Amber* is a Civil Engineer, working in Marine Structure Design, who combines part-time work with mothering her two small children. She completed her Bachelor degree as a full-time, on-campus student and has also studied a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) and several post-graduate university subjects externally.
Pat: Tell me about your studies, Amber.
Amber: After high school, I completed a Bachelor of Engineering majoring in civil engineering and landed a job with an engineering company designing shipping wharves and jetties. For several years, I focussed on my work and becoming a Chartered Engineer. I also married and became a mother in this time.
While on maternity leave after the birth of my second child, I took the MOOC The Age of Sustainable Development from Columbia University via Coursera. It was a 14 week MOOC. I did this as an experiment to see if I wanted to complete more formal studies in sustainable development. It also helped me decide whether to do further study with small children in the house.
Now I am doing some external post-graduate studies in environmental management. I have finished four subjects, which is enough for a graduate certificate, but I may continue and do a graduate diploma and possibly a master’s degree.
Pat: Which mode of study do you prefer?
Amber: As an undergraduate, I was straight out of High School and was used to the classroom style and working with my peers, so the internal format suited me at that time.
For this time of life, I prefer the external format. It saves time, I don’t need to travel to the university. The external format is more flexible than having to attend all the lectures at set times. I can watch the recorded lectures at my convenience and can choose the time of day to study.
As an external student, I don’t actually meet my classmates. In some subjects, however, I am required to log on at certain times for tutorials and group meetings online.
As a fairly self-motivated person, I manage to get the work done without relying too much on the support of my classmates.
Flexibility helps, particularly with a family, but study needs to be treated like work. I still need to set aside particular times and a certain number of hours per week to do it, and arrange for someone to care for the children or do it when they are asleep. Otherwise, it won’t get done and you fall behind the rest of the class. You also need reliable internet access.
Pat: What about the external university classes compared to the MOOC?
Amber: An advantage of the university study is that it is arranged in semesters. There is a break at the end of each semester. It could be easy to take MOOCs constantly, but I tend to work better when I have a break from time to time.
Discussion boards on MOOCs could take up too much time for non-essential information, so I tend to stay away from them. I participated in forums and group work for the external subjects because it was part of the assessment. With limited time, it’s imperative to focus on the essentials and not get side-tracked.
Pat: Any disadvantages of external study?
Amber: While most of the external subjects I’ve completed have been positive, external subjects can be presented very poorly. University subjects these days are often internal and external, so design and delivery need to be planned from the start towards the external students as well. In one particular course, the internal students had very interactive lectures. The external students heard the recorded interactive lectures but weren’t able to actually participate. We could access lectures within the hour but lecture notes to assist with study were not always available. Things were not delivered by the promised dates. We, the external students, were worried that we were missing out on information that didn’t arrive. Was it still on the way, or had I somehow missed out on receiving it? It was as if the external aspect had been tacked on without planning or thought for the external students’ needs.
Pat: Do you have any study tips?
Amber: In my first year of high school, a teacher announced we would be having a test on a number of chapters of our textbook. We had not covered all the test material in class, but he had already instructed us to read the chapters.
I hadn’t read the chapters. What could I do?
I came home and decided that the only way to do well in the test was to go through the chapters and write down the important parts of each chapter. I took notes as I read, then tried to recall and summarize what I’d written. I found that during the exam I could quite easily recall the bits that I had written and summarised.
When the test results came back, I topped the class in the content part of the exam. I have used this technique ever since, of picking out the important parts and writing summary notes on them. In later years of high school and during my university degree, I started to cover up the notes and ask myself questions to see if I could answer them. If I can recall the answer, I know I’ll be able to reproduce it for the exam.
I work best when I can understand everything from first principles. I don’t like to be told to just learn an equation. I need to understand it so I can apply it. Even in the workplace, if I am learning a new calculation, I have to work it out fully on a piece of paper to understand it completely.
Pat: You did a MOOC on sustainable development. Was it challenging? What about the workload compared to a university subject?
Amber: There was not as much content and it seemed easier than a full university subject, although it was a 14-week MOOC. The lectures were between one and two hours, broken into five videos each week. Many of the readings were optional, and I could have spent a lot more time with further reading. Because it was a MOOC rather than an official course, I didn’t take it as seriously. Even so, it was a good introduction to the topic and it was worth doing. Because of the quizzes, I found myself thinking more about the content. The quizzes prompted the need for recall.
Pat: Did you earn a certificate?
Amber: I received a completion email at the end of the course, but a certificate was not available. I added the course to my Curriculum Vitae (CV). My workplace requires all staff members to update our CVs annually to make sure all our education and project work is included and clients know our capabilities.
Pat: Would you do more MOOCs? Any particular ones or particular topics?
Amber: I would like to do emerging subject fields such as system analysis and multi-criteria analysis. As a hobby, computer programming could be interesting, or 101 fundamentals in a range of topics. I see MOOCs as better than buying books, in theory they should be more up-to-date and reliable since they are presented by experts in the field. At the moment, though, I don’t know how I’d fit them in. Maybe in the future. I would also like to do other hobbies such as crochet, jigsaw puzzles, and art. There is not enough time, with two young children and part-time work, even with the support of my husband, who works long hours with his own career.
*Name changed to preserve anonymity
By Pat Bowden, published February 27, 2018.
