Online Learning Tools That Can Help Set Students Up for Success

Masterclass is one of my favorite unconventional ways of learning. It is essentially a series of lectures by the top people in the field. Think storytelling from Martin Scorcese, taking your cooking skills to the next level with Gordon Ramsay, and organizing for change with Malala Yousefzai.

They are usually fairly broad categories like learning how to stream or learning about space travel, but they break it down in a way that relates to a variety of more niche subjects.

The classes are deeply immersive but not interactive. Each class varies in time from a little over an hour to five hours or more. They are cut up into bite-size classes perfect for listening to while cooking dinner or watching while you wait at the dentist's office.

The lectures are engaging and well-plotted to give you all of the relevant data necessary in the order that makes the most sense, with enough detail that it informs without overwhelming.

I have listened to several, with my favorites being the classes from authors Neil Gaiman and Roxane Gay, and businessperson Kim Scott. However, I have found that even watching or listening to Masterclass subjects that are not directly related to my area of study or my work life has a tangible benefit on those areas by opening my mind to include more expansive ideas in any number of areas.

You can subscribe to one or more devices depending on how you like to learn. As someone who likes multiple modalities for learning, there are times I want to watch the classes on my laptop and times when I would rather just listen on my headphones on my phone, so I find that two devices suit me just right.

Udemy is a learning tool focused on coding and programming, with a ton of certificate prep courses thrown in. With an individual monthly plan ($20 per month), you have access to over 11,000 courses on everything from learning Python to Microsoft's AI. Each course is fairly monocular, focusing on one piece of coding, software, or programming and breaking it down into bite-size pieces with ample resources for each course.

The breakdown of the courses is a little less straightforward with Udemy than with Masterclass or some others because it's more about how long one single concept takes to teach than trying to fit an idea or chapter in a specific time frame.

The main difference between Udemy and other online learning platforms is that each class isn't something that Udemy has created or hired a professional in the arena to create. It is a database for instructors to post their content and for learners to find. There is free content on the site, and anyone can create a free course, but for a paid course, the teacher needs to pay the site to be considered for their professional tier. This is great for some reasons — like creators who want to get their courses in the hands of more people, but it also means that not every course has the same level of rigor or quality.

That being said, the paid content is generally great, and for the low cost of entry, it's a fantastic platform for learning how to code or improving other skills in the coding arena. It's also my 16-year-old computer wunderkind son's favorite online learning tool.

Most people think that Audible is only for audiobooks, but that's just the beginning. Of course, they have an unparalleled catalog of audiobooks, but they also have a ton of podcasts, single-episode topic learning, and entire courses built into their programming that are available to members to download at any time.

Audible's primary learning tool available is called "The Great Courses," and they are truly incredible. There aren't words for how much my family and I love Audible (as members for well over a decade, we own more than 1100 titles!). My favorite course for students (which are fully able to be cited for college papers) is "Particle Physics for Non-Physicists" by Steven Pollack. The title sounds dry and boring, but the course is anything but. I only wish I had it when I was trying to slog through undergraduate cosmology, trying to wrap my English major brain around abstract mathematical and scientific concepts. They also have content that is only available on Audible, like "Medieval Myths and Mysteries" and "The Skeptics Guide to Investing," among others.

Audible's courses feel a bit like Masterclass courses, but they tend to be far more in-depth, and instead of being approached by famous names that most of us are familiar with, they tend to be more academically curated, which brings a bit more gravitas to the learning on many of the subjects. Audible has one of the broadest catalogs, with nary a subject going unexplored. It's done in Audible's signature highly-produced style with extremely good-quality audio and reliable performance.

Last but not least, their app is so easy to use and navigate, allowing you to take notes, record bits to save for later, and share what you find insightful.

SkillShare combines lectures and instruction with project-based learning and student-teacher interaction, putting it in a whole league of its own. They have tens of thousands of courses available on just about every subject. Whether you're looking for how to coordinate your closet after graduation or you want to learn how to edit videos on your laptop. They have a multitude of courses in just about every subject you could dream of.

I love that SkillShare doesn't rely on novice learners to power its base. Instead, it opts for multiple levels of courses on any given subject so that there's a real opportunity to grow and improve. Where Masterclass is built like a liberal arts education, SkillShare is a more specific trade school with tons of great info on each choice.

SkillShare has a few really fun capabilities that make it stand out from the crowd of online learning platforms. One of them is the ability to "schedule" learning for a specific time. I find that having a schedule for these things really increases my accountability and keeps me coming back to do what I commit to.

As someone who is profoundly Deaf, one of my favorite things about SkillShare is their transcript function. Each of their videos has a transcript available so that if you like to read while you listen, or, like me, sometimes you just want to not worry about keeping up with captions while trying to take notes, this is an impressive and helpful feature.

There's also a space on the platform to post questions to the teacher and interact with other students, share projects and concerns, and generally converse with one another.

Unfortunately, like Udemy, SkillShare has the issue of a lack of continuity of product quality from class to class. While most are fairly great, some of the classes would benefit from more editing or perhaps more time spent creating them.