iv_onlinelearningThe topic of online education and training got some significant media attention on Thursday when the USA Today published an article on the topic of using online courses to expand upon skills you’ve learned in college and to make yourself more appealing as a job seeker.

Of course, unlike this blog, the article does not focus specifically on online IT training or IT placements. But it does mention java online training and related IT courses amidst its more general discussion of skills acquisition for USA job seekers.

As a matter of fact, online IT training doesn’t even need to be mentioned by name in content like this, because it goes without saying that IT skills are among the skills that it is most appropriate to learn through web-based and non-traditional educational platforms.

The USA Today quotes Karen Francis of AcademixDirect as saying, “You can easily learn any skill online and enhance your own competitiveness and ability to do your job well.” And if that’s the case, you can certainly use online IT courses to develop whichever skills are most relevant to your chosen career path, from Agile methodology training to quality analyst training.

But what might be even more important is the ways in which these sorts of online IT training courses dovetail with the broader focus of the USA Today article, which emphasizes that employers often find educated and qualified applicants to be lacking in skills like leadership, communication, and problem solving.

It may not be obvious where a person can seek out skills like that online, or even through on-campus education. But if you’re in the IT profession you might be both surprised and pleased to learn that various online IT training programs cover this ground in addition to dispensing the specific technical skills needed for specific IT job placements.

When you’re looking for any sort of online education, training, or certification, your principal responsibility is to give yourself an honest assessment of what your resume and your personal job performance are lacking. After that, you should take care to look for programs that encourage improvement in as many separate dimensions as possible. They’re certainly out there. And if you’re working in or looking to enter the IT field, we’d like to point out that they’re on this very site.

Both through our online courses and via the Canvas InfoTech campus in California, certified scrum master training and other types of Agile training successfully teach hundreds of IT professionals relevant technical skills alongside leadership and team-building methodologies through online Learning that can be applied to any workplace and can help fill in the gaps in the “soft skills” that the USA Today claims so many employers are looking for these days.

Whether for IT or otherwise, whatever skills need further development for the sake of your career, you can probably find a way to build them independently and through online platforms if you have the necessary conviction and know where to look.