How to Sharpen Your Skills with Online Classes

Sissy Silva on July 13, 2020

tags: Back to Work, Balancing Work & Cancer, CAC Resource, Career Advice, Career Change, Employment, Job Hunting, Job Re-entry, Job Search, Professional Development, Telecommuting, Workforce

Education has changed dramatically in the last decade with the rise of e-learning. This trend has become even more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the new realities of 2020, people are adapting as best as they can, connecting virtually and finding online resources to help them continue to work and learn from home.

According to a recent Monster.com article by Patricia Scanlon, since March of this year, online learning platforms have seen increases of more than 400% in enrollments. In response to this surge in demand for online learning, many universities and online learning platforms have stepped up and begun to increase the number of free classes they offer. For patients and survivors seeking to develop their skills, here are three platforms to check out.

  1. edX (www.edx.org) — Edx, a collaborative project of Harvard University and MIT, provides free online courses and classes from the world’s best universities and other institutions.
  2. Coursera (www.coursera.org) — Coursera is a platform through which anyone can take free online classes from 120-plus top universities — including Stanford, Yale and Princeton — and other educational organizations.
  3. Udemy (www.udemy.com)  — Udemy is an online education marketplace with limitless variety; more than 30,000 courses developed by subject-matter experts. Courses are inexpensive with many starting at $11.99, or completely free!

Of course, these are so many other online resources out there. Cancer and Careers offers patient-focused webinars through our Balancing Work & Cancer Webinar Series, that addresses many of the challenges of balancing work and cancer. In particular, you can view the recordings of past sessions such as our webinar on Enhancing Your Skills: Prepping for Success in our Video Archive.

Additionally, take advantage of some of Cancer and Careers' other offerings, including:

  • Our Resume Review Service offers free, personalized feedback on your resume from one of our professional career coach!
  • Check out our publications available for order and/or download, in particular our Job Search Toolkit, with a section on LinkedIn.
  • You can submit a question to our panel of professional career coaches via our Ask a Career Coach message board. Many people also find it helpful to search through our log of past questions to see if their specific concern has been addressed before or to spark an idea.