High flexibility and variability are the main advantages of online courses and trainings in IT. To the classic set of advantages, such as remote access to live classes from any gadget at a convenient time and without the need to travel anywhere, we add the following:
- Great competition in the market of IT schools with online education, which allows you to choose the best option in terms of price, conditions, and teaching staff;
- The ability to independently determine the pace of learning new information by viewing lesson recordings and remote access to additional materials;
- A wider audience of listeners than in the case of a face-to-face format. For example, IAMPM courses in business analysis are often attended by students who live and work in the EU, the US and Canada, Arab countries and Latin America, Asia and even Australia. This greatly diversifies the communication during live classes and workshops, and provides great potential for networking;
- Personal mentoring, consultations with teachers and career specialists at a convenient time;
- Online schools often invite several practicing experts who have extensive experience in international IT companies, live and work in different countries. This allows students to learn and compare real-world “tricks” that have been successfully applied to projects of different levels and directions. In most cases, schools with a face-to-face learning format cannot provide such a variety of teaching experience, primarily due to time and technical limitations.
The practice of inviting several speakers to one course and the wide geography of students have a positive impact on the effectiveness of workshops – communication and distributed teamwork skills are greatly developed, but the level of teachers and their skills in organizing the process are important here.
Any online IT course requires a high degree of motivation, self-discipline, and personal time management. This is one of the reasons why many students prefer live classes to recorded ones: there is more incentive, and it is easier to get answers to your questions or make new friends. The other thing is that in such communication, someone may really lack the effect of live communication.
When choosing online IT courses, some people are confused by the fact that the learning process depends on the quality of the Internet connection and the availability of electricity for both the speakers and the student. IAMPM solved this problem by:
- distributing the team of organizers and speakers across different regions with technical access to the Internet;
- using foreign web servers;
- Providing lesson recordings to all students;
- extending the deadlines for submitting homework;
- assigning to each student the right to switch to other streams in case of force majeure.
So, if the only thing stopping you from choosing an online course in non-technical IT is the issue of electricity and communication, just ask the organizers how they have secured themselves in case of a blackout. Otherwise, this learning format is in no way inferior to the traditional one, and in some respects it can even give you a head start. The opportunity to work at workshops with colleagues and experts from other countries who have a professional background in different niches is worth a lot.