The coronavirus pandemic has not only added a lot of stress to our lives, but it has also made many things impossible to do conventionally. One of these things is business courses, something that many professionals were attracted to in order to move forward their career. It was a way of networking with other professionals. With the coronavirus pandemic, people cannot meet in-person as often and so more and more business courses shifted to an online platform. However, with zero real networking opportunities, most courses have switched to an online curriculum that you can do at home and still get a certificate at the end. This begs the question, is it worthwhile to spend money on online business courses?

Let’s break down the possible advantages and disadvantages of online business courses compared to conventional business courses..

Pros of Online Business Courses

• You Decide Your Learning Time.
  One of the best things about any online course these days is that there are no fixed class times. Depending on your routine and your time limitations, you can easily decide how much time you want to allocate to it and when. This is especially useful if you are also doing a job and/or running a family. Some might find the flexibility comfortable enough to dedicate their attention to learning.

• You Set The Pace
  Everyone has a different learning pace and that can be a problem when you are learning a course in the classroom. When learning online, you can set your pace according to your own learning speed and take your time to cover the content. Additionally, online courses usually comprise a lot of video lectures as well, so you can pause and play as you like.

• They Are Significantly Cheaper
  When compared to physical classrooms and face-to-face teaching, online courses are significantly cheaper. That makes them a lot more accessible, something that newly graduating and unemployed persons will appreciate a lot.

Online business courses are, however, not free from fault either.

Cons of Online Business Courses

• No Interaction with Tutors
  There are a lot of things that you might understand a lot better in your course if you had direct contact with the tutor. Since that is almost non-existent in most online courses, you might suffer in some areas where your understanding of the subject is not as good.

• Time Management is Critical
  When learning online, there is no physical classroom with structured hours to keep you going straight. Instead, you need to be highly organized and manage your time flawlessly, so you do not miss anything and keep up with the course as well. This could be an issue for people who have long shift hours and no prior experience with self-management.

• Networking Opportunities Severely Limited
  The best part about business courses is that you get to meet with other people and network with them, creating new business connections. With an online course, you may not get the chance to do that as your work time may differ from other members of your group. Additionally, some online courses are solitary endeavours and you don’t have any group to interact with besides perhaps a forum.

You should weigh these pros and cons for yourself. You may even view some of these pros as cons in your circumstances. For example, perhaps self-management is something you struggle with and thus the flexibility provided by online courses won’t really work with you. Perhaps you want to improve your sales skills or perhaps you would like to learn about business management. Either way, these are great courses to get you started.