Transcript Free online courses & diplomas

FREE ONLINE COURSES & DIPLOMAS
PCNA: Sign Up with Alison &
Access Great Courses for Free!
WELCOME
Welcome, in this tutorial we will have a look at www.Alison.com – A great website
that has hundreds of free online courses, including many which will provide you with a
(completely free) diploma upon completion of the course.
The PCNA has been recommending Alison Courseware for quite a few successful
internship campaigns, and continues to do so due to their huge library of courseware.
In this tutorial we will signup for an account on the website, look at the different ways
to browse the courses available, and also start one to see the basics of how it works.
Alison includes courses on everything technology (and otherwise) from the basics, to
more advanced topics, which makes it a perfect resource for either you, or any in your
community that you are assisting.
Lets Start!
FIRST THING’S FIRST
Upon arriving to www.alsion.com you will be greeted with the option to browse
courses, have a look at the most popular courses & new courses etc.
However in order to do much you will need an account, so we will tackle that first.
Alison makes it pretty easy to signup for an account:
Just click the big
green button
SIGNING UP
You should now of been redirected to the signup page, you have four options;
A, signup like I did by entering your email, name and password. Or B,C, & D- signup
using your existing Yahoo, Facebook, or Google+ Account.
CONFIRMING YOUR ACCOUNT
The next screen will ask you to confirm your account by going to your email account
and opening the email you sent them (& click on the verification link in the email).
If you didn’t receive an email,
Check your “Junk” or “Spam” folder
As it might have been misinterpreted
As spam by your email provider.
If you still did not receive an email,
Follow the instructions in the yellow
Box.
BACK TO THE HOMEPAGE WE GO
You should now of been redirected to the homepage after opening the confirmation
link in your email. You can look at courses that Alison offers in a variety of ways, such
as sorting them by Category, Subject, Publisher, Diploma Level, Certificate Level etc.
I am going to browse for one using the “Category” filter.
PICK A COURSE, ANY COURSE
There is a long list of categories. I’m going to click on the “Digital Literacy & IT Skills”
and have a look what is in that category.
I am again presented with a long list, this time of all the courses offered in this
category. I will just pick the first one on the list in order to start a course and cover
the basics.
Just click on “Start Course”
MODULE 1
Most all courses on Alison are broken into “Modules” > which really is just a fancy
name for chapters. Most courses will have a the very least 2 modules, one for
learning and the second to take your assessment.
Do the modules, and the content in them in the order of number; eg- Module1, then
Module 2, Module 3, 4, 5 etc.
I’m going to start the First Module
for Adobe After Effects so I just
Click on the Box with the #1 in it

STARTING YOUR COURSE
Next, click on the first item in the module (in this case, there is only one item).
HOW THE COURSES WORK
The Alison courses use Adobe Flash Player, so if you get an error saying that there is
no plugin, make sure you install Flash Player from here.
The player looks like as shown below- with the left sidebar showing all of the videos
you will be watching for the section you are on.
Once you have finished all of the videos, just click the back button in your browser
and continue on to the next section or module. Don’t forget to take the final
assessment to complete the course!
ONE LAST THING
You can check/resume the courses you are working on by (signing in and) using the
menu at the top right of the webpage.
Click on the “Courses: #” link to be taken to a page showing all your active and
completed Alison courses.
That’s concludes this tutorial, hopefully you are now comfortable with the Alison
website and how to navigate it & pick a course to learn!
Jaiden Leach
PCNA 2013