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Engineering Courses Online – Become an Engineering Ninja

Engineering and Leadership | Engineering Courses

Photo Credit: Flickr/ mer chau

When I left undergrad, I discovered something terrible: my education left me woefully unprepared for real engineering work.

I remember arriving at work my first week and being asked to “spec’ a cable”. I literally had no idea what that meant.

“You know, like, chose the size the conductor, the insulation rating, all that stuff.” my boss told me.

“Right”, I said, “I’m on it.”, not having a sweet clue where to start.

I was embarrassed, to say the least. How could I go through more than 4 years of school and not know something so basic?

That was the first of many eye-opening moments in the first weeks and months of my career. I came to learn that my engineering education, while excellent, was not going to be enough for me to get by in the real world of work. The academic rigour was an excellent foundation, to be sure. But what I discovered was that it wouldn’t be enough to really thrive in industry.

What I needed was a quick way to get up to speed on a lot of the practical, hands-on aspects of engineering. Sure, experience would end up being the best teacher, but I was looking for a way to short-circuit the process.

After searching high and low, I found a number of different resources that would end up being pivotal in my development as an engineer in industry. One of the best tools I found were online engineering courses meant for working professionals. Today, I want to share one my my favourites with you – PDHengineer.com.

At the end of the post, I’ll tell you how I can help give you personalized help in finding the perfect engineering course to fit what you’re looking for.

My favourite online engineering courses

PDHengineer.com logo

PDHengineer.com is a website dedicated to continuing education for engineers. It currently offers a number of courses (804, to be exact) in every discipline of engineering, as well as peripheral subjects like business, law, and ethics.

What I loved so much about the website is that it’s courses were affordable, and that I could do them on my own time. That way, I could pick up whatever course I wanted, and tackle it at my own pace. The other thing I like a lot about this site is that it’s courses are accredited for professional development hours in the United States. To me, that leant a certain level of credibility to the course material.

Pros

What I like about PDHEngineer.com is that:

  • It’s affordable – most courses are in the $30 to $90 range. Some others are really expensive, but that’s the exception rather than the rule
  • I can study on my time. There’s no need to attend classes or rearrange my life.
  • The system is simple. Just download the course material, study it, and take the test.
  • You can take the test as many times as you need to pass.
  • Quality materials – the teachers are experts in their field, and PDHEngineer.com itself has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau

Cons

There are some downsides to this site, too.

  • No classmates – Often, I find it helpful to discuss things with classmates, but you don’t get that here.
  • No deadlines – Some people might see this as a good thing, but not having any deadlines means that you could, in theory, get away with never finishing a class because there’s nobody hounding you to get things done.

Who is this for?

I recommend this site to any engineer in any discipline who wants to dig into the more practical aspects of engineering practice. To be sure, there are a lot of academic topics, too, but  I think it’s best for “working professional” education.

I’d also recommend it for people of one discipline who are working in or with another discipline. One good example is a course on Electrical Engineering for Non-Electrical Engineers. This is a great way to get versed in the language of other disciplines.

With the cons mentioned above, the site is definitely not for people who have a hard time with self-discipline. Some people need to structure of a classroom and specific deadlines. If you’re that kind of engineer, I’d suggest you skip this and check out coursera.org as an alternative.

How does it work?

PDHEngineer.com is easy to use. All you do is:

  1. Find a course
  2. Study the material
  3. Take the test (as many times as you need to pass)
  4. Print the certificate
  5. Do your happy dance

The rest of the post will be a walk-through of these  steps to show you what the site is all about.

An Example

1. Finding a course

Finding a course is easy. First, go to www.PDHengineer.com to get to the home page.

Go to PDHEngineer.com Now

I like to search through courses by discipline. For example, if I want to find an electrical engineering course, I use the list of disciplines on the sidebar.

Choosing a course

Once there, I’ll find a course that I’m interested in. Today, I’ll take a course on Induction and Synchronous Motor Fundamentals to show you how everything works.

Intro to Synchronous Motors

Click on the course you want, then click “Preview Course”

Preview Course

 

The “Preview Course” option is awesome. What it lets you do is review a PDF of the course material before you actually buy the course. It used to be that you got the whole course in the preview, which was awesome, but now you only get the first few pages. It’s still enough to get a sense for a couple important things:

  • The material that is covered
  • The depth/ complexity of the material
  • The style that the author uses to convey the information

I think it’s important for you to really consider each of these points before deciding to buy a course. You definitely want to make sure that the course is covering the material you’re interested in and to the depth you need.

Once you’ve decided you like a course, just go back to the course page and click the “Add to Cart” button.

Add to cart

 

From there, you can either look for more courses, or just go on to buy the course. In this example, I’ll just buy the one course.

Checkout

Once you’ve done this, you follow the prompts to set up an account and provide your payment information. It works the same way as any other online shopping portal. So you know, the official company name that shows up on your receipt (either PayPal or your credit card) will be Decatur Professional Development, LLC.

Once everything goes through, you’ll end up at a “Thank you!” screen. Just click the “My Courses” link on the left to get access to your course.

Thank you!

Then select “My Courses and Receipts”…

My courses and receipts

And finally select your course…

Course list

That will take you to a screen where you can get started on your studying.

2. Study the material

This part is relatively straightforward. All you need to do is download the course material using the link below, and study.

View Course

If you’d like a really efficient way to study, I recommend the SQ3R method. It’s what I use now to study all of my MBA course material, and it helps me understand and retain material in half the time it took before.

Course material is nearly always in PDF format. For this example course, it’s a 9-page PDF with a couple charts and graphs.

3. Take the test

Once you’re ready, you can take the test. Most tests are multiple choice and true/ false questions. As you go through the test, you can go back to questions you were unsure of, which is great. I’ve written electronic tests in the past that wouldn’t let you do this, which can be very stressful.

For my example course, the pass mark is 70%.

To start the test, just click the “Start online test” link.

Start online test

Once you do that, you’ll get a screen that shows you some information about the test. There’ll be a button at the bottom that allows you to “Attempt the quiz now”

***Protip: It might help you to write the test before studying the material. Knowing what the test questions will be like can help you focus your studying (as is suggested in the SQ3R method above). You can retake the test as many times as you need to pass, so there’s no harm in doing this. Of course, if the goal is to really get into the information, as opposed to simply earning the credit, you’ll want to study all of the material in detail.

A typical test screen looks like this…

Test Screen

The screen shows you your question, the possible answers, the option to flag the question and a navigation menu. To flag the question, just click the “flag question” link in the grey box. To answer a question, just select the option (a, b, c, or d) that you think best answers the question. The answer will be saved automatically.

The test only shows a certain number of questions per page. For my example test here, there are only 5 questions per page of the 10 questions total.  To get to the next questions, click the “Next” button at the bottom of the page.

Once you’ve answered all the questions, go to the last page and make sure all your answers were registered. Then, click the “Submit all and finish” button.

Submit all

Once you’ve clicked the submit button, you should be able to see your test results. You’ll get a breakdown of your overall score, the questions you answered correctly and incorrectly, and the correct answers for all those questions you got wrong.

Quiz Results

If you didn’t pass the test, you’ll have the opportunity to review what went wrong, and you can take another crack at it.

If you passed, you can move on to print your certificate.

4. Print your certificate

To print your certificate for the course you just passed (Yay!), click the “Return to course home” link.

Return to course home

Then select the “Certificate of Completion” link.

Certificate of completion

Your certificate will look something like this…

Certificate_of_Completion_pdf

5. Do your happy dance

Now, I highly recommend you celebrate. You officially made progress towards becoming a better engineer! Woot woot!

Let me help you!

In order to help you along with your continuing education, I’d like you to tell me what course you’d love to be able to take. Just write me with your request in the comments section below, and I’ll find the best course  I can for you on PDHEngineer.com. I promise to write you back with what I find, and if I can’t find anything for you on that site, I’ll come up with a recommendation for you from some other website.

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Have your say

10 Comments

  1. Ronin

    This is an excellent idea man, I’m currently in my 3rd year of a BA of Mechanical Eng and I have been worrying about getting into the real world as I have been told plenty of times that new graduates are hopeless in the field. Glad I now have a quick way of getting up to speed when I get out there. Thanks!

    Reply
    • Pat Sweet

      Hi Ronin,

      Great stuff! I’m glad you liked it. If you need any help with anything in particular, be sure to drop me a line.

      Best of luck with your studies.

      Pat

      Reply
  2. khadijah (@khadijahchi)

    Hi Pat,

    Great site! I have a couple of questions regarding these online PDH courses, there are MANY of them out there. Too many and too little resources on how to discern the quality of these courses. I’d like to really learn stuff (not just accumulating PDH hours), and some of these courses are more expensive/cheaper than others.

    http://www.pdhdirect.com
    http://www.pdhonline.org has a lot of courses too

    Next question, as a professional, it is expected that one keeps up with the latest and invest in educating oneself. The cost of continuing education and maintaining professional memberships can add up, and some employers may or may not pay for them. How much should one invest in continuing education?

    Reply
    • Pat Sweet

      Hi Khadijah,

      Thanks very much! I’m glad you like the site. It means a lot to me.

      As for PDH courses, you’ve got a great point. There ARE a ton out there. As for the two sites you mentioned, I have no experience with PDHDirect, but I’ll take a look into them. I’ve done courses with PDHOnline and was happy with them for sure. They also have an enormous catalogue of courses, which is nice.

      Discerning quality is tough in these cases. What I’ve done in the past is taken free or cheap courses to test the waters. That gives me an indication on the style of the course, the quality, the website’s layout, etc. Then, if I don’t like something, I’m not out a bunch of money. I recommend PDHEngineer because they’re the ones I like the best (so far, anyway!).

      If you’re interested in learning a lot, then there are a couple other places you might want to check out…

      https://www.coursera.org – gives university level courses for free from some of the world’s leading universities.
      http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm – same kind of thing, but from MIT specifically
      https://www.edx.org – similar to Coursera

      As for your last question, it is absolutely expected that engineers will keep themselves up to date. Even if an employer doesn’t really push it, I’d recommend it anyway. You’re never done learning. I take the mentality that if my company went out of business tomorrow, I want to the best possible candidate for a new job. If my company stays in business – great! Then I’m the best educated in my group. It’s win-win. If you find it tough to get financial support from your company, I’d just chose low-cost routes. Books, volunteer opportunities, and online courses (see my recommendations above) can all be very helpful, and not all that expensive.

      I hope this helps, Khadijah!

      Pat

      Reply
  3. Raoul Fossi

    Hey Pat,

    You cannot begin to imagine how much all your points are in line with my concerns.

    I just graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and about to start work. However I realized during my internships from interacting with technicians and maintenance personnel that I was lacking basic technical knowledge. That really really bothered me because i felt like it affected my credibility.

    So I made it a goal to learn more practical stuff after graduation. However, i was thinking about going to a trade school to learn hands on stuff like maintenance tech or welding or electricity tech etc… What do u think about that?

    Now that i found you i will definitely check out phdengineer to see what it has to offer. Am just worried about the theoretical aspect of it which is what i have been doing for the past 5 years. If it’s as good as you say then you will be my hero because getting this knowledge has been a big concern of mine for a while. And i will b glad to pay for it.

    Thankyou

    Reply
    • Pat Sweet

      Hi Raoul,

      Thank you so much for your comments! I really appreciate that. Hope you have luck with PDHEngineer.com. If you have any questions about it, just let me know.

      Pat

      Reply
  4. karawatersceo

    Words of advice from a 35+ year structural PE. Please read your board rules first. I’m licensed in 8 states and typically spend 20 minutes looking over the rules before anything. Continuing education requirements do not vary much between states. Very few states actually approve CE providers. This being said there are multiple multiple ways to earn continuing education credits. College Courses, instructing other PE’s, board meeting attendance, to name a few. In fact most of these CE sites will give you hours if you write a course, they also will pay you small royalties. I found after some research different sites offer the same courses written by the same PE. Not that this is unethical but for $15 to 30 a hour, I think that’s vastly overpriced considering the courses have been around for years. Regardless, I do get in a crunch sometimes and use this site EZ-pdh.com. They’re a board approved CE provider and the courses are the cheapest and quickest to use. I did call them and spoke with one of the PE instructors and basically they use to write courses for other providers for hours but were tired of the of the PE community getting tricked and spending way too much, so they opened their site..Anyways, my two cents.

    Reply
    • Pat Sweet

      Hey there,

      Thanks for the awesome reference. I’ll be sure to check it out.

      Pat

      Reply
  5. SANJEEV KANSAL

    Nice blog Pat. I was using discountpdh.com for individual pdh courses and discountpdhunlimited.com for pdh package. I will defiantly check your suggested pdh provider.

    Reply
    • Pat Sweet

      Hey Sanjeev,

      Thanks for sharing this! I really appreciate it.

      Pat

      Reply

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February 15, 2014

By Pat Sweet

Pat is the president of The Engineering & Leadership Project. He's a recognized expert in leadership, project management, systems engineering and productivity.

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