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Udacity Review: Is It Worth Learning Online?
Hi, everyone!
It is absolutely clear that in the 21st century, we need to keep learning new things and acquiring new information. Knowledge becomes outdated quickly, sometimes within a matter of hours. That's why we need to learn every day and apply what we learn to our lives immediately.
However, with thousands of online courses and educational platforms available, how do we find the right one? How do we know which platform is worth our time, money, and effort?
This is a big question, and we have spent considerable time researching the information for this review.
Today, I want to introduce you to a relatively young but very promising project. We're going to talk about Udacity.
Online Education and Udacity
Online courses have already become a great alternative to traditional education. Thanks to the internet, you can learn from lectures offered by outstanding universities such as Harvard and Stanford without leaving your home.
Today, we'll discuss a relatively young and interesting educational service: Udacity.
In late 2013, the company moved away from university-style classes and began offering online professional training courses designed to help people enhance their careers.
Since then, Udacity has built a small but diverse collection of courses, particularly well suited to computer science and programming. It has partnered with several universities to create online credit-bearing courses and launched five programs called Nanodegrees, tailored to the employment needs of corporate partners such as AT&T, Google, and Salesforce.
Design and User Experience
The first thing you notice when launching the application is its clean, modern design. Everything looks minimalist and stylish, reminiscent of iOS 7.
There are no overloaded interfaces or unnecessary design elements. Transitions between controls and educational lectures are accompanied by pleasant animations, and the few interface elements are positioned exactly where you would expect them to be.
The application's design is definitely worthy of praise.
Before starting a course, you will be prompted to register with Udacity. The process is quick and straightforward: sign up, confirm your account, and you're ready to go.
Courses and Learning Experience
Many courses are available for free. Each course includes a description and a preview and is divided into several lessons.
Each lesson, in turn, consists of approximately 10 to 15 thematic videos. At the end of each activity, the program notifies you of your progress and how close you are to completing the lesson.
One particularly convenient feature is the ability to download lessons for offline viewing. If you're going on a trip, simply download the material in advance and continue learning without wasting your time.
Like Khan Academy, Udacity organizes and creates educational materials. However, because its programs are developed in collaboration with corporate sponsors, Udacity claims that its credentials are designed and recognized by industry leaders to help advance your career.
Whether these credentials will actually make a difference to employers remains to be seen.
Free Courses vs. Paid Programs
Udacity's credentials are more extensive than those offered by some competing educational platforms, such as Coursera and edX, which cater to similar audiences of technology-oriented adult learners.
Although students can review much of Udacity's course content for free, they may need to pay for enrollment verification, personal feedback, and verified certificates.
Udacity offers both standalone courses and structured, time-based Nanodegree programs.
Free courses provide access to learning materials but generally lack personalized feedback and a strong sense of community.
Paid courses and Nanodegree programs include standardized feedback from Udacity trainers, along with verified graduation certificates.
Given how relatively new these programs are, it is still too early to determine how much value employers will place on these credentials.
My Experience with Udacity
I evaluated Udacity by enrolling in a self-paced course and exploring its Nanodegree offerings.
My perspective is shaped by my background in technical journalism and my experience as a student, teacher, and administrator at a traditional higher education institution.
My goal is to focus primarily on how successful Udacity is as an adult learning platform.
Calling Udacity's classes simply "online courses" is somewhat misleading. Its courses include many features associated with online education, such as discussion forums, machine-graded assessments, and video-based microlectures.
However, unlike online courses offered by my own institution, Udacity is open to anyone interested in learning the subject. This allows for broad participation, although the discussion forums can sometimes feel like a mixed bag.
Furthermore, if I take a course developed by AT&T for its potential employees, it is unclear whether the credential would be valuable to another company's HR department, such as Twitter's.
Course Selection and Categories
You can browse Udacity's course catalog by category, skill level, and sponsor.
Filtering by category reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of the platform.
At the time of my review, there were approximately two dozen courses each in software development and web development. However, Udacity offered only three non-technical courses and relatively few courses focused on Android and iOS development.
I estimated that approximately 60 classes were available in total, with about a dozen listed under more than one category.
Sorting by skill level suggests that the platform is particularly suitable for intermediate learners. Around three dozen courses were classified as intermediate, while the remaining courses were roughly divided between beginner-level and advanced offerings.
Despite Udacity's extensive corporate partnerships, with the exception of several courses from Google, many companies—including Facebook, Twitter, and NVIDIA—appeared to have limited their involvement to individual courses.
I am also somewhat skeptical about the results produced by filtering courses by sponsor.
For example, selecting 23andMe displayed courses associated with Zipfian, Hack Reactor, San Jose State University, and other organizations.
It is worth noting that two universities had dedicated course offerings on Udacity. Georgia Tech had its own category for courses related to its undergraduate computer science program, while San Jose State University was listed as a sponsor for courses such as Introduction to Java Programming.
My First Course: The Design of Everyday Things
I began by auditing a beginner-level course titled An Introduction to the Design of Everyday Things.
I chose this course because it allowed me to evaluate a free, non-sponsored learning experience.
However, even the course title promotes the book written by its lead instructor, Don Norman.
The course is designed for self-study and is scheduled to take approximately two weeks, with around six hours of work per week.
Based on my experience, I suspect that an active learner could complete it in significantly less time.
The course consists of three lessons and a final project. Each lesson includes instructional videos and coursework exercises.
Final Thoughts
There are several aspects of Udacity's approach to online education that I find commendable.
Udacity rightly recognizes that education is not an isolated event in a person's life but an ongoing and cumulative process.
Nanodegrees, in particular, may appeal to readers who want to acquire new work-related skills during their free time.
For motivated learners—especially those interested in computer programming or computer science—Udacity's small but growing portfolio of professional courses offers an interesting learning opportunity.
If you are interested in exact sciences, programming languages, cryptography, robotics, or physics, Udacity has courses that may appeal to you.
The application is convenient and visually appealing, and the service continues to develop. The limited variety of educational material may not remain a long-term problem as the platform expands.
So, let's gather our enthusiasm, download the application, and start improving our skills!
What do you think about online education? Are you already using any of these services?
Udacity: Pros and Cons
Advantages
Nice, user-friendly application
Free lectures and learning materials
Offline learning
Interactive coursework
Specialized, career-oriented programs
Disadvantages
Limited variety of educational material
Some courses lack personal feedback
Uncertain employer recognition of credentials
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