Category Archives: Reviews

I took some short courses before and after a holiday in north Queensland.

Reviews of Three Free Short Courses

I ended my last post by saying I was taking some time away from online learning and blogging. My husband and I had a lovely road trip to north Queensland during which we spent many hours in the car, took hundreds of photos, and soaked up the tropical winter temperatures. I took a break from online courses and writing, which meant that when we returned home, I had no post ready for last week.

Oh, crumbs.

Rather than churn out a hurried post, I decided to take an extra week to collect my thoughts.

Which meant that now I had one week to think of a topic, research it, and write about my findings. While, of course, dealing with all the catch-up tasks that inevitably accumulated while we were away. Not to mention a brain that wanted to stay in relaxed holiday mode.

What to do? I had recently taken a few free very short courses and discovered some others, so here is an overview of three courses.

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Don't let distractions interrupt your study.

Improving Your Study Techniques: a Review of the Course

I have taken several online courses about learning in the last few years. Some have been interesting and inspiring. Others have been less memorable.

I am happy to say Improving Your Study Techniques is definitely worthwhile taking if you want to make the most of your study time, whether online or as an on-campus student. Presented by Maple Hupkens and Anne-Miek Hermsen of the University of Groningen (Netherlands), each of the four weeks brought new material to help with organisation, prepare the brain for study, learn the work, and revise effectively to prepare for exams. Techniques for dealing with procrastination, stress and keeping motivated are also covered.

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World distribution of blog visitors

CXL Google Analytics: a Review of the Course

If you have a website or blog, chances are you have looked at Google Analytics.

It can be exciting looking at the page views and how many readers use desktop or mobiles. There’s even a map of the world showing where your audience is.

But however fascinating it can be to see which are the most popular pages, how useful are all these numbers, graphs and charts really?

How can we use Analytics to build up our audience or, for a commercial site, increase sales?

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If you witness a sudden cardiac arrest, don't just stand around, use CPR.

Basic Life Support and Automated External Defibrillation: A Review of the Course

Released by Stepik in February 2019, this free short course teaches the basics of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). It achieves its stated aim of educating the layperson in CPR so they might have some confidence to attempt it if they ever witness a cardiac arrest. The victim then has a better chance of surviving until medical assistance arrives. So far, 104 people have signed up for this course.

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Writing in English is a useful skill

Writing in English for University Study: a Review of the Program

What is a Program?

Several MOOC providers have introduced series of courses that are designed to provide in-depth knowledge of particular fields.  Often the final course is a project. Sometimes the final project is individually assessed by course staff rather than the peer assessments common in many free or low-cost MOOCs. Four to six courses are common, although there may be fewer or more. Coursera calls these groups of courses Specializations. EdX has XSeries, Micromasters and Professional Certificates. FutureLearn has Programs.

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