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There are a few things about Udacity that make it different from yet another TeamTreehouse/Tuts+/Pluralsight/Lynda where you pay to get course content: 1) It a
by thatthatis 13y ago
There are a few things about Udacity that make it different from yet another TeamTreehouse/Tuts+/Pluralsight/Lynda where you pay to get course content:
1) It appears they're sticking with free if you do-it-yourself and charging for coaching and certification.
2) Their pedagogical approach, at least in the few courses that I took about a year ago, has a tightly integrated learn-do loop. And, going beyond just pausing for a mini-quiz, in the programming lessons you stopped to write actual code and attempted to "make this pass the unit tests."
2b) Being presented with a conceptual framework, given a problem that framework could solve, coding your own, then seeing how Peter Norvig would have coded it was one of the best programming learning experiences I've ever had.
3) Their content has, historically, never dipped below first-rate.
The transition to more career oriented skills makes me wonder if #3 might go away, but even if you relax #3, #1 and #2 are better than anything else I'm aware of.
I try to consume as much elearning content as possible (ideally 2x the hours I watch tv), and udacity is in my opinion far and away the best producer.
- psbp 13y agoI have the same concern about #3 and even the viability of the certificate/coaching tier. They need to make a pretty compelling case for the certificates as a valid path to employment. Though, I'm happy that they managed to find a strategy to monetization without blocking access to existing course material.
- thatthatis 13y agoCertificates solve a huge issue I've had as an e-learner - getting good credentials for the learning I do electronically. Prior to this it didn't matter how much you learned on Udacity, there wasn't a good way to signal that achievement/knowledge/learning. I'm fine overall because I have traditional credentials that speak well enough and open enough doors for me. A udacity certificate would just be icing to add to my resume. But, the learning Udacity provides is probably most valuable to people who don't have traditional credentials. And, Udacity as an institution is most valuable to the economy/society if we can use it as signals of competence for people without traditional credentials. So I find a lot of reasons to get really excited about this move. I imagine there's probably a budget/frugal hack that would work where you take the course for free, finish it, then enroll in the credential/coaching for a single month. I wouldn't be at all surprised if one-month-cost post-hoc credentialing is an intended feature of their platform.
- psbp 13y agoyep, it seems built to encourage learning and then pursuing the credentials to guarantee that enrollment stats are good.
- thatthatis 13y agoWhat do you mean "guarantee that enrollment stats are good"?