Learner Story – Melissa
Discover how Student Recruitment Manager, Melissa, has been using FutureLearn courses to upskill during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Melissa is a Student Recruitment Manager from Indonesia who has been using FutureLearn to upskill during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this post, she shares how the platform has helped her discover new ways to succeed in her current role and why she’s taking online courses to get closer to her long term career goals.
During lockdown, Melissa took the University of Wollongong’s course, The Power of Podcasting for Storytelling, to keep busy and learn new ways of developing engaging content from a hobbyist and professional perspective.
Discover new passions
“I discovered the wonders of FutureLearn during my time in isolation due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. I have always been intrigued by new forms of communication and I wanted to learn more about podcasting, especially as it seemed to really take off as a medium during lockdown.”
Although she initially decided to take the University of Wollongong’s course to fill spare time and learn new skills, taking this course helped Melissa to discover a new passion as well as a new medium to explore in her professional life.
“I’m so glad I took this course as it helped to provide me with knowledge of a communication platform that I could use in my line of work. Content creation is an area of focus for my team and I in student recruitment. We’re constantly looking for new ideas for developing new content to reach potential new students. More importantly, with the vast range of communication platforms out there, it’s more important than ever to reach our target market using the right communication platform.”
Develop your professional skills
Melissa says the course helped to provide her with a foundation of knowledge that she can refer back to when she comes to produce her very own podcast.
“Podcasting is a great tool to build a community, but it is a relatively new area of discovery for me. This course helped to equip me with the basic concepts of podcasting and how to go about planning and making a podcast while avoiding common pitfalls.”
Explore a huge variety of topics
In addition to the podcasting course, Melissa also completed the YouSTUDY International College Preparing for the PTE Academic course.
“It’s a long-term career goal of mine to move to Australia, and completing the PTE Academic test is one of the requirements. I found this course really useful in helping me gain a better understanding of this English test and getting a good grip of the format of the test really helped.”
Melissa’s favourite thing about FutureLearn is the ability to fit learning around your schedule.
“FutureLearn is a great ally in my pursuit for lifelong learning and a perfect way to upskill and reskill at my own pace, from the comforts of home. The courses are also structured in such a way that you get to unpack the modules in bite sizes, making it a less intimidating task to take on each week.”
Build future-proof skills from home
Melissa plans to continue using FutureLearn to learn new skills, particularly in digital areas as the workplace continues to change as a result of technological innovations.
“The global pandemic has caused a shift in the international trade, investment and education sectors amongst others. I’m keen to pick up new skills that are aligned to the future of work and I’m excited to explore FutureLearn’s digital courses, particularly those that focus on new methods of content creation for the digital space and basic concepts of coding and app development. FutureLearn is a great way to learn new skill-sets on demand – it’s the Netflix for the education world!”
