Top E-learning Scams to Beware of While Taking Online Courses
Now that everything is online, here are some E-learning scams and tricks you must be aware of.
The pandemic has hit us all hard and that wave has resulted in the boom of E-learning platforms and courses, where we could attend the classes from the comfort of our homes. However, there are lot of scams E-learning scams happening these days.
Hence it is very important for us to beware of the E-learning scams and tricks to avoid online frauds. Global Tech Outlook brings to you the Top E-learning Scams to Beware of While Taking Online Courses:
Scam 1: Duplicate Colleges and Courses
The word ‘college’ is unprotected so anyone can set up an online educational college, where in reality it does not exist. One scam involves creating a site, charging you for a course, and then never delivering the product. So, the scam could be creating a fake course or a college name and offering a bait with fancy names and fake certificates.
Scam 2: Cloak and Dagger Sales Presentations
Certain online trainings will actually be cloak and dagger products, that actually try to sell you another product or service. When you are choosing online training, you need to look for courses that provide at least 4 to 8 learning objectives or learning outcomes. For instance, the course may demand to buy a book only from a particular site or a particular publishing that won’t accept COD and only pre-paid orders.
Scam 3: Fake Qualifications
It is easy to fall foul of scammers who promise professional qualifications that meet the Department of Education’s National Educational Framework. Scammers can easily hook you in by selling a course but then fail to materialise the professional certificate or licence. Fake certifications here not only apply for the students who pursue the course, it applies even for the accredited certificates the course or the college or the faculty is credited to.
Scam 4: Promises of Placements
Another hoax tactic often used are promises of employment, for example, a provider selling a course that guarantees work, or a set of clients at the end of the programme. In this case, the course is not the problem, it’s just that the money promised at the end does not materialise.
Scam 5: The Online Course is a Primer for a More Expensive Course
As online courses’ content is completely shielded until you have paid your money, some scammers put together a very short overview course – which is not worth the money you’ve paid for it – only to then promote a longer, more expensive course. Also, they insist to make bulk payments at one go.
The only solution to not fall in trap for such E-learning scams offering a fake degree or course is to make you register yourself from an authorized website like Coursera, Udemy etc.
Even after you register, make sure you double-check the learning outcomes, the placement opportunities estimate the ROI and then proceed.
