VOA · Education Tips
Advanced · C1learner speed4:452025-01-07public domain
Education Tips shares practical advice for students: study habits, test preparation, applying to schools. The vocabulary is academic but the delivery is slow and structured, making it useful preparation for exam listening sections.
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01In today's workplace, what you learned in the usual college courses may not be very useful later in life.
02For example, in the field of information technology, workers might never use BASIC, the computer language that was taught in the 1990s.
03But they might need to know Python or SQL.
04The answer for students or workers is a professional certificate program, or what is called microcredential.
05UNESCO, the world's education agency, defines microcredential as professional certification that centers on a set of learning outcomes in a narrow field.
06It is completed over a shorter time than a traditional university program, from a week to a month.
07The most popular fields in which microcredentials appear are data analytics, information technology support, and cybersecurity.
08The courses are often developed by technology businesses like Google, Salesforce, Meta, Intuit, and IBM.
09The businesses provide a certificate when a student finishes the course.
10Coursera, an online educational service, recently released a report on how microcredentials are preparing students for jobs and affecting higher education schools.
11It says that 51% of colleges in the United States that offer microcredentials also provide school credit and more plan to do so in the next few years.
12Some colleges include one or more courses leading to microcredentials as part of their usual programs.
13At Hawaii Pacific University, school leaders say including professional certifications in its business program has sharply increased the number of interested students.
14For students, credential finder offers a way to search for the right microcredential offerings by field of study or industry.
15For example, if you are studying information science, you may take Google Data Analytics or an IBM Data Analyst course.
16If you are working toward a degree in business administration, you may take a Google Project Management course.
17Your university program's advisors should be helpful in identifying the best certificate programs for your area of study.
18Be sure to check with your country's government for more information on special training programs.
19One example is Ukraine, which is aiming to meet its shortage of skilled workers with its Reskill UA initiative.
20It provides help with finding training and employment.
21Many of the course providers permit learners to use the materials for free, but to earn a certification, payment is required.
22For courses that universities offer for credit, the payment will depend on the price set by the school.
23The languages available in Coursera are English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, and Portuguese, Brazilian.
24Other available languages include Japanese, Korean, Chinese, traditional and simplified, and Arabic.
25The online education service also provides automatic translation of course materials in Swedish, Greek, Polish, Bahasa Indonesian, Italian, Turkish, Thai, and Kazakh.
26I'm John Russell.
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