Do you ever wonder if you made the right decision by enrolling in an online program? Or are you wondering if choosing remote learning would be a profitable option for you? Perhaps you have concerns about being able to meet the demands of the work environment with your online degree. If this is you, then you are at the right place!
The first thing you should know is that nobody earns a qualification that says, “bagged online” or “earned through remote learning”. No one does and no one ever will! That said, you actually do have a lot to gain from learning remotely. In fact, some of the skills employers are looking for today are those you’d be able to effectively build through distance learning
In this article, we will highlight some of the not only important but also transferable skills that you can gain from remote learning. It’s about time you get serious about building your workplace skill sets while also developing yourself academically.
What Are Transferable Skills?
Transferable skills, also called portable skills, are the skills that you can transfer from one job to another. In other words, these are skills that will be applicable in virtually any kind of work environment. When you highlight your transferable skills in your resume or portfolio, it can help you boost your employability. This is particularly true when you are changing work roles, switching career paths, or just starting out in your career.
Why Are Transferable Skills Important?
At this point in your life, whether you are enrolled in an online program or just thinking of enrolling in one, you’re most likely just starting out in your career or switching career paths. While you may not have been able to build some skill sets specific to that job since you have no previous work experience in it, the transferable skills you have gained from working elsewhere or while still a student can give you leverage and boost your employability.
Transferable skills will not only stand out to employers in interviews or when evaluating your resume, but they will also actually help you handle the challenges and situations you will encounter in your new job or career path. Your ability to transition from one role to another using these skills and applying them to the unique challenges encountered in each role shows that you are indeed a versatile person – one who is flexible in the ever-dynamic and rapidly changing world.
Many job roles will highlight a series of skills the company requires from applicants, or at least, there will be those particular skill sets that are expected that anyone who wants to excel in those roles must have. While you may not have all of those skills, a number of them would be those you have built from previous experiences, or you will have built other skills that are similar to those on the list. Those are your transferable skills!
Where Can You Gain Transferable Skills From?
Interestingly, transferable skills can be built from almost any kind of experience – from working a short-term job, interning at a local organization, volunteering for an NGO, undertaking research for your undergraduate thesis, or working at an international job. These are all experiences you can gain transferable skills from. The list of such experiences is endless, which explains why we are talking about the transferable skills you can gain from remote learning.
Here is a list of some of the important experiences in your life that you can gain transferable skills from:
- School classes
- Extracurricular activities in school
- School research work
- Internships
- Volunteering
- Previous jobs
- Leadership roles
- Previous projects you’ve handled
- Conferences, training, and workshops
- Other life experiences
What Transferable Skills Can You Gain From Remote Learning?
It’s about time you get intentional about building workplace skill sets while also developing yourself academically. Your experience as a remote student can lay the foundation for many of these skills. These are skills that will not only get you that dream job but will also help you develop healthy work habits for your workplace. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Time Management
You’d think the ability to manage time wisely is just one mantra everyone talks about. However, it is actually a skill that employers are looking for, and we don’t know any other experience that can help you gain time management skills if not remote learning.
When learning online, you have time on your hands to manage. Unlike physical classes, where there is a timetable you cannot negotiate, you have the liberty to choose what times and days you want to learn. While that may seem to be an advantage, it can also get tricky in that it is easy to get carried away with work, fun, and other activities you may be invested in.
If you’re enrolled in an online course and you’re able to not only succeed in the program but also finish in time or even earlier than the recommended duration, you’ve been able to hone this tricky but highly important skill called time management.
Self-Motivation
Again, where else is the best place to learn self-motivation and personal drive if not when enrolled in an online program? When learning remotely, you need to deal with all the concerns in-person students deal with – classes, assignments, deadlines, in addition to any other activities you will be invested in. Nevertheless, you may not have as much human help as the in-person student who has friends they can study together with and numerous academic and career advisers provided by the school.
Yet, all of these will not stop you from completing your program and doing well in your class exercises. We strongly believe that self-motivation is a skill every remote student has gained. Nothing should stop you from putting this on your resume!
Communication Skills
We are always communicating everywhere we find ourselves, but communication requires additional effort when it is in the context of a remote program. With the distance gap, online technologies, and sometimes foreign accents, it may require more focus to be able to communicate effectively.
This makes communication skills an important skill set you gain when enrolled in an online program. You should highlight your ability to listen and sift through information, put down your thoughts in writing and speaking during exams and interviews, and how familiar you are with virtual learning platforms in your resume. These are skills that you will be needing everywhere else, even if your subsequent jobs are physical in nature.
Organization
Learning from a distance means you have to be super organized and coordinated to stay on top of your coursework, suggested materials, exercises and assignments. You will need to be doing the same when employed in a job too, which makes organization a skill set that will boost your effectiveness anywhere.
To be organized means that you’ve balanced and set your priorities correctly. This is what allows you to complete tasks, not just in time for the deadline, but with excellence, efficiency, and the absence of errors. These are all abilities you will gain as you continue through months and years of remote learning.
Confidence
Due to the fact that learning remotely is a personal journey, it helps boost your confidence in who you are as a person and what you’re capable of achieving. You are less likely to receive encouragement and hands-on guidance from tutors when learning online. Yet, you’re still tasked with the responsibility of understanding all that is being taught and completing exercises and class projects.
No doubt, your remote learning journey will help you grow in confidence – confidence in your intellectual abilities, confidence in other skill sets you will build, and confidence in your ability to take on any challenging ordeal and overcome it with little or no help.
Critical Reasoning
Of course, all forms of learning prepare you to be able to reason critically. During your program, you will be challenged with examinations and projects that test your knowledge of your field. These questions and tasks are often not going to be simple; you’ll need to think critically and logically to arrive at the needed solutions.
Similarly, the work environment requires you to keep coming up with solutions for every challenge. How well you’re able to think will determine how successful you’ll be at managing tasks efficiently. Your reasoning will be thoroughly drilled while you’re learning as you carry out research, sort through tons of materials for answers to your questions and evaluate options that are laid out before you.
Technological Skills
Technology is what makes remote learning possible. Your success while learning remotely will depend on your ability to maneuver your way around different types of technology. From the ability to craft and send emails correctly, to creating Excel sheets for compiling research results, to creating PowerPoint slides for your presentation, all of these familiarize you with working with a computer and will boost your confidence to learn about any other technical tools you may need in the future. However, even before we talk about future tools, employers are looking for your basic computer literacy, including knowledge of certain programs such as Excel and PowerPoint, and other skills such as writing, data analysis, design, and coding.
How To Identify The Remote Learning Program That’s Best For You
It takes being in the right environment and having the right exposure to build transferable skills. An experience that does not challenge you enough will leave you with little or nothing to gain from it. This is why you should also be intentional and picky, if necessary, about the kind of remote learning programs you enroll in.
There are no hard and fast rules for determining which school or online program is the best. However, a couple of factors should be considered as a guide. These include but are not limited to:
- The curriculum of the program
- Reviews from previously enrolled students in the school or program
- Accreditation of the program by a recognized body
- Internship and placement opportunities during and after the program
While looking for inexpensive tuition fees and fast-tracked online programs is great, those should not be the priority consideration on your list. Remember what truly matters is how you’ve been built, shaped, and equipped for your career by the end of the program.
Another factor you might want to consider before enrolling in an online program is employability. You may even go the extra mile to check what the statistics are saying regarding that career path. It is no longer news that some roles are becoming extinct while others that were not considered so important are now taking the upper hand.
Take social work, for example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates overall employment of social workers to grow by 9% between 2021 and 2031. This is faster than the average for all occupations and leaves about 74,700 job openings for social workers each year. Additionally, the occupation is vast enough to include people in a variety of roles – from working with children to family, hospital, and senior social workers – thereby allowing for less competition for job roles.
To top it all off, studying to become a social-worker features some of the easiest academic steps out there. Most social work master’s programs such as the Keuka Online MSW programs admit students with a bachelor’s degree in any field and can be completed remotely. In addition, Keuka College presents you with different social work online tracks depending on your previous academic background. You can enroll in the advanced track if you already have a bachelor’s in social work or enroll in the traditional track if you do not have prior experience.
Conclusion
Transferable skills provide an easy way to grow your skill sets for employability purposes. While they help get your resume noticed for employment, they also help prepare you to take on any challenge and address situations you will encounter in your new role. The most beautiful thing about transferable skills is that they can be built from virtually any experience, including your unique experience while studying remotely.