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Late 2012 I had the pleasure to join the FSDF e-Campus team. At that time, the team comprised of 3 people (including me) and I was thrilled to start my journey with our first 2 courses – Microfinance and SME Finance. In the beginning, I was quite skeptical about online learning since I was just finishing my Master’s studies and always had traditional academic type of classroom teaching. It was quite difficult to imagine a class without a professor, participants studying by themselves in front of a screen, and not being able to discuss actively with other students.
Luckily, I was given the chance to enroll in the Certified Expert in Microfinance starting in 2013 to have a closer insight into the course and on understanding the participant’s view. I followed the course during the German summer from the other side of the screen, which was a challenge as I felt like every time I opened the training materials the sun started shining and I could only see happy people enjoying the nice weather through my window. But I managed to combine sun and studies in my balcony and completed the course on time (Wohoo!). During this time, we started developing our next course, the very famous and notorious, Certified Expert in Risk Management.
During the first months working at FSDF e-Campus, I was more acquainted with e-learning and its benefits. We received hundreds of emails per week from participants mentioning how much they appreciated our courses, especially, those who did not have the chance to visit such courses in their home country for various reasons. Most of our participants could not follow classroom training as they were working full-time with a family to take care of . But above all, I felt really proud when participants wrote to us that the knowledge they gained from our courses was helping them to achieve their dreams in their professional career as this is the main objective of delivering FSDF e-Campus courses.
This definitely not only motivates me but also my team to deliver the best of our capabilities. We do so by understanding our participants’ needs of being always up to date in terms of the content and skills which help them with solving problems in their own companies. After experiencing all this, I realized that academic courses do not necessarily need to follow a traditional model and I admit that online courses are not suitable for everyone; studying online requires a lot of self-discipline. However, it is a great opportunity for those who do not have easy access to traditional education at a renowned international business school due to personal or financial reasons. Likewise, online courses serve as an excellent way to acquire relevant knowledge and skills, especially for professionals who are often spending their life at airports, in field work in a remote corner of the world or just prefer to follow a course from their couch.
Today, after 5 short years, our courses are well established in the market. I still think joining the FSDF e-Campus team, which now consists of 11 staff members from 7 different nationalities offering more than 10 courses in 4 different languages, was the right choice! Our job surprises us every day with new challenges and it is an amazing feeling to see how our team, our portfolio and the amount of participants have rapidly increased over the past years.
I hope to meet you in our courses soon. Till then Sayonara, Chao!
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