Springboard

Springboard was a great overview to the UX design process. The curriculum was thorough and my mentor helped me to focus on what really matters based on his experience in the field. I work full time and have a family, so the course took me a little less than 4 months. For the $2000 I paid, I wish I had more than the one capstone project to add to my portfolio. I am thankful that I have access to the curriculum after the course is done so that I can go through the process for another project on my own. One suggestion I have is to facilitate relationships between non profits who need UX volunteer work and students, allowing for real-world projects and case studies. 

o I completed my Bachelors, went directly into my Masters, but then was really struggling with landing a job. I was failing the technical interviews, and then a good friend of mine recommended Springboard.

I took the entrance exam (At the time it was timed exam with a few simple to moderate coding problems) and was accepted into the program.

In my first week I was assigned a mentor and introduced to all of the software / learning platforms.

The first month was centered around learning python, SQL, and completing a slew of DataCamp courses (You get a DataCamp membership with your Springboard course) that really prepare you for your big projects, the Capstone Projects.

You work with your mentor to choose your projects (The first one is intended for a simple but deep data set, a good example is the Capital Bikeshare dataset from the UCI Repository, feel free to checkout my github for an example Username: JonOrr . Meanwhile the second project requires a bit more data cleaning, think along the lines of a kaggle competition.) then you follow up through weekly calls that keep you on point.

Throughout the course you'll also learn how to better conduct your job search, interviews, and role targeting (Do you want to be a Data Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, Data Scientist, Data Analyst, etc.). There is a job guarantee that gave me a lot of confidence while I was doing the course, it has a good amount of terms and conditions, but all of them are reasonable. They include but aren't limited to: Apply to 5 jobs a week, don't skip any interviews, etc. The career team works hard to make sure you get into a role that both fits your skill level, and your career goals. Let's say you want to be a Data Engineer and are quite suited to it, they won't push you to be a Data Analyst instead.

One month after the completion of my course I was offered a Data Scientist position with a competitive salary (going to keep the number confidential but it was strong) in one of the regions of my choice (You choose 2-3 regions at the start of the course, I chose: Boston & San Francisco) I could not be happier with my experience.

 

If you found my review helpful and decide to pursue a Springboard course please consider using the following referral link: https://www.springboard.com/invite/6HPPV

The springboard UX Design online course is a cheap alternative to the in-person bootcamps. The course goes through the basics of UX design, allows students to complete 1 full project, and pairs students with mentors. Mentors are extremely knowledgeable and helpful and are well-connected in the industry. The project goes through the full UX design process, and gives you material to put onto your portfolio at the end of the course. The online forums, or community, is composed of fellow classmates who are available to give feedback and provide information or help.
The concept of UX design relies on obtaining feedback for any work you have created, and this is one area that Springboard struggles with. Students who have completed some work need to spend a lot of valuable time finding people to help them with things like surveys, interviews, user testing, card sorting. Additionally, some of the curriculum can be repetitive and overlapping.

I attended the Springboard UX Design program from September 2017 to April 2018 and had a great experience. I initially started my course in 2016 for three months before pausing the program. Since that time the curriculum was significantly revamped for the better. The strongest aspect of the course are the mentors providing weekly coaching. I had three mentors throughout my Springboard courses, two of which had experience in the game development industry, which was important to me. One of my mentors did not have much experience in the industry and as a result I requested a change in mentors. This was the only negative experience I had with the course, and resulted in some duplicated work when I transitioned to my next mentor. Even though this mentor did not have game development experience, they had plenty of Fortune 500 UX knowledge and if my desired job was not so niche, I believe the mentor relationship would have been excellent.

The curriculum has a relatively short beginner's guide to UX concepts before introducing the capstone project. The capstone will take up most of your time, and all of the small assignments build to this final project. I felt like the training content (largely through Lynda videos) was applicable and engaging. It helped to apply the ideas from the video directly to my project as I took notes. Having a capstone to constantly build on while studying these concepts provided constant motivation. My mentor also helped take concepts and apply them to my project. I found it easy to speed through sections I was already well versed in, and enjoyed being able to take my time in sections that were new to me.

Overall, I'd recommend this program with the caveat that if your mentor doesn't feel right for you in your gut don't feel afraid to contact Springboard support immediately and talk it out with them. They are very responsive and immediately placed me with a mentor that fit my needs. I'm glad I learned the skills I did, and was able to create a professional portfolio from my learning experiences.

Something they don't mention in the on-boarding/ marketing material is that you also get a year's Lynda.com subscription with your Springboard course. This is a great resource to access if you have other disciplines you want to study.

I completed the introduction to data science course in 3 months. The course used the R programming language and covered important skills required of data scientist. This included data wrangling, data visualizations, data story telling, probability and statistics, and machine learning. The course also provided career resources. The material in this course was good and I believe I learned a lot. There is also a capstone project you are required to complete. This is where you bring all the skills you learned together. 

The best part of the course was a mentor who’s is a professional data scientist where you get 1:1 calls once per week. You can chat about anything data science related. The mentor helps guide you and motivate you, especially on the capstone project.

All in all I thought the learning experience was really good. 

Pros:
1:1 mentor call
Capstone project
Learn r programming

Cons:
I wish some of the assignments where hands on (a lot where) but some were assigned through datacamp

Pros

- Mentor was great. Really guided me and showed me how someone in the field thinks. Also put my name in at the start up that she works at and they hired me as a contractor!

-Lots of practice on the analytics side. I feel like I'm pretty knowledgeable now

-Mock interviews and career coaches, especially Allison, were great for preparing for interviews. 

Cons

-Was unemployed and finished in 4.5 months. I find it quite hard to believe someone can finish within 6 months with a full time job.

-Second half of course seemed disjointed and unfocused, though that could've been because of the track I chose. 

-They focus on us contacting random people on LinkedIn as a means of "growing our network", which in turn will allow us to get a job eventually. They don't really do much in terms of actually putting you in contact with people who are looking to hire or are open to meeting someone new to the field. 

I had a fantastic experience with Springboard. I took their Introduction to Data Science course in fall of 2017 and their Data Science Career Track course in 2018.  The course was a great alternative to a fully immersive bootcamp, since I wanted something that allowed me to quickly learn the skills required for a Data Scientist while still being able to work my full time job. The course does require a lot of self-discipline in time management since you're working through everything online and there is a lot of material to get through. I ended up spending an average 10-20 hours per week working through the course material so that I could finish in 6 months. The biggest asset for me was the weekly meetings with my mentor. He was a huge help in making sure I understood the tutorials and assignments and he helped keep me accountable and on track.

If you are willing to put in the work and don't mind learning online in an isolated environment instead of in a classroom, I highly recommend Springboard. It was a lot of work, but ultimately worth it because I ended up landing my first job in data. 

I signed up for this course after learning about UX and wanting to make a career change.  Ultimately I chose this school over others because of the access to mentors and flexibility to complete the coursework on my own time.  I was completely new to the field so I wanted mentors to help guide me.  Also I worked full time, so I didn't want to commit to a specific class time every week.  The overall course structure starts with a product idea that you create and walks you through the UX design process with the guidance of a mentor.  The actual course work is pretty much a compilation of videos and articles that are available publicly online.  For a beginner, it's nice that the course organizes the content appropriately.  I wish the time with the mentor was longer, because 30 minutes once a week comes and goes really fast!  It's important that you're mentor clearly understands what you want to get out of the course, that helps to determine how detailed they are in feedback.  Hallie was also an amazing student leader and Fabio & Emily were great as an additional resource in the weekly office hours.  You can check out videos on YouTube to see how office hours are structured.  I'm really glad I took this course as it helped me move from a job I didn't like in manufacturing to a product manager for a web development company!

I'm very happy I took the Data Science career track, it landed me a job in 5 weeks, was very useful and very flexible.

PROS:
It's flexible, with all the contents online, so you can go at your own speed and take time off if needed.
The contents are complete and wide, well focused onto what the professional world looks for
There is a lot of support, from TAs, mentors, and career services. Always there when needed
The exercises are interesting, gaining good insight from real data

CONS:

If any, some lessons can be a bit tedious or feel that you already went over it before. But this was only like 3 times in 6 months.