Free Online Education Every Retail RD Needs to Know About
By Amanda Rubizhevsky MPH, NC
Think you need to take some more courses in business and management but just don’t have the time? Have you explored the free online educational platforms? Find out what they are and how you can brush up on your business and managerial skills on your own time and pace.
Continuing education is important for anyone wanting to advance their career and skills, but time and money are often constraints. If you are looking to gain more business, managerial, finance skills and more, but don’t think you have the time or budget, you might want to consider the online educational platform Coursera. As a retail dietitian there are a lot of business related skills that you must learn as you go. If you want to get a jump-start on your learning during your free time read on for what you need to know.
Coursera is an education platform that partners with top universities and organizations worldwide to offer courses online for anyone to take. Their mission is to provide universal access to the world’s best education. Choose from hundreds of courses created by the world's top educational institutions. Courses are open to anyone to audit, but if you wish to obtain a Course Certificate, fees apply (financial aid is also available).
What’s great about Coursera is that you can learn on your own schedule. Watch short video lectures, take interactive quizzes, complete peer graded assessments, and connect with fellow learners and instructors on your time. This is ideal for a retail RD with a busy non-predictable schedule.
One of the ways Coursera helps you learn is through mastery learning, which is based on an approach developed by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom. Mastery Learning helps learners fully understand a topic before moving onto a more advanced topic. Coursera’s style of teaching immediately gives feedback on a concept a learner did not understand.
With just a quick search for business and leadership courses, here’s what comes up:
- Intro to Project Management Principles and Practices: from the University of California Irvine
- Leading People and Teams: from the University of Michigan
- Strategic Management and Innovation: from Copenhagen Business School
- Inspirational Leadership: Leading with Sense: from HEC Paris
- Coaching Skills for Managers: from the University of California Davis.
Another online learning platform, Udacity is more focused on tech, but has a few business courses as well. Their mission is to bring accessible, affordable, engaging, and highly effective higher education to the world. Udacity seeks to empower their students to advance their education and careers. Education is no longer a one-time event but a lifelong experience. Education should empower students to succeed not just in school, but in life. Browse Udacity’s courses here.
