by Lisa Huntsha, Head Editor, INALJ Sweden

MOOCs on Your Resume

You’ve heard of MOOCs, right? The acronym stands for Massive Open Online Courses. These are, as the name suggests, large online courses you can take for free, offered by some really great schools and professors. I’m currently taking Metadata: Organizing and Discovering Information by Jeffrey Pomerantz of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, via Coursera. This has been a welcome supplement to my formal education on the subject. However, the question I’ve been toying with recently is: Should I add this to my resume?

I want to add this course (and the others I will later take) to my resume since taking MOOCs show initiative, interest in continuing education, and the acquisition of specific skills. I do not, however, want to highlight them so much that it looks like I’m trying to equate this supplemental coursework with my actual degree coursework (though, arguably, some of it can be at the same level). So, I turned to my favorite career and job-hunting advice blog, Ask a Manager and found that this question had been asked before. You can read all the comments yourself, but the most helpful ones I found suggest:

• List MOOCs in a “Continuing Education” or “Professional Development” section, along with your presentations and attendance at conferences, webinars, and workshops. 

• Add “MOOC Enthusiast” as an interest on your resume, which demonstrates the same traits that listing specific MOOCs you’ve taken would. 

Also, read more about MOOC suggestions from Courtney Baron of INALJ Georgia here.