Skillcrush

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! 

I already do website maintenance (html/css) in my career, but I wanted to step it up and add to my skills so I could branch out. I thought the Web Development blueprint would be an easy and affordable way to advance. I liked that it was flexible and I could do the lessons as I pleased. I was wrong. While the lessons are laid out nicely, clean, and seem short, they are not completely useful. They contain very short video lessons--I'm talking 3 minutes or less--and simple diagrams to teach. It seems logical in theory, but it doesn't work in practice. While there are a lot of basic resources and cheat sheets to refer to, it isn't enough. You really can find that information for free online, plus more!

I breezed through the HTML/CSS portion because I am familiar with that, but after starting Javascript, I was totally lost. It made me feel as if I was stupid and incompetent, but really its caused by the lack of explanation and information on Skillcrush's part. They immediately throw you into writing Javascript. While I like hands on learning, there needs to be thorough instruction on constructing statements and writing methods BEFORE throwing you off the deep end...especially in programming languages because of the various nuances in the code. There just wasn't enough guidance! There are so many holes they expect you to fill on your own. They literally instruct you to "google" how to do certain steps when they don't take the time to explain them in lessons. I am not paying you so I can google! That's what I pay my internet provider for! The majority of the lessons told you really simple information and then you were left to put the pieces together and magically create something out of scratch. So a 30 min to 1 hour lesson would take hours to complete. What a deterrent! 

There is no way someone who is a complete novice could successfully begin a career in web development after finishing these courses. That claim is such a joke. Employers would scoff at this resume if you brought this lack of skill to them. Even though Skillcrush claims you will have a polished, impressive portfolio at the end of Part 1....yea right! You get basic HTML & CSS to make a one page site with a few paragraphs and pictures. That's not acceptable in the modern web anymore and honestly is something you should expect from 1998. I got completely frustrated with how much the lessons leave you sitting in the dark that I haven't even finished the blueprint. I suspect the third and final portion, Ruby, Git & Sinatra, will be the same way.

There is a support system of other peers which can be nice, but I found the Mighty Bell platform to be very confusing. There were layers and layers of pages and half the time I didnt know where I was or if I was in the right group to post a question. Most of the time the students questions would go unanswered by the instructors and we were left trying to answer each others questions without any confirmation. They post daily tasks for each lesson in Mighty Bell as well, but my instructor was constantly late posting or posted the wrong week and took far too long to correct the mistake. That made learning even more confusing. The office hours were always at odd times...always during the weekend. I couldn't make any of them. It would be more useful if the office hours were during the week in the evenings.

Overall, I was disappointed with what I got out of Skillcrush for the $400 price tag. After giving up on Skillcrush, I picked up a Javascrip & JQuery book and felt more informed after reading it for 30 minutes than I did pulling my hair out for 2 weeks in the Javascript lessons. The lessons can help you start understanding websites, but I wouldn't use it to change your career....because it just simply does not give you that knowledge. I will say that the blog has a lot of great ideas and guidance on changing your career and how to get started. A++ in that aspect, but the lessons are terrible and were a waste of money.

Skillcrush was my first introduction to coding and I loved how it was designed for women and encouraged a community of females coders, but I didn't find the material to be thorough enough for an absolute beginner.  I ended up taking forever to get through the Skillcrush stuff because the video lessons were brief and didn't make much sense to me. All in all, I thought it was a waste of money because I ended up taking other non-Skillcrush courses to help me get through Skillcrush.  

I love the career resources and I'm thankful that Skillcrush left me feeling empowered as a female coder, but I really don't think it was worth the expense.  There are many other beginner friendly coding courses for far less money.  

When I began the Skillcrush Web Design Blueprint (Sept. 2014), I had no prior experience in web design or development.  I had been looking for a course that was geared toward women - for the design style and also communication.  I enjoyed the teaching style, 1:1 weekly office hours, community and support so much that I signed up for my 2nd Skillcrush Blueprint, Freelance WordPress Developer, Jan 2015.    

Through these blueprints I learned the foundations for several skills:   Web Designer Blueprint (Photoshop, HTML/CSS, JavaScript/JQuery  - the last one was the hardest for me and I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two); Freelance WordPress Developer (Intro to WordPress, Git, WordPress Best Practices, and Apprenticeship).  While there wasn't a focus in the Web Design Blueprint on job transition (aside from blog posts) - job skills were included in the WordPress Developer Blueprint (creating a resume, interviewing, client relationships, becoming a freelancer, and portfolio review).  

To get the most out of your Skillcrush Blueprints, I'd recommend:   1) Be as involved as you can on the Mightybell groups.  The more involved you are with asking questions and answering fellow classmates' questions - the more you will learn.   2) Show up to every possible 1:1 or group office hours, and participate.  3)  Do your best to keep up with lessons.   Even though this is self-paced and you can take all the time you need to complete your lessons, you will find more support from peers if you are current than if you are a few months behind.  The instructors are great at answering when you do get to the lessons, but you will find the most help by staying as close to the schedule as you can.   If you do get far behind, I have known a couple classmates to request to be put into the next start date's Mightybell group so that they can get on track with the new group's schedule, and it benefitted them. 4) If you see that there are peers with common interests or learning styles, consider asking if any of them would like to be "study buddies" (as recommended in one of the webinars), with the idea that you could message each other with any questions about the course, and encourage each other as you go.  I did that with a few peers and it has been among the best parts of the experience.   I'm a few months beyond my blueprint and still keep in touch with one of my "study buddies."  

I would HIGHLY recommend Skillcrush.  My favorite pieces aside from the content, were the interaction with instructors and peers on Google Hangouts and Mightybell.  As I processed the coursework with them, I learned so much more.   I really do feel the value is more than the cost of the course, and you will most likley make the cost up in your first client or two.    As other reviewers have said, you won't learn everything there is to know (probably in any course) - but I loved that the instructors often encouraged us that there is always more to learn, and that's exciting!  And that your website can and will continue to evolve as you/your business does (takes pressure off the perfectionists! ;))   

The courses are code heavy, so if you are more interested in the design side, you may want to consider other programs.  I thoroughly enjoyed Skillcrush and what I learned through the program, instructors, and peers!  And would highly recommend their blueprints.  Right now, I am looking to learn more about design to add to what I've learned through Skillcrush.  If/when Skillcrush creates a Graphic Design or Logos/Branding Blueprint - I'd be one of the first to sign up! :)