Continuing Education

[Christopher C]

Hello all,
Have any of you found any online continuing education programs that really focus on quality of instruction. Everything I've found so far just feels mechanical, like taking an online defensive driving course. The lectures/slides are either old, shallow, or incredibly boring, and the tests require no thought at all to answer correctly. How do you meet your CE requirements?... Can you recommend any quality courses?

“When engineers and quantity surveyors discuss aesthetics and architects study what cranes do we are on the right road.” ? Ove Arup

 

[JStephen]

I've taken two or three online courses, and wasn't impressed. Partly due to subject matter, which was ethics. I'm all for being ethical, but have seen very little worthwhile material/classes/courses, either. The commercial classes took significantly less time than the hourly credit, which is not right. The TTU Murdough School of Ethics took plenty of time, but much of it was "Write an essay on this topic" type material.
On the tests requiring no thought- that's because the test is only to show that you actually did the course, not to show you learned anything. It's like being at a live class, you get credit for being there, regardless of the utility of it.
I've taken live classes from ASME, ASCE, and a couple of other sources. They were pretty good IF you could find material of interest, which is a major challenge.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Did you look at the AISC "Night School" courses? Personally, I haven't done them yet. However, the topics / content look pretty good.

Also, I've taken a few courses through SEUniversity (Learnwithseu.com). The quality varied (based on presenter), but there were a few that were pretty good.

 

[Christopher C]

Thank you for these suggestions. I will definitely look into them. It seems that if I want a truly informative set of courses, I'm going to have to curate them myself. I've had some pretty inspiring professors over the years, and it makes me a little sad that some of our best lecture driven learning experiences as PE's might be behind us. Perhaps university level courses are the answer?