Does September have you daydreaming about going back to school? Like most working adults, your options for formal retraining probably are limited by an empty wallet and a full schedule.
One solution, particularly if you're not looking for college credit, is the collection of free online courses available through the OpenCourseWare Consortium (www.ocwconsortium.org).
Begun in 2001 as part of an effort by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to share course materials with the public, the OCW Consortium now consists of thousands of courses offered by more than 100 higher-education institutions. There is no fee, no registration, no passwords to access the sites . . . Nothing but you, your browser and zillions of pages of material. There is also no contact with professors or students and no credit is offered, so this is not a substitute for an actual degree program.
I'm not typically enthralled with anything on the Internet, so I thought I would be a good person to test the site.
I stopped first at the OCW link to the University of California–Irvine and was a little disappointed in the seemingly low level of the content. The course I sampled was on spa operations, and, while the presentation made good use of the Web technology, it was a little too interactive for my taste, with too many helpful boxes asking "do you get it?" kinds of questions.
Then I visited the sites for MIT, Tufts University, Johns Hopkins and Notre Dame.
After looking at reams of information from the course on geriatric dentistry at Tufts' School of Dental Medicine, I concluded that more might not be better, after all. There was plenty of in-depth information, but there also was a lot of information missing. Instead of organizing the course material into a step-by-step lesson plan, Tufts had loaded the site with things like the course syllabus, lecture notes, PowerPoint slides and links for further reading.
I decided that this would be a good way to brush up on a topic or to learn enough about the lingo and issues to prepare for a meeting where the subject would come up. I also decided that the people taking these classes in person are really, really smart.
I was happy to return to the UC-Irvine site and read more about opening a day spa. This time I paid more attention to the programming that went into making the material so accessible. The curriculum writer managed to make the material flow well, while the designer created a site architecture that removed all barriers to the information.
Well, not all barriers. I was working on a fast computer with a good Internet connection, so my barriers were only mental. The consortium makes a point of saying that some systems won't be able to handle some of the course downloads, so take that into account.
Here are a few pointers for incorporating open courseware into your career-development plans.
• If possible, decide in advance what you want to learn so that you can search for the class and the school that will have the best material for your purposes.
• Be disciplined in your approach. Commit an hour or more to each online session, and take notes to review later. This will make the difference between scanning and learning.
• Use what you learn to determine your overall training goals so that you can better invest your time and money when it comes to more formal courses.
• Take credit for what you're learning, but don't overstate it. On your résumé, try something like this: "Continued Areas of Study: Spa operations, through open courseware materials from the University of California–Irvine (noncredit), 2007."
In interviews, refer to these experiences lightly and in reference to a broader point: "In reading through course materials on MIT's Web site, I learned about the concept of ___. I was wondering if your company has been applying similar concepts in the manufacturing process?"
• Enjoy yourself. Everything doesn't have to be about work; look at some of the courses you couldn't justify paying for, and have fun learning new things.
- Amy Lindgren owns Prototype Career Service, a career consulting firm in St. Paul, Minn. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecare rservice.com or at 1071 W. Seventh St., St. Paul, MN 55102.