7^th, then could not access the course the following day. Because Class Central is not involved in running the courses, I referred that student to the Open2Study Help/Contact pages.

Formal Notification

A few hours later, I received an email from Open2Study advising that the site is closing. I have one week to complete a self-paced course I had enrolled in a few months ago. Logging in and accessing that course was easy. I could not access any other courses.

Only four self-paced courses still appear on the Open2Study site. All the rest have now disappeared. My guess is that the remaining four will disappear after January 15^th. Exploration of the Open2Study site reveals links to many of the free courses, but the information pages state that “Classes are no longer available”.

All the Open2Study courses followed a similar format: 4 weeks of study, with around 10 short lecture videos each week. A simple “pop quiz” question followed each video, with around 10 questions rounding off each week. If you passed all the weekly quizzes with a 60% pass mark in three attempts, you received a free unverified certificate.

Many Open2Study courses blatantly advertized (paid) online undergraduate or postgraduate courses available through Open Universities Australia.

If Open2Study had sent the email in December, and updated their site properly before the midsummer holiday break, there would be fewer disappointed students.

University of Naples Federico II – Italy | May 20 – 22, 2019. Call for papers now open

Organize Your Learning With Class Central’s Custom Lists

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January 29, 2019

Organize Your Learning With Class Central’s Custom Lists

Disclosure: To support our site, Class Central may be compensated by some course providers.

December 29, 2018

2 minute read

Last week, we silently launched a new feature: the ability for learners to create their own list of courses. In just a few days, learners have already created hundreds of lists.

This feature builds on top of our My Courses feature, which has been renamed to My Classes (we are Class Central after all…).

Previously, Class Central users could add courses to seven default lists. In preparation for launching Custom Lists, we streamlined the Default Lists and dropped the following lists: Enrolled, Audited, Partially Completed, and Dropped. The active default lists are now as follows: Interested, Taking Right Now, and Completed/Audited. These default lists are one of Class Central’s most popular features. Learners have added courses 6 million times to these lists! Now, in addition to the default lists, users can create their own lists and name them whatever they want.

The Custom Lists feature is inspired by YouTube’s playlist feature. There are several ways to create a new Custom List in Class Central. You can quickly create a custom list by hovering over (or clicking on) the +Add button next to a course in our course listing page (or the +Add button on the course page itself). Or you can create a new list by visiting the My Classes page.

Here are a few examples of public lists:

When you create a new list, you can choose whether it will be Public, Unlisted, or Private. Public lists are publicly searchable and viewable. Unlisted lists do not come up in search results but can be accessed by anyone with the URL. Private lists are viewable only to the user who created the list.

At the time of writing of this post, each user is limited to 5 lists and 100 courses per list.

Let us know in the comments what you think of this feature, how you are using it (or plan to use it), or if you have any feature requests. If you’ve already created a Custom List, feel free to share it in the comments too.

University of Naples Federico II – Italy | May 20 – 22, 2019. Call for papers now open

EdX Puts Up A Paywall for Graded Assignments

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January 29, 2019

EdX Puts Up A Paywall for Graded Assignments

Disclosure: To support our site, Class Central may be compensated by some course providers.

December 17, 2018

3 minute read

It finally happened. Early this year, edX removed the word free from their homepage and announced that they would soon start testing a support fee. (Class Central cataloged a few of the tests here.)

Apparently, the results of these tests are in. EdX has decided how it will monetize its MOOC courses going forward. Edx’s paywall will be similar to FutureLearn’s course upgrading feature, in that free users will be able to access the course content for a certain time period. Graded assignments will be behind a paywall.

Coursera was the first to introduce a paywall for graded assignments three years ago. To access the graded assignments, students need to purchase a certificate. Free users could still access the course contents.
FutureLearn Pricing
FutureLearn’s course upgrading feature.

Then in March of 2017, FutureLearn adopted a similar paywall to Coursera’s, with an added twist. In addition to there being a paywall for graded assignments, the content was only available to free users for the duration of the course and two weeks after it ends.

Edx’s new paywall also has a time limit; after the course ends free users won’t be able to access the course content. According to edX, most existing courses (with a few exceptions) will be moved over to this new model. All new courses will be offered under the new model.

Edx Verified vs Audit Track (2018)

It may come as a surprise to some that edX’s paywall will now be higher than Coursera’s, especially since Coursera has borne the brunt of criticism about restricting access to MOOCs, which many attributed to pressure from Coursera’s venture capital (VC) investors.

Now edX, a non-profit, has arrived at a model similar to Coursera’s, a for-profit company which has raised $210 million dollars in VC. Despite the difference in tax status, this move makes sense. EdX and Coursera offer similar products to the same markets.

Will edX’s new monetization strategy pay off? Evidence from other MOOC platforms is mixed. Coursera’s monetization has worked really for them. They have made $140 million in estimated revenue for 2018, out of which $100 million or so might be from their consumer-facing MOOC business. But FutureLearn’s stronger paywall hasn’t generated similar returns. FutureLearn’s revenue touched £8.2M in the last fiscal year (to the end of July).

Coursera’s catalog has more courses from bigger global brands as compared to FutureLearn’s catalog. But there is another big difference – scheduling policy. Nearly Coursera’s entire catalog is available to register and start immediately, as well as purchase a certificate. This is not true for FutureLearn or edX, where many courses are still session based and often are not available to register or purchase a certificate after the course ends.

This difference in scheduling policies might mean that edX’s experience will more closely resemble FutureLearn’s. And if edX and FutureLearn are not able to monetize at the same level as Coursera, they may have to become even more aggressive with their paywalls.

Strangely enough, with this change to edX, Coursera is now the MOOC platform that allows free users to go furthest before hitting a paywall.

University of Naples Federico II – Italy | May 20 – 22, 2019. Call for papers now open

January 2019’s Future of Learning Conference Focuses on Transformation of Higher Education

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January 29, 2019

January 2019’s Future of Learning Conference Focuses on Transformation of Higher Education

Disclosure: To support our site, Class Central may be compensated by some course providers.

December 8, 2018

1 minute read

It can be easy to forget that there is something big going on in higher education. By now, many of us have become used to the fact that for nearly any subject, there are high-quality, free or nearly free materials available for anyone interested in learning. Because so much of formal education remains unchanged, we forget (or ignore) the fact that that the higher education sector may be on the precipice of a transformation in how its core offerings are delivered and consumed.

One of the most exciting conferences in the online learning space, the Future of Learning Conference at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), focuses on this potential for transformation. The conference brings together academics, industry professionals, and policy makers to discuss the impact of digitalization on higher education. Speakers at 2018’s Future of Learning Conference included edX CEO Anant Agarwal, Coursera Co-Founder Andrew Ng, and the CEOs of MOOC platforms Coursera and FutureLearn, as well as many education innovators from across India and beyond.

Next year’s Future of Learning conference is just around the corner. FOL2019 will take place January 4-5, 2019 on IIMB’s campus in Bangalore. The theme of the 2019 conference is Learning 4.0: Connecting the Dots and Reaching the Unreached.

Stay tuned for Class Central’s reporting on FOL2019, as we continue to keep tabs on all that’s new in MOOC-ville.

Class Central is a media partner of the 2019 Future of Learning Conference.