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CareerFoundry is an online learning platform which supplies courses for individuals looking to retrain and change their career to a tech-focused area.
The courses available on this website are mostly paid, but I decided to try out this free option to get a feel of the style of courses you may get.
The Experience
Upon signing up for this course, I received an email stating that the 5 lessons within the syllabus would be released to me over time, with one per day being sent to my email address. This was different to previous courses I'd covered, as they have all been completely self-paced so far.
The first lesson began with the very basics of HTML web development, and progressed from there over the following 5 days.
Each lesson consisted of a YouTube video of the information, along with a written text version of the same information and instructions, and an FAQ section at the end. You start by being introduced to the topic to be covered, the how-to and syntax, and then follow a Daily Challenge Activity to demonstrate your learning.
Days 1 and 2 consisted of an introduction to HTML, followed by days 3 and 4 which began covering CSS and design, and finished on day 5 by introducing Javascript.
There is also a 6th section of this course which consists of a 10-question multiple-choice quiz.
Who is it for?
I think this course could be a helpful introduction to Web Development to a complete coding beginner, or perhaps someone just looking to get a taste for coding or web design.
One thing that could make this course more accessible for beginners would be incorporating an in-browser console to code-along in, rather than having to download a separate code editor. This is not a big issue, just something I feel may improve the experience, especially as it is such a base-level course, I don't really think you should have to download software to follow along.
Is it worth it?
Overall, I felt this short course was quite informative. While I do believe it is a good introduction to this topic, I would have liked to see more Javascript within this course, as the Javascript tutorial was half the length of the other videos.
This course also does not offer any kind of certificate of completion. Once you finish the quiz at the end, your reward is simply a 5% discount off of another course.
I also did not necessarily enjoy the slower release of this course, I prefer to pace my learning in a way which works for me. This wouldn't be a huge problem though, as all of these video lessons are available on CareerFoundry's YouTube channel.
If you already have any kind of Web Development experience, I do not think this course is for you. However, if you have some interest in HTML and CSS and no previous experience, maybe try this course out, or just watch the videos on YouTube.
Sources:
All images have been screenshot from CareerFoundry