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5 soft skills to boost your employability

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5 soft skills to boost your employability

In the not too distant future, being innovative will be as important as technical skill. In fact according to Deloitte, soft-skill intensive jobs will account for two thirds of the market by 2030.

Ranging from the capacity to self-manage through to the ability to communicate effectively, development of soft skills is now key to finding secure employment in the future of work. 

But what counts as a soft skill? While there’s no universal agreement about what the term means, the World Economic Forum uses “soft skills” interchangeably with “human skills”, meaning things like creativity, problem solving and interpersonal skills all fit the bill.

Which ones will you need most?

While there’s a myriad of valuable soft skills, Jess Mizrahi, an Associate Director at Deloitte Access Economics pegs five soft skills as essential for future employability.

1. Customer service

According to LinkedIn, customer service skills are first in terms of soft skills sought by employers.

“When we think of customer service, we often think first of hospitality and retail, but the fact is that every single job in the entire economy has a customer,” says Mizrahi. 

“You may not call that person a customer, you might call them your employer, internal staff or clients, but the fact is that they’re all your customers and people you’re trying to serve.”

“Getting that right can’t be understated, because everyone knows how much you can treasure a really good customer service experience—it can make someone a customer for life. Conversely, a really bad customer service experience, in a time of social media and prolific word of mouth, won’t just lose you one customer, it could lose you thousands.”     

2. Conflict resolution

With today’s technologies doubling in capacity every 18 months, employees are dealing with more complex situations that ever before. For this reason, conflict resolution is key. 

“Not everything always goes smoothly and the ability to navigate interpersonal situations with different cultures, backgrounds and viewpoints is difficult, but increasingly important,” says Mizrahi.  

3. Leadership

Strictly speaking, Australia actually has an oversupply of managers. Although some are adept at compliance and giving directions, that’s not what employers are talking about when they say that they’re after leaders, says Mizrahi. 

“They’re talking about people who can inspire, motivate, create momentum and change.” 

4. Innovative thinking

Innovation in this context means the capacity to do something new or different to create value for an organisation. 

“When organisations have the capacity to think innovatively, they perform better along a whole bunch of metrics – it’s actually something measured by the Australian Bureau of Statistics,” says Mizrahi.

“They’re just better performing businesses, so the ability to bring those skills to a business is very powerful.”     

5. Sales

Businesses have broadened their understanding of sales. It’s no longer just hawking a product.

Sales is about understanding a customer’s needs, the customer as a person, as well as being able to sell something, whether it’s an idea or even yourself. 

“It’s about being able to convince someone of the value of something – it’s a powerful skill,” Mizrahi explains.  

Will soft skills ever replace the need for technical skills?

Probably not. You’ll always need to bring technical competency to the table, but increasingly you’ll need to pair it with a whole range of soft skills. 

“We’re always going to need both,” says Mizrahi. 

Can you learn soft skills?

As many experts in the field know, learning soft skills is possible.

“There is a myth that soft skills can’t be trained, but that’s just not true. There’s a reason that we call them skills, rather than attributes,” says Mizrahi.

Through Open Universities Australia (OUA), you can upskill for the future of work by studying single subjects with leading Australian universities. With thousands of subjects to choose from – all available to study online – it’s never been easier.

To learn more about how to study through OUA – fill out the form on this page, and a friendly student advisor will get in contact. You can also chat to them on OUA’s website Messenger service, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or SMS. They’ll help you find the right course for your future.

Keen to learn more about the future of work? The Definitive Guide to Future-Proofing Your Career is the report every career-conscious Australian needs.

By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2019

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By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2019

Now in its eighth year, the modern MOOC movement has reached 110 million learners, excluding China1. In 2019, providers launched over 2,500 courses, 11 online degrees, and 170 microcredentials.

Here’s how the top-5 MOOC providers look like in terms of users and offerings:

LearnersCoursesMicrocredentialsDegrees
Coursera45 million3,80042016
edX25 million2,64029210
Udacity10 million200401
FutureLearn 2,410 million8804923
Swayam 2,310 million1,00000

 

For Class Central‘s complete analysis keep reading. For our previous years’ analyses, follow the links:

Courses

By the end of 2019, 13.5K MOOCs have been announced or launched by over 900 universities around the world. In 2019 alone, around 2.5K courses were launched by 450 universities.

Online Degrees

201720182019
Coursera41116
edX1910
FutureLearn41823

In 2018, we saw the top MOOC providers announce a large number of degrees: 30 overall!

I called this the second wave of MOOC Hype and 2018, the year of MOOC-based of degrees.

But in 2019, only 11 new degrees were announced, most by Coursera and FutureLearn.

Interestingly, a MOOC-based degree seems to have been either canceled or postponed: edX’s Data Science Master — offered by the University of California, San Diego — isn’t listed on the provider’s page anymore.

The total number of MOOC-based degrees has now grown to 50. This number includes Georgia Tech’s online master’s degree in computer science (OMSCS), which is offered on Udacity and has over 9,000 students.

You can find a comprehensive list of MOOC-based master’s degrees here.

Microcredentials

TypeProvider20182019
SpecializationsCoursera310400
Professional CertificateCoursera013
MasterTrackCoursera36
Professional CertificateedX89123
MicroMastersedX5156
XSeriesedX2940
Professional EducationedX6273
NanodegreesUdacity3540
ProgramsFutureLearn2332
Academic Certificates4FutureLearn1417
ProgramsKadenze1920

The total number of MOOC-based microcredentials has now crossed 800. In 2019, more than 170 new microcredentials of 10 different types have been launched. In 2018, only 120 microcredentials were added.

Subjects

Overall, the distribution of courses across subjects has remained quite similar to last year. Forty percent of courses belong to the categories that are the easiest to monetize: business and technology.

[1] We decided to leave China out of our analysis this year because, as we learned more about Chinese online education, we realized that the metrics we’d like to present are: (1) sometimes unavailable, (2) sometimes available but impossible to validate to the extent we’d like, (3) sometimes reflect a view too narrow to adequately capture the overall state of MOOCs in China.

[2] For platforms with session-based courses, we counted the total number of distinct courses offered in 2019.

[3] This is the first year that Swayam is included in Class Central’s analysis. This year, NPTEL and Swayam were merged, which is one of the reasons behind the rapid growth of the Indian MOOC provider.

[4] Graduate and Postgraduate Certificates are listed under microcredentials, instead of under degrees.

This article is just one of our 2019 MOOC Roundup Series. Find the whole series here. You’ll discover everything about MOOCs in 2019 — from the most popular classes, to overviews of MOOC platforms developments, to looking at the future of MOOCs.

Word + Quiz: stentorian

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Word + Quiz: stentorian

: (used of the voice) very loud or booming

_________

The word stentorian has appeared in 13 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on April 16 in “Review: The Rare Problem of a New Opera That’s Too Short” by Anthony Tommasini:

Like “An American Soldier,” this work, from 2014, is based on a true story: Diane Tran, a 17-year-old honor student in Houston, was jailed overnight in 2012 for truancy; balancing her heavy school workload and the two jobs she took to help her family, she had missed some classes. During a post-performance talk on Monday, Mr. Huang explained that he was drawn to Ms. Tran’s story for what it revealed about the often-overlooked struggles of second-generation immigrants, trying to meet their parents’ expectations while trying to become fully Americanized.

…. The story shifts back to her cell, where her mother (the formidable mezzo-soprano Guang Yang) seems to appear and sings a fitful monologue about ghosts that haunt: the parents and siblings she left in Vietnam, horrific memories of war, the ancient ancestors she feels she’s betrayed. In the final scene, a by-the-book judge (the stentorian bass-baritone Daniel Klein) decides to teach Diane a lesson and send her to jail.

_________

Do You Have Any Close Friends?

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Do You Have Any Close Friends?

Find all our Student Opinion questions here.

Do you care most about the number of people who show up for your birthday party or who like your posts on social media? Or do you prefer to focus on the people with whom you can be most intimate and vulnerable — those who make you feel that you can really be yourself?

Research shows that close friendships are necessary for optimal health and well-being. Do you find it hard to make close friends? Based on your experience, do you find that closer friendships make you happy and healthier?

In “How to Have Closer Friendships (and Why You Need Them),” Emma Pattee writes:

Like so many people, I grew up watching the TV show “Friends,” dreaming of the day I would be living a glamorous city life surrounded by a group of close friends. Over the years, I’ve made lots of friends: childhood friends, work friends, college friends, writer friends. I have friends who like to hike, and friends who like to chat over coffee and friends who live far away but whom I talk to a few times a year.

But close friends? “Friends” level friends? The “I can tell you anything and count on you always” kind of friends? Not so much. A childhood friend and I had a falling-out, never to be repaired. Another close friend moved away.

Ms. Pattee explores the question of what closeness really means:

If you look to popular culture to understand close friendship, you’ll be left with a few common tropes: the friend who will take a bullet for you; the friend you can call in the middle of the night and they’ll be there for you, no matter the inconvenience; the friend with whom you can share anything.

True close friendship (unsurprisingly) does not need to be quite as extreme. “A key to close friendship is intimacy, and a big part of intimacy is being able to be fully yourself and be seen and understood by others,” Dr. Chen said. “When people close to us don’t ‘get’ us, it’s undermining to intimacy.”

Reciprocation is also a key element to creating intimacy. Dr. Chen explained why all the people you know on Facebook or Instagram don’t necessarily count as close friends: “When we post something on Facebook and people give us affirmation in the way of nice comments or encouragement, that feels good, but it doesn’t necessarily create intimacy because there’s no give and take.” A big part of intimacy is that both people feel they are seen and understood by the other person.

After exploring reasons that forming close friendships can be difficult, Ms. Pattee presents ways to make friendships closer. Here are excerpts from four techniques she suggests:

Create a foundation of security (hint: Answer that text)

Before we can attempt closeness, we need to have security. Through his research, Dr. Levine has identified the five foundational elements of secure relationships, which he refers to as CARRP.

Consistency (Do these friends drift in and out of my life on a whim?)

Availability (How available are they to spend time together?)

Reliability (Can I count on them if I need something?)

Responsiveness (Do they reply to my emails and texts? Do I hear from them on a consistent basis?)

Predictability (Can I count on them to act in a certain way?)

Let yourself be known

If you want to be seen for who you are, you have to be willing to stop pretending to be somebody cooler or smarter than you are. Admit that you binge watch “Honey Boo-Boo,” are jealous of other people’s accomplishments or don’t always brush your teeth before bed. Make that goofy joke. Share that less-than-flattering detail.

“You have to try to help people understand and accept you, which conversely means you have to understand and accept yourself enough that you believe you can make somebody else’s life brighter just by being in it,” said Donald Miller, author of “Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy.”

Take your friends on a test drive

Most of us would consider a close friend somebody we could call in a pinch. But if you, like me, have a romantic partner or live close to family, you might rarely find yourself in a pinch that requires a friend. I recently had to undergo a minor medical procedure and my husband wasn’t able to go with me. “Why don’t you call one of your friends?” he asked me the night before, naming a couple of friends who might be available. I didn’t have a good answer. Sure, these were pretty good friends, but were we medical-procedure close?

When I posed this situation to Dr. Levine, his suggestion was simple: Take them for a test drive. “Ask for help even when you don’t need it so that when you truly need them, you’ll feel more comfortable reaching out and you’ll have a better sense of how they will respond.”

Accept that closeness isn’t one-size-fits-all

I asked the same question of everyone I interviewed for this article: How much closeness do we need? Each person gave a different answer, each of which boiled down to this: It’s not that simple.

Dr. Chen said that it varied from person to person; some of us need dozens of connections, some of us need only two or three connections, but we all need some closeness to others. Dr. Johnson emphasized that building intimate connection in our love relationships is even more essential than building it in our friendships. Mr. Miller said that it had to be the right people. Dr. Levine mentioned that being able to confide in somebody or call in an emergency is only one type of closeness, and not necessarily the only important kind.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

  • How would you define a close friend? Someone you can “call in the middle of the night”? Someone with whom you can share anything? Do you agree with the author that a close friend is someone with whom you are intimate and vulnerable, someone with whom you can really be you?

  • How important are close friendships to you? Do you prefer to have many casual friends or just a few close friends?

  • What do you think are the benefits of close friendships? Are there any drawbacks?

  • How helpful are the article’s recommendations for making closer friendships? Which of the them might you be most likely to use? Why? What advice would you give to others who struggle to make close friendships, based on your own experiences?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Lesson of the Day: ‘The Hoodie Enters the Museum’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘The Hoodie Enters the Museum’

Find all our Lessons of the Day here.

Featured Article: “The Hoodie Enters the Museum”

The Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Dutch institute for architecture, design and digital culture in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is opening an exhibit on the style and meaning of the hoodie over time.

In this lesson, you will explore what clothing can say about someone’s beliefs and culture by looking closely at the hoodie. Then, in the Going Further activity, we invite you to think about your own style or to break down another significant fashion item.

The featured article focuses on a specific article of clothing: the hoodie.

Do you ever wear hoodies? Some schools have banned hoodies as part of their dress code. Are you allowed to wear them at school? How do you feel when you wear a hoodie? Is it something you wear only casually, or do you also wear hoodies when you’re dressed up?

Then, watch this video about the history and different meanings associated with hoodies.

Next, respond to these questions:

Read the article, then answer the following questions:

1. Lou Stoppard, the curator of the exhibition, said that the hoodie was “unparalleled in its loaded tensions and contradictions.” How would you summarize the tensions and contradictions that Ms. Stoppard is referring to?

2. How have communities that have embraced the hoodie reflected or pushed back against “evolving social concerns like elitism and gender neutrality”? Think about some of the different uses historically and more recently that are discussed in the article.

3. The article says that the upcoming show connects the hoodie to racial profiling. What example is given to make this connection? Can you think of any other instances of fear or profiling that come from wearing hoodies or other clothing that can be identity-based, like a skullcap, hijab or turban?

4. According to the article, why could wearing a hoodie be seen as a response to the rise of surveillance culture in the Netherlands and elsewhere?

5. Based on what the article describes of the show, what do you think Ms. Stoppard means when she says, “The hoodie is an iconic and recognizable piece of clothing, but to wear one with unthinking confidence tends to be inextricably tied up with privilege.” Use examples from the text and your own experience to explain her claim. Do you think it is privileged for some people to wear a hoodie? Or do you think it can be an act of resistance? What makes you respond one way or the other?

We have given you three options for Going Further. Look at each prompt and respond to the one that interests you most.

1. What do your clothes say about your identity?

Do you ever intentionally try to say something about your political beliefs or culture through your clothes? Are the clothes you wear important to how you construct and present your identity? When you choose your clothes, are you trying to fit in or stand out in your school or in your neighborhood? What do your parents, teachers and friends think about your clothes? Do they all see your fashion the same way? How has your fashion changed over time? What has influenced those changes?

2. Dissect one evocative article of clothing.

What is one article of clothing that you think is politically, socially or culturally meaningful? It could be ripped jeans, a cowboy hat, sneakers, a romper or something else. Then answer these questions:

  • How would you describe the article of clothing to someone who had never seen it before? Does it serve a practical purpose? Are the materials that it is made out of important to its function?

  • Is it associated with being something that only one gender, age group, nationality or religion wears? What would happen if someone outside of this group were to wear it?

  • As far as you know, has the look, style or design of this item of clothing changed throughout your lifetime? What about throughout history? Did people wear this article of clothing (or a version of it) in Victorian England, for example?

  • What might other people think about someone wearing this article of clothing? Are people who wear it trying to make a fashion statement or a political statement? Does the article of clothing say anything about someone’s cultural identity or privilege?

3. Write a love letter to your favorite clothing item.

Think of one article of clothing that you could not live without. It could be your favorite jersey, a sweater that was passed down from your grandmother, sneakers that you’ve worn every day for three years or a necklace that you received for a special birthday.

What makes this object so important to you? What does it look like? Feel like? Smell like? Get descriptive and write a love letter to that article of clothing, letting it know how much it means to you and why.

Word + Quiz: palimpsest

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Word + Quiz: palimpsest

: a manuscript (usually written on papyrus or parchment) on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible

_________

The word palimpsest has appeared in 13 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Nov. 1 in “‘The Writing on the Wall’: Voices of the Incarcerated” by Devi Lockwood:

Where the High Line meets 14th Street, visitors can enter a series of three rooms designed to evoke prison cells. Each is 9 by 6 feet, 8 feet tall, and is covered on every surface with writing: essays about womanhood; poems about race and family; pages from a hand-drawn graphic novel; letters from incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people around the world.

…. “The Writing on the Wall” is made from quarter-inch-thick polycarbonate and acrylic. Some 2,000 pages of writing by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in Uganda, Britain, China, South Africa, El Salvador, Norway, Australia and Brazil were scanned and printed. Palimpsest-like layering of these stories creates windows and the suggestions of bars.

_________

What Does Thanksgiving Mean to You?

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What Does Thanksgiving Mean to You?

Find all our Student Opinion questions here.

Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving? Or do you dread the holiday? Do you have certain Thanksgiving traditions? Do you think they are the same or different for other people in your school or community?

In this special Thanksgiving Student Opinion, we have selected four articles from The Times that each takes on a different perspective about Thanksgiving. Read the four excerpts and choose the one that resonates most with your experience of Thanksgiving and share your response to the question: What does Thanksgiving mean to you?

In “Turn Off Your Phone for Thanksgiving,” David Leonhardt writes about using Thanksgiving as a time to disconnect from phones, tablets and computers and to focus on connecting with others:

This week, Americans will endure flight delays, traffic jams and other logistical miseries to spend time with family and friends. And when the holiday weekend is ending, many will lament that they don’t get to spend enough time with those relatives and friends.

But during the weekend itself, these same lamenters will spend a lot of time ignoring the people around them and distractedly staring into their phones. They will get a notification and disappear down a digital rabbit hole of Facebook posts, text messages and fantasy-football updates. They will monitor the comments on the photos they just posted, instead of engaging with the human beings in those photos.

Many of us have a complicated relationship with our phones. We enjoy them in the moment. Yet when we reflect on all the time we spend looking at a tiny screen, we feel lousy about it. We pine for a less addictive relationship with the online world.

So let me make a suggestion for this Thanksgiving weekend: Turn off your phone, and keep it off for a full 24 hours. I predict you’ll be surprised by how much you’ll like it.

The nutritionist and writer Christy Harrison acknowledges that Thanksgiving can be an emotionally overwhelming and stressful time and that for some of us, just enjoying food without regret is the best way to remain in contact with our feelings. In “Go Ahead. Eat Your Holiday Feelings,” Ms. Harrison writes:

The Thanksgiving table can be an emotional battlefield. Whether because of resurfaced sibling rivalry, blended-family tensions or mealtime political debate, the togetherness that we hope will inspire gratitude is notorious for causing stress instead. One subtle insult or off-color comment from a relative, and it begins: You feel your blood pressure rising, your palms sweating, your face getting hot. Suddenly, you’re inhaling the sliver of pumpkin pie you’d just been picking at a minute ago. Next, you’re going back for a second big slice. Your stomach already feels full, but you can’t stop eating.

If you’re like many Americans, you then feel guilty. You chastise yourself for handling the difficult moment the wrong way — the “weak” way. For “eating your feelings.”

But eating emotionally, which conventional wisdom says is dysfunctional and even pathological, is actually just a normal part of being human. We don’t turn to food in response to negative feelings because we’re broken or out of control, or because food is addictive. We do it because it’s one of many ways in which we (even the most balanced eaters) cope, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty harmless one.

We should embrace eating in response to our feelings — pleasure, excitement, sadness and, yes, that special brand of family-inspired stress — at Thanksgiving, and all year long.

In the 2018 article “The First Thanksgiving,” Julia Moskin features the stories of refugee families celebrating Thanksgiving in America for the first time, balancing their own food culture and traditions with the holiday:

This fall, Jana began prekindergarten, and fans of Ms. Anjari’s food helped her publish a cookbook of Syrian recipes. So she decided to take a test run at making her first Thanksgiving feast.

Like many people who have recently arrived in America from other countries, Ms. Anjari, 33, found the holiday a bit perplexing. At home, she said, family celebrations and feast days are reserved for religious events. “People do things in so many different ways here,” she said: how they dress, how they raise children, how they worship. “I was surprised that there’s a holiday that everyone celebrates.”

Before she even began cooking, there were many mysteries to be solved, with the help of people like Jennifer Sit, her co-author on the cookbook; Mira Evnine, who assisted with the book’s photography; and Dave Mammen, part of the refugee task force at Rutgers Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side.

Were the apples really going to be baked with cinnamon, a spice that Ms. Anjari uses with meat and chicken? Why would you roast a bird whole — how would it get evenly cooked that way? How can macaroni and cheese, one of her children’s favorite dinners, be a side dish? Were the mashed potatoes not going to be seasoned with a little garlic and a lot of caramelized onions, the way she makes them?

“Without it, there isn’t much flavor, no?” she asked, speaking through an interpreter, knitting her expression into a question, as she so often must in her new life.

For some people, Thanksgiving is not a celebration, but rather a time of mourning and healing from the colonial roots of the holiday. In “Thanksgiving for Native Americans: Four Voices on a Complicated Holiday,” Julie Turkewitz compiles the essays of four Native American writers and activists, including Jacqueline Keeler, who writes:

I see, in the First Thanksgiving story, a hidden Pilgrim heart. The story of that heart is the real tale than needs to be told. What did it hold? Bigotry, hatred, greed, self-righteousness? We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental devastation, poverty, world wars, racism.

Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused.

Because if we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving Day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle.

And the healing can begin.

Students, choose the article you relate to the most, then tell us:

  • How do you feel about Thanksgiving? Does the holiday make you feel grateful? Nostalgic? Angry? Lonesome? Connected? Do you think these articles encompass the breadth of Thanksgiving experiences? Do you relate to one more than the others? Why? What are other stories of Thanksgiving that you think are important to tell? Can you find any of those stories in the Times archive?

  • Now tell us, what does Thanksgiving mean to you? Why? Does it mean something different to other people in your family or community? Has the meaning of Thanksgiving changed for you over time? Are there certain Thanksgiving traditions that you want to preserve throughout your life? Are there other Thanksgiving traditions that you would like to create as you get older?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Why study TESOL?

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Why study TESOL?

As a native speaker, it’s easy to take English for granted. But did you know, English is one of the world’s most difficult languages to learn? So why not use what you already know to carve out a rewarding teaching career?

Through Open Universities Australia (OUA), you can study a range of qualifications that prepare you to teach English to people who don’t know the language. This is commonly known as ‘TESOL’ – Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

The best part? All courses are available to study online – making it achievable to gain a TESOL qualification with leading Australian universities without having to cut down on work or sacrifice your family life.

More than meets the eye

Apart from graduating with the ability to work abroad in beautiful countries, there’s a lot you’ll gain from a qualification in TESOL.

You’ll discover what it takes to teach English to primary, secondary and even adult learners. Ultimately, helping non-English speakers expand their opportunities by learning one of the world’s most-spoken languages.

“For many people around the world, the only way out of poverty and disadvantage is through education.” explains Toni Dobinson. Toni is the course coordinator for TESOL at Curtin University – just one of the universities you can study with online through OUA.

“Often that means learning the English language.”

Language aside, many TESOL courses develop skills in understanding different cultural backgrounds.

“The cross-cultural understanding you’ll develop will help you better educate students in your class who have different cultural backgrounds, different first languages, or English dialects.” adds Toni.

Beyond this, TESOL courses also explore how culture influences the way we use English. This often takes place in an unspoken manner, which can be difficult for non-English speakers to interpret.

With a qualification in TESOL, you’ll become an expert in interpreting unspoken communication, as well as encouraging dialogue in the English language.

A growing field

If the idea of helping others learn English sounds like a career for you, it’s an ideal time to make the move. At present, there’s a world-wide demand for specialist English language teachers.

Graduates of TESOL courses often find work in language centres in Australia or TESOL streams within schools. Aside from roles in Australia, TESOL courses can also lead to teaching overseas.

“It’s a passport to the rest of the world,” says Toni.

Learn from expert teaching staff

Choose to study TESOL with leading Australian universities through OUA, and you’ll have access to experts in the field.

Take Toni for instance. She earned her doctorate in applied linguistics and has over 36 years teaching English as a second language, with 26 years as an educator at Curtin University.

Her career took her to Egypt for 3 years, and to many destinations since. She’s a part of a team of experienced teachers of English, whose expertise with different cultures, and understanding of language nuances, provide students with an in-depth learning experience.

Learning online through OUA

With online study, there’s no limit to when and where your learning takes place. A great advantage is that you can complete your studies in TESOL whilst already working overseas – so you can start a life abroad sooner rather than later. Here’s how it works.

To learn more about how to study through OUA – fill out the form on this page, and a friendly student advisor will get in contact. You can also chat to them on OUA’s website Messenger service, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or SMS. They’ll help you find the right course for your future.

Otherwise, head over to the website to browse hundreds of degrees and subjects from leading Australian universities right now.

Related courses

Graduate Certificate in TESOL – Bond University

Master of Arts (TESOL) – Bond University

Graduate Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) – Curtin University

Graduate Certificate in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages – Griffith University

How can I SWOT my next career move?

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How can I SWOT my next career move?

If you feel like your career has hit a snag, or you can’t decide what to do about a job offer that’s on the table, scrap the pros and cons list and SWOT it instead.

A SWOT analysis is a business and marketing rubric used for analysing your current position and identifying business opportunities. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Strengths and Weaknesses are intrinsic variables, so they’re listed under ‘internal environments’ in the matrix, while Opportunities and Threats sit under ‘external environments’.

Complete a SWOT analysis, and you might just discover something you didn’t know about yourself, or come across a million dollar idea by considering your career situation or job prospects (we can’t guarantee a million dollars though).

Already lost in the ‘matrix’? Don’t worry. Here’s how to start.

Strengths

Think about what gives you a competitive advantage in the job market, or even in your current role if you’re angling for a promotion.

Attributes like being highly organised and self-motivated are great, but dig deeper. More specifically, list your skills. You might have the ability to write HTML code, understand javascript, or know your way around Adobe Suite. These are valuable, quantifiable attributes for current and prospective employers. 

When looking at the Strength category for a new job offer, you might consider what’s good about the potential employer. Do they offer awesome incentives, and do they look to be set for growth in the future?

Weaknesses

Personal weaknesses should be seen as an opportunity for growth. If your skills are lacking, or you’re terrible at keeping time, how can you get better? Where can you up-skill? 

When SWOT-ing a job offer, think about the perceivable pitfalls of the employer and the offer.  Is it a fading industry? Does the company seem like they’re on the decline? Remember, a period of change for a company can be both positive and negative. 

Opportunities 

All the other quadrants of the SWOT matrix feed into Opportunities. Leapfrog off what you’ve written in the rest of the chart and reverse-engineer these points into opportunities. Think of it like working out X if you already know Y and Z. 

If you’ve noted that your skills in Adobe Suite could be brushed up, then that’s an opportunity to take on some study. Through Open Universities Australia (OUA), you can pick up a single subject to up-skill in a particular area online.

Threats

Much like weaknesses, threats pose a negative impact on your career or job offer.

Are your skills becoming fast outdated, and is your employee making cutbacks? If so, you’re probably standing in the firing line. Think of how you can future-proof yourself and secure your career. 

For every negative, try to find a positive by working out the best possible opportunity in the situation. 

SWOT yourself

So now it’s time for you to fill out a SWOT for yourself. You can use this handy little template from the Queensland Government. Print it out and fill it in for yourself. Then review your analysis and start thinking about how you might apply the findings. 

Completed your SWOT and found a knowledge gap? Take a look at what OUA has to offer. You might find a single subject that can bulk up your skill-set so that you can take on your next career move. 

To learn more about how to study through OUA – fill out the form on this page, and a friendly student advisor will get in contact. You can also chat to them on OUA’s website Messenger service, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or SMS. They’ll help you find the right course to meet your SWOT needs.

Coursera’s 2019: Year in Review

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Coursera’s 2019: Year in Review

In 2019, Coursera achieved the coveted unicorn status — that is, it reached a valuation of over $1B after raising $103M in a Series E round.

The total number of registered learners on the platform grew from 37 million to 45 million, allowing Coursera to remain the world’s largest MOOC provider by a significant margin.

As usual, Coursera launched more degrees, courses, and microcredentials. They also tweaked their scheduling policy and acquired their first company.

For Class Central‘s complete analysis of Coursera’s 2019, keep reading. For our previous years’ analyses, follow the links:

2016201720182019
EmployeesNANA330+450+
Revenue$60M$100M$140MNA
Courses1,7002,7003,1003,800
Specializations160240310400
Degrees241216
Learners23m30m37m45m
Coursera for Business customers305001,5002,000

Courses

The number of active courses on Coursera increased to 3,800 (up from 3,100 last year). According to Coursera, these were the most popular courses in 2019:

  1. Machine Learning (Stanford)
  2. Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects (McMaster University and UC San Diego)
  3. The Science of Well-Being (Yale)
  4. Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) (University of Michigan)
  5. AI for Everyone (deeplearning.ai)
  6. Neural Networks and Deep Learning (deeplearning.ai)
  7. English for Career Development (University of Pennsylvania)
  8. Algorithms, Part I (Princeton)
  9. Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning (deeplearning.ai)
  10. What Is Data Science? (IBM)

Half of the courses in the above list also appeared in last year’s list. Four (including three newcomers) are taught by Coursera’s co-founder, Andrew Ng.

Specializations, MasterTracks, and Professional Certificates

Specializations are Coursera’s flagship micro-credential. In 2019, the platform offers 400 Specializations, up from 310 in 2018.

Coursera currently also lists six MasterTrack Certificates on its platform. MasterTracks allow learners to earn credit towards a master’s degree. Students still need to apply and get accepted into the master’s program to redeem the credits. MasterTrack courses tend to be paid.

Coursera renewed its emphasis on Professional Certificates. This type of microcredential promises to help learners gain in-demand skills and prepare them for specific industry roles. Coursera currently offers 13 Professional Certificates.

According to Coursera, these are the most popular Specializations and Professional Certificates in 2019:

  1. Python for Everybody (University of Michigan)
  2. Deep Learning (deeplearning.ai)
  3. IBM Data Science (IBM)
  4. Google IT Support (Google)
  5. Architecting with Google Compute Engine (Google Cloud)
  6. Applied Data Science with Python (University of Michigan)
  7. Data Science (John Hopkins University)
  8. Excel Skills for Business (Macquarie University)
  9. Data Engineering, Big Data, and Machine Learning on GCP (Google Cloud)
  10. Improve Your English Communication Skills (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Online Degrees

In 2019, Coursera announced four new online master’s degrees (first four in the list below), each from a different country. This is half the number of degrees they announced in 2018.

Degree NameUniversityCost
Machine LearningImperialNA
Ingeniería de SoftwareUniversidad de los AndesNA
Data ScienceNatural Research University Higher School of Economics577,500 – 1,155,000 RUB
Electrical EngineeringUniversity of Colorado Boulder$20,000
Computer and Information TechnologyUniversity of Pennsylvania$26,300
Global MBAMacquarie UniversityAUD $33,000
Bachelor of Science in Computer ScienceUniversity of London£10,088 – £15,132
Computer ScienceArizona University$15,000
Computer ScienceUniversity of Illinois$21,440
Public HealthImperial College London£12,000 or £20,100
Public HealthUniversity of Michigan$40320 or $44,520
Applied Data ScienceUniversity of Michigan$31,688-$42,262
iMBAUniversity of Illinois~$22,000
Computer Science in Data ScienceUniversity of Illinois$19,200
AccountingUniversity of Illinois30,000
Innovation and EntrepreneurshipHEC Paris20,000 EUR

One of those four is the Electrical Engineering Masters from University of Colorado Boulder, which Class Central wrote about back in April 2018. We found out early this year that it would be offered through Coursera.

Early this year Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign announced that it will be ending its on-campus and part time MBA programs in favor of its MOOC-based iMBA. The iMBA program was the first ever MOOC-based online degree announced on Coursera in mid-2015.

You can find Class Central’s complete compilation of MOOC-based Master’s degrees here.

Coursera for Business

Coursera’s corporate training product is called Coursera for Business. According to Coursera, it now has 2,000 enterprise customers, up from 1,500 at the end of last year.

Coursera for Business costs $400 per year per employee and includes full access to around 3,300 courses. This is a subset of the entire Coursera catalog. Here is a list of courses that are not part of Coursera for Business.

Other 2019 Highlights/Milestones

Fundraising

Early this year, Coursera announced their Series E round of $103M, led by Australia’s SEEK group (who also invested in FutureLearn). SEEK group is Australia’s number one job matching site and also owns a number of different job related properties around the world.

With this new round of funding, Coursera is now worth more than $1 billion, achieving so-called “unicorn” status. The total amount raised by Coursera now is $313.1 million. The last time the company raised funds was back in June 2017, with a $64 million Series D.

Acquisition

Coursera acquired Rhyme, an edtech startup based in Sofia, Bulgaria. The startup is dedicated to creating software to support cloud-based, interactive projects.

More specifically, the company’s software allows learners to use their browser to access virtual environments. The acquisition aims to augment the capabilities of Coursera Labs, the platform’s broader initiative to put hands-on projects at the heart of the learning experience.

For instance, the University of London leverages Coursera Labs in their Introduction to Computer Programming course. The course includes a game called Sleuth that invites learners to complete coding challenges in the context of a film noir, mystery game.

A couple of years ago, Udacity made a similar first acquisition when it bought CloudLabs, a startup dedicated to building self-contained programming environments.

Course Scheduling

In an investigation by Class Central, we found that most Coursera courses show a start date that corresponds to the day you visit the course page. Out of the 3,800+ courses currently listed on Coursera, over 90% follow this pattern.

Note Taking

Coursera now lets you highlight parts of the transcript, type your own notes, and save screenshots of videos. You can access all your notes for a course or select individual modules. Some features are not yet available on mobile devices.

Coursera For Campus

Coursera announced Coursera for Campus, a paid program that gives universities access to a large subset of Coursera’s catalog.

The program, akin to Coursera for Business, comprises 3,600 courses, roughly 94% of Coursera’s catalog. Universities may pick and choose from this pool of courses and integrate them into their on-campus offering in different ways.

Leadership

In 2019, Coursera added two new people to the leadership team: Dil Sidhu and Rich Jacquet replaced Deanna Raineri (Chief Academic Strategist) and Shravanti Chakraborty (Head of People) respectively.

Here is how the current leadership team looks (excluding advisors):

  • Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO
  • Shravan Goli, Chief Product Officer and Head of Consumer Revenue
  • Kim Caldbeck, Chief Marketing Officer
  • Dil Sidhu, Chief Content Officer
  • Rich Jacquet, Chief People Officer
  • Richard Wong, Vice President of Engineering
  • Leah Belsky, Senior Vice President of Enterprise
  • Tom Kovats, Vice President of Finance
  • Xueyan Wang, Vice President of Services
  • Anne Tuttle Cappel, General Counsel
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