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Bhagya Mudgal
Bhagya Mudgal

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at blog.bhagyamudgal.me

How to Get Most Out of an Online Course

Today if anyone wants to learn a new skill, they prefer online courses over books because they tend to learn more in less duration by consuming video content instead of going through textbooks.
There are many courses available on the internet free as well as paid, some people prefer free over paid and vice versa, it is completely a personal choice. The end goal for taking a course is to learn something new. We put our time into it so it is important for us to know how we can get the most out of an online course.

1. Follow up with the instructor

Let's say you are doing a course that needs implementation like a coding course, so usually, what people do they watch the course like a movie or web series and they think that they are getting all things that the instructor is explaining but after they finish the course and try to implement those things they realize that they have forgotten some concepts and in the worst case they don't remember anything. Now they blame the course that it is not good so they try a new course or go through the same course again. To overcome this issue you should always implement side by side whatever the instructor is explaining. By doing this you will understand and remember concepts better.

2. Focus on concepts and adapt to changes

Sometimes courses are not updated with the time but it does not mean that those courses are now useless. The content in that course may be better than of some new course. Let's say you want to learn react.js and now you are searching for a course to start learning and your friend is offering you a course of react.js that he purchased last year and it is not updated since then instead of saying to him that it is outdated and I will buy an updated one what you can do is to go through that course and if the instructor had used any particular package in that course that is now deprecated you can get its replacement by searching it on google. Concepts don't change over time so try to focus on concepts and adapt to changes.

3. Always make your own notes for the course

Nowadays, it is very convenient to take notes while watching courses due to the online tools like the notion, google docs, etc. So try to make your own notes using one of these tools or you can follow the old way of using pen and paper to take notes. By doing this you will be able to summarise let's say 20 hrs of content into 4-5 pages so that if in future you forgot something you can always go through the notes instead of watching the course, it will definitely save you time.

4. Complete the course

The most important thing is to complete the course. People tend to start the course and leave it incomplete. This happens due to a lack of consistency, when we start something we should be consistent in it and do it regularly until it gets completed. When we do something regularly it's difficult for us to miss one day because our brain tells us that we are going out of track. Make a plan to study at least 1 hour per day and keep going until the course gets completed.

Thanks for reading! I hope it will help you.

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