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Looking to do some online courses in my spare time as a little bored at work. Don't want anything too full on like starting a degree again etc.
Just short courses that have accreditation. Perhaps something on mental health as I work with lots of charities in this area. Or even nature conservation etc.
Just browsing really. Seems to be a huge number of providers out there, some look awful some look OK.
Any recommendations for online providers? Or interesting courses people have done in their spare time?
Well it's not really in the area that you are asking about but if you were interested in something technology related then General Assembly is a company I can highly recommend. Their courses are (largely) acredited and range in length but the median duration is around 12 weeks.
In general, online courses are not especially high calibre as traditionally their very existence as 'online' (rather than classroom based), means that they were low value/low cost - as soon as you put a trainer/faculty member in a room then you're costs increase exponentially.
However, the situation with covid has changed the landscape quite a bit and now most of what was 'professional training and development', which worked around a model of instructor led, classroom based training, is now also virtually delivered, so the standards of delivery have risen quite a bit. That's not to say there won't be lots of still low value/low cost options to try and avoid.
In general, the sad truth is that the quality of delivery and course materials will vary directly with the amount of value those skills being developed will be able to subsequently create. Even more sadly, mental health is one of the poorest areas in that regard. It shouldn't be like that, but it is.
Quite a few courses on Futurelearn on mental health and related matters. Some courses are free others require an up front fee. For the free courses you can purchase a one year thing which gives you the accreditation certificate for all courses you do in that year, or you can get accredited for individual courses but this probably works out more expensive if you plan on doing a few courses. I've done a few courses on the Futurelearn platform but haven't bothered with the accreditation.