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 – 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 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 , 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 account and opening the you sent them (& click on the verification link in the ). If you didn’t receive an , Check your “Junk” or “Spam” folder As it might have been misinterpreted As spam by your provider. If you still did not receive an , 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 . 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.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