How To Do Adult Learning At Home- Home Based Learning In Singapore – SkillsFuture, Udemy, Skil

You may feel stuck indoors during this COVID-19 circuit breaker, but that doesn’t mean your personal growth has to stop. Take the opportunity to upgrade your skills! Your age doesn’t matter – e-learning is for everyone.

Today, we take a look at some online learning platforms that you can use in the comfort of your own home. All you need is an internet connection.

When we think about upskilling, One portal comes immediately to mind: SkillsFuture, a government initiative to help Singaporeans develop their skills throughout their lives.

There’s a lot of courses to choose from, but there is an assessment test to find out areas where one can improve their skills.

There are some free online courses to help you brush up your digital skills, and you can use your Skillsfuture credit on them.

The only catch is that it’s not very clear from the website which courses can be taken online. That’s not the only place you can use Skillsfuture credit though.

One online portal that also accepts Skillsfuture credit is Udemy, a global platform with over one hundred and fifty thousand courses.

Some people think online learning is boring – all numbers and professional advancement stuff, but on Udemy, you can also pick up a new hobby. Teachers upload videos to the website, and all you have to do is watch and follow along. Some courses even have tests at the end to make sure that you have the right takeaways from the course!

You can decide which courses to purchase through their review system, which allows learners to rate the lessons out of 5 stars.

Best of all, there are no subscription fees, so you only pay for the courses that you take, and you will be able to access these lessons indefinitely.

Another platform a lot like Udemy is Skillshare. All the courses are conducted through video, with instructors breaking down the course into separate lessons.

The key difference between Udemy and Skillshare is that to access the full courses in Skillshare, you need to pay a monthly fee to ‘Go Premium’.

On this Premium subscription, you can take as many courses as you want, even downloading them to watch offline on your mobile devices. This subscription only costs SGD 20 a month, or 11.50 a month if you get the yearly package.

If you’re looking for something more school-like, look no further than edX. This platform pulls together course content from leading universities from around the world like Harvard University to make you feel like you’re back in school again.

Choose from a wide range of courses on offer, from architecture to physics. Most courses are free, but you can also pay a fee upon course completion to get a professional certificate.

Or take it even further by doing an Online Master’s Degree. Of course, that will probably take much longer than the duration of the circuit breaker!

While this content leans more towards education rather than improving your raw professional skills, these courses can really open your mind to what humans are capable of.

Finally, let’s look at Gnowbe. This platform allows you to take microlearning courses in categories from Business to Pest Management and more.

What’s microlearning you ask? Well, it’s very focused e-learning that is performed in short time bursts. In fact, it’s a great way to learn on, say, on your mobile device.

Many of Gnowbe’s courses are linked to our local tertiary institutions, like Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic, and you get a digital certificate you can share on LinkedIn upon completion. You can even use your Skillsfuture credits for some of them.

While there aren’t many courses, unlike on Udemy or Skillshare, Gnowbe is currently providing a course on preventing the spread of COVID-19 in many different languages including Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, absolutely free.

With an abundance of time, it’s definitely time to grow in the comfort of your own home.

This is part of the SG United Content Series supported by IMDA. Let’s stay hopeful and stay united! #SGUnited #StayHealthyGoDigital.