Hello. My name is Sharon and I have an addiction....

I am enrolled in 7 online courses.

I love MOOCs.

I love online learning.

I happen to think if you design for online learning, build for online learning or teach online learning you should be undertaking online learning (maybe not 7 courses at once!).

I have learnt so much not only from the online content of some of the courses I have done but also from the course structures, content delivery methods, student rating system, assessment verification methods, star rating systems, etc, etc.

I have consciously made the decision to PAY for some online courses based either on the student rating OR lecturer that I have encountered before.

To be honest, I would love to do a Masters in digital learning, media or instructional design but I literally cannot afford it. And I also have enough official qualifications to line my wall to the point where on some job applications I leave some off as it is embarrassing. I really do not need more official qualifications (well... an IT one might be nice... in case I need to teach....) but I need the content knowledge. Ed Tech is changing so fast there is no way our official curriculum development of qualifications can keep up anyway. So, I can enrol in MOOCs (some free, some a few hundred dollars) and get the content knowledge I need NOW.

Last month I completed a gamification course. It was great, I now know what it is, why it might be used, when and how to design for gamification. BAM. Knowledge acquired.

I'm currently enrolled in MOOCs on AR, VR (just learnt what Unity is!), Game design in HTML5, Videoing lectures, web dev and Wordpress. I may not finish them all. I have found I get about 75% through a course and sometimes drift off on another one. But that's OK. I have the content knowledge I need from it and I am applying it in my job.

So, before you turn your nose up at MOOCs (and yes, there are plenty of horrid ones but also some snobbery around this style of education!) ask yourself if you are doing any online learning. If so, are you getting the skills and knowledge you need for your job now?

Hope so. Happy online learning. Which one to do tonight.... decisions... decisions....