Engineering is an excellent profession and given the good salaries that engineers earn and the shortage of engineers in Australia, becoming an engineer could be a great decision for your career.
There are many academic institutions offering both vocational and academic engineering qualifications across Australia, but if you can't attend these institutions or prefer to have more control over your own education, online courses offer an interesting alternative.
Sometimes but not always, online courses are cheaper than the courses offered on campus, too. However, always make sure to check where your online engineering course is accepted. If you're looking to get a job through an engineering course, you'll want to make sure that employers recognise it. Conversely, if you're just looking to learn some new skills for work, then the content of the course is probably more important than its status.
If you feel like online courses are right for you, here are some of the places offering them to help you start your search.
Online Education Platforms and Websites
When it comes to online courses, some of the best places to find them exist only online. There are plenty of websites and online education platforms offering their own courses, courses from users, and even courses from universities.
There are literally thousands of different courses available, which makes these platforms great places for shopping around before deciding on which course is right for you.
edX
edX is a massive open online course (MOOC) provider based in the US. It was created by the American universities Harvard and MIT and now offers a huge range of university-level courses and qualifications, including courses in engineering.
Many of the engineering courses on edX are offered by either engineering companies or universities. For example, there are courses from Brown University, Princeton University, Cornell University, and MIT as well as courses offered by edX itself and companies like IBM, the Linux Foundation, and Solidworks.
As always, the validity of these courses can vary, but you can always check before you enrol. In some cases, you can pay to have your course verified or do the course for free just to learn what's on the course.
On edX, most of the courses last a few weeks with the equivalent of a few hours each week of study so that you can complete them while still working, but the platform has introduced full bachelor's and master's degrees, just not in engineering yet.
Discover the best engineering courses in Melbourne.
FutureLearn
FutureLearn is a British MOOC that works with UK universities and companies to offer micro-credentials, which are basically the qualifications you can earn by completing shorter courses online and studying at your own pace.
FutureLearn includes courses from reputable universities such as Cambridge University, University College London, King's College London, and companies like Raspberry Pi and Accenture.
Engineering courses include chemical engineering, principles of engineering, technical report writing for engineers, maintenance engineering, and many more.
There's a plethora of courses on the platform and since micro-credentials are pretty specific, you must search for the exact kind of engineering skills you're interested in to find what you're looking for.
Udemy
Udemy is an online learning and teaching platform with over 62 million users. The platform is particularly popular for software engineering and code and literally has thousands of courses on them.
Udemy's focus is more on the skills than credentials as courses can be uploaded by anyone and aren't necessarily provided by universities or companies.
That said, if there's a particular skill you want to learn, you'll likely be able to find it on Udemy and start studying immediately.
The cost of courses varies, but because of the democratisation of the platform, prices tend to be quite competitive.
Class Central
Class Central isn't a MOOC, a university, or an online course, but rather an excellent resource for finding courses.
Think of it as Google for online courses. You can search for anything and filter by level, credential, duration, subject, and language.
Once you've visited a few of the other sites offering online engineering courses and have a better idea of what's out there, you can always go to Class Central and start searching for specific things as you'll know what to look for.
Alison
Alison is an Irish online education platform offering courses and certificates across a range of different subjects. This isn't one of the bigger online education platforms, but there may be some engineering courses of interest on it.
There are short engineering courses on engineering management, industrial engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, and many others.
Coursera
Coursera is another American MOOC. Much like edX, Coursera has links to top American universities like the University of Illinois, Duke University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania as well as big companies like Google and IBM.
Some of the engineering courses you might be interested in cover mechanics, project management, thermodynamics, CAD, computational fluid dynamics, mathematics, and digital manufacturing and design.
While the courses on Coursera come in all shapes and sizes, the most popular ones are between 3 and 6 months as opposed to the courses on Alison which were mostly a few hours long.
You could also study engineering in Perth.
Lerna Courses
Lerna Courses is more of a resource than a place to get information and advice on careers, online courses, study tips, etc.
If you're feeling a bit lost with all the options, Lerna Courses can help you make heads and tails of all the courses out there, especially the ones from Australian academic institutions like Edith Cowan University, James Cook University, RMIT University, Southern Cross University, The University of Adelaide, UNSW Sydney, and UTS.
Studying Online Through a University, College, or Academic Institution
If you're still interested in studying a recognised academic qualification but can't attend lessons on-campus or have other commitments that make studying online better for you, you can always do traditional courses online.
There are many universities, colleges, and educational establishments offering online courses and qualifications to students all over the country and around the world.
UNSW
The University of New South Wales is a public research university in Sydney and was founded back in 1949.
The university is highly-ranked and considered one of the best in Australia and in the top 50 of all universities around the world, especially for engineering, where it's regularly ranked the best in the country.
Through UNSW, you could study a graduate diploma or graduate certificate in data science, for example.
Don't forget to check out the other great engineering courses in Sydney.
Charles Darwin University
Charles Darwin University (CDU) offers fully online engineering degrees with the option to specialise in civil and structural engineering, electrical and electronics engineering, or mechanical engineering.
Deakin University
Deakin University is in the top 1% for engineering and technology globally, #1 in Victoria for course satisfaction, #1 in Victoria for graduate employment, and #1 in Victoria for teaching quality.
The engineering degrees from Deakin University are now available online. However, there are still certain activities that require students to attend certain activities on campus.
Southern Cross University
Southern Cross University also offers engineering courses online through its online learning portal. While not technically online, you can also have resources mailed to you in the event you can't connect.
Southern Cross University is also rated #1 for teaching quality, skills development, learning resources, and overall experience and there are a number of online options such as the Diploma of Civil Construction (Engineering and Management), the Associate Degree of Engineering, and the Bachelor of Engineering Systems.
University of South Australia
The University of South Australia (UniSA) offers an associate degree in engineering as an online course. This is a 2-year course with between 10 and 15 of study a week.
You could also study these great engineering courses in Brisbane.
Get Help with Your Engineering Studies
Whether you're studying engineering at a university, college, or online, engineering is a famously tricky subject that requires an excellent knowledge of science and maths as well as all the engineering you need to know.
While there is help out there for students both through online education platforms and universities, sometimes you need some extra help to make sense of everything or study as effectively as you can.
In these cases, it might be a good idea to look to private tutors. Private tutors can help you with engineering, specific parts of engineering, or even study skills to make you a more effective learner.
Much like engineering degrees, you can work with private tutors in-person or online and it's up to you to decide what works best for you, your other commitments, your budget, and your preferred learning style.
Generally, face-to-face tutors charge more than online tutors as they have more travelling to do, but you can find tutors for all budgets.
The more experienced the tutor and the higher the level they teach, the more you'll likely have to pay them for tuition, but other factors such as location, supply and demand, and how many lessons you book at once could all affect how much you pay.
To save more money, you could also get some colleagues or classmates together for group tutoring, which costs less as more students are paying for the cost of the tutor's time and expertise.
Like with online courses, work out what's best for you and shop around before making your decision!
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