Skillcrush

I happen to LOVE Skillcrush!! I have taken a couple different Blueprints and have found them enjoyable, well-rounded and pretty thorough. They are probably not going to teach you every possible facet of each subject, but they do try to touch on some of the major aspect of that particular course...whether it is Web Development or Ruby on Rails or whatever. I think they do a good job of incorporating the various 'tools of the trade', whether that is GitHub or Photoshop etc. My computer skills all come from being self-taught...so for me, the fact that they try to lead you to ask the right questions and how to search for solutions rather than spoon feeding you the answer is good. Of course, sometimes, learning is hard and frustrating...but knowing how and where to look for help I think is a great skill on its own! And in my experience, communication with Skillcrush has been great. There is a Skillcrush community as well, which is nice...granted, that community only works when others use it, which I do not believe is the fault of Skillcrush. I am sure there is room for improvements....and from my experience, I do think Skillcrush is continuing to find ways to improve...so I can only assume they will get even better with time.

If you want tech skills, you can't beat Skillcrush. They offer several different options, from single classes to sequential courses (called "Blueprints"), so you can decide the best choice for your career goals.

The lessons are clear, easy to follow, and fun. Adda is perfect for the video lessons. She really explains the concepts well. She also has a fun personality. The instructors and assistants are wonderful at answering questions. They look at your code, so they can guide you if it's off.

What I love most about Skillcrush is the people. Everyone I've talked with has been incredibly supportive. I got behind in my Blueprint, but it wasn't a big deal. They answered my questions and were very encouraging. I recently finished my first Blueprint and I'm on to another.

Whether you're looking to get basic tech skills for your current job or, like me, change careers, I can't recommend Skillcrush enough. I do suggest getting some of the books that they recommend, specifically the Jon Duckett for the Javascript & jQuery class. I needed both the lessons and the book.

I enrolled in the Skillcrush Web Design Blueprint back in November of 2014, and it opened up a world of possibility to me. The learning modules gave us hands-on experience in learnable chunks of content, and the instructor and classroom help was top notch!  And before I knew it, I was coding up static and mobile sites! (Read my blog post review of it!)

I loved my Skillcrush experience so much I became a repeat customer. Later in 2015, I took the Freelance WP Developer Blueprint.  During that class, I built my first WP site and decided to make my client services public. Since then I've had small and larger clients and have a great side hustle going alongside a day job I love. 

Prior to signing up for Skillcrush's Web Development Blueprint, I'd taken a few courses on Codecademy and Code School, along with knowing basic coding needed for customizing Tumblr/Myspace/ Livejournal back in the day. I already had a pretty good hang of HTML/CSS and breezed through a month's worth of lessons in a week or two. When it came time to actually learn something new, I found Skillcrush's videos and lessons lacking in information, definitely not enough to make me a skilled web coder. While I appreciated the TA's and other women in the community, asking the TA a question only to be presented with a bunch of Google links without any proper answer just made me angry. Thanks, but I don't need to pay $400 to Google coding questions, I'm paying these people at Skillcrush (whom are supposed to be knowledgeable of the topics) to help me!

As others have said, the Mighty Bell platform they use for communications is horribly organized and hard to follow. Often times recent postings or important postings would be lost on the page. I was so happy to be done with it.

Needless to say, I ended up getting a refund. You're better off using free resources.

Just do CodeAcademy. It's free and you can now get support for $20 a month.

This course started out okay for me but if you need techinical help, like with your account it takes DAYS for anyone to back to you. The actual interface that they use for you to do challenges in all parts of the course are messy and confusing.

The lessons themselves aren't explained very well, especially the Javascript portion. I got through the css and html okay but I pretty much had to drop out when it got to the Javascript (which I am now learning using other programs and books). 

They also spent way too much time on fluffy stuff like how to use photoshop which, sorry but that's not what I signed up for. They spend a whole week on design and typography, which I do think is important but not as important as learning CODING which is what the course is supposed to be for. They even go over color theory before they freaking teach you how to code! 

I mean sure, teach design, but at least wait until your students can actually make a website first! This is also super irritating for me because I actually have a bachelors in fine art and have taken typography, color theory and design classes already. Such a waste of my time and $! 

It reminds me of a photoshop professor I had who would always say, " I am just here to teach you how this program works, I cannot give you creative talent, I cannot make you an artist". 

They needed to focus more time on the coding. They should teach design separately. It's true that everyone can learn to code but not everyone is going to be good at design! They make you think that anyone can be a great designer after taking a three month course.

Can you learn to code in three months? Yeah. Does that automatically mean you will be a talented web DESIGNER? Hell No! Sorry, I worked really hard to put myself through a fine art school so that really gets my goat.

They push a lot of their favorite products, without mentioning that you don't have to actually use those products.

It was too easy for the first couple of weeks and then when I got to the Javascript part it was overly confusing. And I can't stress enough how messy the interface is. 

Also, I signed up for the mobile web design course by accident and made it a few weeks into the course before realizing I needed to know HTML and CSS first. They did switch me but it did take at least a week for anyone to respond to my questions.

I learned how to use GIT during that time which is cool and was easy enough to understand. But during that course they definitely favor Mac over PC. And that sucks because when you are using Command-line interface to program,Mac and Pc don't work in the same way. All of the examples and videos show someone working on a Mac and they don't show examples of what it looks like on PC. For some of the excercises they mention how the two differ, but most of the time they are just like " this is different when you do it on a PC, sorry!". 

I now realize that there are so many FREE options that are much more intuitive and easy to understand than Skill Crush for learning html, css, javascript and any other programming languages that you don't really need to spend $350 on a Skill Crush course. 

All of the paid programs that they suggest that you use have a million other alternatives. 

I like the community part of it where you can interact with other users but that's pretty much it.  

I signed up for the Ruby on Rails blueprint eager to learn. Adda has a great personality and I enjoy her short videos.

However, my overall experience has been frustrating. It can take more than 48 hours to receive a response to a question (if at all). Daily lessons are emailed and students are encouraged to communicate  and post their work in Mightybell. For the past several classes I am the only student posting to Mightybell.  There is rarely any feedback and I've spent most of my time supplementing with outside videos and tutorials.

After a couple days of not being able to proceed, I sent an email requesting a refund unless someone could respond to my questions. In this case I received a friendly response from a TA. 

If you get stuck in a class and are not able to proceed you can expect to remain stuck unless you ask for a refund.

Skillcrush has the potential to be great but unfortunatley they fall short on offering basic support.

It is pretty much a $400 roadmap to follow on your own. 

This online course consists of videos, reading materials, beautiful hand-outs and cheat sheets, and hands-on coding, and research links. The course (aka Blueprint) is divided into three sections. The course begins wiith learning the Ruby language using the terminal. The next month brings Ruby to the web, using Sinatra, Active Record, and Postgresql db. Test-driven development is introduced, along with more Ruby gems. The apps are deployed to Heroku. In the final month students use Rails to build a test-driven, complex web app. More gems are use and organized into dev and test. Quizzes are given after each module to help solidify your knowledge. Adda's positive, querky personality make learning fun. Her encouragement gets you through the times when you feel overwhelmed or frustrated.

In addition to the above, there is an instructor with office hours each week where you can ask questions, get help, and share your code using Google Hangouts. Those are very helpful. The instructor also responds to email, but sometimes real-time dialog is what you need to explain a problem. There is also an online forum, MightyBell, where students post accomplishments or questions. This is helpful when other students are participating. 

Skillcrush teaches you how to learn. So if you want to be force fed tech skills, you can't expect to do so for an hour-a-day. You can't expect to become a developer without going above and beyond and practicing everything you learn in the tutorial a ton. If you want to spend 3 months in a class and become a full-fledged developer do these (1) quit your job, (2) spend $12,000-15,000+ on an immersive course + housing, and (3) devote 60 hours+ week coding. Skillcrush is for DIY learners looking for a little more structure. 

You get the basics and learn how to level-up yourself. And you get great instructors helping you do that and a-mazing master classes introducing you to more amazing concepts. I've done so much since finishing my course in March-and I was encouraged/empowered to do so by Skillcrush. Imposter syndrome is a real thing for people changing careers/women entering a male-dominated space. Learning web dev is not just about learning technical skills, it's about learning the soft skills that help you feel they belong.

In all of the tech events I have felt empowered to attend (meetups, in person classes, Django Girls workshop) so many developers say 50% of their job is searching things on Google. And you pick up some mad Google skills with Skillcrush. And some amazing resources to keep you going even after the course is completed. It's Web Design and/or Web Development you learn by doing and Skillcrush is a great place to start (and continue) doing!

As far as job resources...they rolled out a career section after I completed the course (and I still get action-lifetime membership baby) and the master classes are great (i.e. multiple webinars with the Power to Fly CEO) It has been really helpful with putting myself together and getting me on the right path. A 5 would of course be assistance with job placement; a girl can dream!