Here’s How You Can Use Your Smartphone to Become Smarter

Your phone gives you access to a host of online resources you can use to learn new skills and upgrade your knowledge; you can even study with an online program and earn a degree. Instead of using your phone to play games or keep up with your social media when you have some down time, you could put that time to productive use and improve your career prospects. Let’s find out how.

Embrace the MOOC

In 2016, 58 million students around the world signed up to study with a MOOC, up from 35 million the previous year. What’s a MOOC? MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course, and currently you can choose from 6,850 courses delivered by over 700 universities.

The majority of MOOCs are free, but a growing number have a fee attached, as a paid course or as the price of receiving a completion certificate. Some paid courses allow you to earn a nanodegree in a few subjects, which will qualify you for entry level positions with companies like AT&T.

Earn Your Next Degree Online

While you can study for free with a MOOC, you’ll still need ‘proper’ qualifications if you want to compete for the good jobs. Leading universities, like Rutgers Online, offer a wide range of degree courses at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels.

Take an online master of information degree, study business or healthcare administration, learn to defeat hackers with a cybersecurity degree, or study something like history or philosophy. There are hundreds of degree courses available from accredited schools, so you’re sure to find a course that fits your needs.

Rigorous tuition is delivered in both pre-recorded sessions and live classes, and you can access all of your course material and submit your assignments online, enabling you to catch up with lectures while you commute into the city on the train, while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office, or any time that you have a few spare minutes.

Courses, like the online MLIS degree, typically take around two years to complete and you should expect to put in roughly 15 hours of study per week.

Learn New Language Skills

Learning a new language can be tough if you follow the traditional route of studying grammar and lists of verbs. But it can be easy and fun when you use an app. The most widely used language app is Duolingo, and you can use the free app to learn one of 22 languages including French, German, Swedish, and Hebrew.

The lessons are short, so you can squeeze one in when you’ve got a few moments free and pick up a new language in your spare time. Lessons give you a mix of listening and speaking tasks, as well as text to translate and multiple choice questions to answer. Once you complete a lesson, the app gives you a grade. The inbuilt gamification keeps you coming back to the app so that you don’t start full of enthusiasm and then fade away.

Since you keep your phone in your purse or pocket everywhere you go, it makes sense to use your mobile technology to learn something new and maximize your career opportunities in the process.