Category: MOOC Courses

The MOOC course “Introduction to Personal Branding” has made me understand why it is important to create a personal branding for myself. Both to create my foundation in order to know myself and what I want in life but also to manage expectations from other people around me such as colleagues, collaborators and managers. 

The course gave hands-on tips on how to manage the personal branding and I found the personality test very informative and eye-opening. This made me really understand what I am looking for in a company and what my goals in my personal life are. Also the 3 words and the mission statement helped me with this. 

The tips regarding a professional photo also made me aware of how important it is to show who you are in other ways as well. For example the use of linkedIn to expand my network and the importance of having a good photo that represents me and makes me recognizable. 

Some parts of the course were not really relevant to me such as the leadership approach to personal branding as well as the in-depth explanation of Twitter/X. However, some parts were still applicable in other contexts, for example in other platforms or when collaborating with other people.

The course also made me realize the importance of continuous learning and how a MOOC course can expand my knowledge outside my field of study in the classroom. Therefore I added Coursera as a tool in my personal learning environment since I can see the great benefits of taking more courses like this.

I attach here the course certificate that shows that I have completed the course!

Coursera AS5XDLBFMLAH

What I learnt from this MOOC is, personal branding is the practice of promoting oneself and one’s career as a brand. This can involve highlighting one’s unique skills and experiences, as well as creating a strong and consistent online presence through platforms such as social media and professional networking sites. Personal branding can be beneficial because it can help individuals stand out in a crowded job market and gain recognition for their expertise in a particular field.

It can also help them build a positive reputation, which can open up opportunities for career advancement and personal growth. Ultimately, personal branding is a valuable tool for individuals to effectively market themselves and their careers.

The first MOOC I followed is called “Introduction to Personal Branding” by Coursera and University of Virginia. Despite hearing about personal branding many times, I never understood what this concept meant. The course is an interesting introduction to an aspect we should all take care of, and explains what personal branding mean: promoting yourself, building a brand and building a reputation, just to name the most important. During the course I was asked to create my brand mission statement, and got introduced to the concept of reputation management. This last was the chapter of the course I found most interesting.

My second MOOC, instead, was entitled “Critical Raw Materials: Managing Resources for a Sustainable Future” by EdX and TU Delft. I decided to take this course, which was not among those proposed, because the topic of critical raw materials was definitely my favorite over the master, and I wanted to deepen into it. Analyzing the criticality of a material is a fundamental step to adopt especially when it comes to key technologies for energetic transition. This is because solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and so on, currently have a vulnerable supply chain due to different issues (geopolitical, economical, social, ecc.). The course gave me a complete understanding of the topic, and taught me that when it comes to criticality study, a multidisciplinary approach has to be adopted.

Following these two courses gave the opportunity to approach a new type of resource I never used before. Since the quality of the teaching and the resources proposed was very high, I will definitely include the Massive Online Open Courses, and in particular the platforms which provide them, in my PLE, as expressed in the following picture.

Thanks for your attention!

Luigi

MOOC I Personal Branding

When it comes to personal branding, it’s important to answer 3 questions. what, is it because, your personal brand is who you are. why, to grow professionally and personally, adding value to what others perceive; and how, Creating content of your interest

After taking the mooc course, in personal branding, I have identified two aspects that I used to not consider when sharing content: Knowledge of the basic concepts of digital security. And reputation management

MOOC II Circular Economy

The second course taken was the circular economy, in which we reinforced the previous knowledge acquired in the master’s degree and other media. This was done by the Edx Platform.

Reinforcing my knowledge, I have directed my attention to two contents that I had not considered before, the first, waste is food, which is based on restoration and recycling, and the second, thinking in systems, which involves all the parts of the diagram of the butterfly.

Opinion mooc courses

The advantages of mooc courses are low costs, time flexibility, multicultural learning and that you can certify yourself

The disadvantages of mooc courses are that they cannot resolve questions and doubts and that tasks cannot be accurately evaluated to deal with system problems.

In conclusion, I can say that this course has enabled me to evaluate my professional digital skills and establish my professional objective to develop a good digital identity. In the same way, I was able to reinforce my knowledge in circular economy.

MOOC 1 : Introduction to Personal Brand.

It was a topic that I didn’t have on my mind, to be honest as it was a new idea to me. After finishing though the course I realize that it is a high advantage for our professional life to synchronize our name with a personal brand that we have to take care of, promote and update all the time. I managed to think about my personal board of directors, and my mission statement that I am sure that will change during my professional life, and find the correct social media to promote it. Being aware of how our image is reflected online, helps me a lot with my Digital Identity plan as it is important to be focusing on our goals and group targets that we want for our professional future.

MOOC 2: Circular economy

A topic that for sure, we all knew before as it the main idea of our Master. Nevertheless, it is always good to revise , rethinking and reorganise ideas to our heads. Butterfly diagram was the most important takeaway along with the Inertia principle as they taught me that we have to be careful with the recycling as it is not always the best option, we have to understand the correct order of the actions that need to be done as maintenance, reuse/redistribute, refurbish/remanufacture and then recycle.

I hope you will find those two MOOCs as important as I did.

MOOC 1 ( Introduction to personal branding)

This course focuses on understanding the primary purpose, benefits, and responsibilities of branding, and begins defining my values, gifts, and goals. I understood key elements including authenticity, my mission statement, and why I should incorporate my photo into my brand. Also, I have identified three platforms that best fit my brand( Linkedin, Twitter, and UPM blog). I am familiar with the pros and cons of creating a maintenance plan for my brand. Thanks to the course, I can now use digital privacy tools to protect my brand and reputation effectively. I highly recommend it.

MOOC 2 (Introduction to a circular economy)

This was another eye-opening course for me. I was introduced further to the concept of circular economy, and how it affects most aspects of major industries. I understood better how it could help a business’s growth. Another interesting fact I learned was how clean energy is important for good disruption. Lastly, this MOOC course made me appreciate this master’s course.

Thank you UPM, TU Delft and edx.

Damilare.

https://www.coursera.org/completed

 

The Circular Economy MOOC course provided by EdX, summing up the most important parts and approaches in CE was overall a beneficial chapter in our MUEC Master’s curriculum. Luckily, not all notions tackled during this course were new to me, but I appreciated the approach and the structure of the course that was easy to follow and helped to organize my knowledge. The most interesting part of the course was the ‘Thinking in Systems’ chapter, where the importance of demand stabilization and increase of recycling rates were pointed out by the case study of aluminium. I will most certainly add the EdX platform in my PLE as a learning tool and source of information, especially for the purpose of life-long learning experience after the end of my studies.

The Personal Branding MOOC course provided by Coursera, served me as a well-structured guide for defining my personal brand by summing up my aspirations and goals. Starting with the Myers-Briggs personality test followed by understanding of the importance of authenticity while creating my mission statement, I have been able to organize the goals for my personal brand. A summary of pros and cons of selected social media validated the vision I have had while working on the PLE assignment during previous classes. This course also included a chapter about digital privacy directly linked to the DIP activity, and only highlighted the importance of taking control over my digital footprint. Finally, I was able to establish my personal brand and I am now following the step-by-step procedure of implying this personal brand in my social media and overall digital presence. I will also consider adding Coursera to my PLE by researching courses that might interest me in my personal, academic and professional future.

During the course of Training for Professional Digital Competences, I have learnt to develop my digital image through different techniques and MOOC courses detailed below:

Course 1 – Introduction to Personal Branding

This first course on Coursera platform was the most interesting for me. Learning different tools to develop my brand and control my digital identity is very useful both for the present and the future. The most important lessons that I take from Personal branding are:

• Be aware of how our image is reflected online and how others see us. Sometimes it feels wrong to self-promoting our professional selves on LinkedIN, but through the lecture ‘Does the whole idea of self-promotion feel wrong?’ and different discussions on class I have realized that we need to take advantage of the enormous opportunities that are online.
• One of the assignments in the second week was doing a Myers Briggs Personality Test and my result was the ‘loyal friend’. As the test proposed had few questions I tried others online in order to know me better.
• The importance on search engines to keep an update on ourselves or any other topic that we are interested in.
• Digital privacy was the most compelling lesson in this course due to the day to day impact that can have a missmanage of our general privacy.

Course 2 – Circular Economy: An Introduction

The Circular Economy course, in edx platform, can be very helpful for every person that only thinks on recycling when they hear the term ‘circular economy’. As I am currently doing a Master in Circular Economy I am very familiar with most of the topics of the course. Eventhough only some examples were new to me I think it was helpful to remember the main objectives and actions of circular economy.

The most interesting topic for me was the chapter called ‘Thinking in systems’, related to the metals scarcity in Europe and all the comments made by Dr Ester van der Voet about the metals in Europe, the urban mining…

My outcome of both MOOCs is the incredible development that digitalisation has supposed in the professional world to be able to grow your knowledges in different topics that can be useful. After finalizing them I have made some changes on my Personal Learning Environment. Check it below!

Thank you for reading my thoughts about this courses and the subject of Training for Professional Digital Competences!

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