A Ruby course to avoid

"Ruby Programming from Scratch - Beginner and Advanced" by EduCBA IT Academy

I'm cheating somewhat in reviewing this Udemy course, because I haven't finished it.  And I doubt that I ever will.  I finally realised I was falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy and gave up. 

That was in Lecture 78 (of 175), in which our tutor's uninspiring delivery is all but drowned out by what could be someone chasing electric cabling into a wall with a mallet and bolster. (Or - for a more attractive image - perhaps chiseling out a piece of fine marble sculpture.)

The list price for this course on Udemy is a jaw-dropping £233 (That's right - two hundred and thirty-three) which I imagine must make it one of the most expensive courses on the site.

As I said in an earlier post, you should never pay full price for a course on Udemy*. I paid $10 for this one, but regret even that. $10 seems like more than the creators spent on putting the course together.

Format

The format of the course (unless it changes in the sections I haven't watched) is to go through elements of Ruby, define them, and give a basic example of the relevant syntax. 

There is no encouragement for you to try out the constructs for yourself: no exercises, or project running through the course.

I suppose it could serve as a look-up for a particular syntax with an example of its' use.  But then you could just look up the ruby documentation yourself.

The presentation is flat and uninspiring. Worse, it seems to have been put together with contempt for the student.

Lazily produced

Aside from visible basic spelling errors on the site like those above, the actual video content is poorly and lazily produced.

For example, within a single video lecture we start with a discussion of the second point on a slide (string interpolation), before the video jump-cuts back to the first point on the slide (explaining what a string is). Clearly wrongly edited.

It gets worse in the section on comparison operators.

It seems odd that the first lecture in that section launches into discussing the second operator (!=) in a table of them.  "What about the first one?", you think.  Maybe == is so obvious it doesn't need explaining?

But, no, after a couple of minutes the video jump-cuts back to give a general introduction to the table we've already been looking at.... and describe the == operator.  And at 5 mins 40 in the same video we jump again to what was obviously meant to be the start of the lecture - with a basic definition of what a comparison operator is.

All confusing enough, but it gets worse as the next video explains the != operator to us again as if we'd never seen it before.

Quality control

I can only conclude that they didn't bother to make even basic checks of the course content before publishing it. And Udemy clearly don't practice any quality control themselves. I should have followed my own advice.

Before long, even the small things about this course were getting on my nerves.

Like the poor audio with various distracting background noises. 

And that every time the tutor wants to run one of his ruby files we have to watch him open a command prompt and "cd" four times to get to his working directory. If you can't organise your presentation a bit better, why not at least cd once with the full path?!

*takes deep breath*

There are, of course, a number of alternative Ruby courses on Udemy.  A couple which I've tried and would rate higher than this one are:

http://www.udemy.com/learn-ruby-programming-in-ten-easy-steps/

http://www.udemy.com/ruby-programming/

Wait for the $10 per course offers, though!

*Except Alan Richardson's magnificent WebDriver course, but even that can be taken outside Udemy here.

Using Udemy for Online Courses

Udemy.com is a website offering online, video-based courses.  A large number of which relate to technology, programming - and even specifically to testing.

I have bought a lot of online courses from Udemy. So many, in fact, that I always have a backlog of ones in progress or waiting to be started.  I expect many of the posts on this blog as it develops will relate to Udemy courses.

Courses can be taken on the website, of course, and there's also a mobile app which allows video lessons to be downloaded and watched offline. (I use the Android app - I assume the same is possible on iOS.)

The latter is very handy for learning during a commute, although some courses will work better than others if - like me - you don't have a tablet.  Even a large phone screen doesn't always give a clear view of what's going on in an IDE or command line.

Udemy don't produce learning content themselves but rather act as a kind of clearing-house for courses produced by "trainers" ranging from individuals to organisations; and from the highly professional to the decidedly amateur.

Sadly there is no guarantee that a course sold on Udemy will be of good quality - and you might not find that out until after you've bought it.  Udemy do offer a 30-day money back guarantee although personally I have no experience of trying to claim on it.

Here are a few points I follow when deciding whether or not to buy Udemy courses.

1. Never pay full price for a course

With a small number of exceptions that course you're interested in on Udemy will soon be available at much less than the full price if you just wait a little while.

As I mentioned, I always seem to have a backlog of Udemy courses and that's mainly because I'm easily tempted to buy them in the regular sales and offers.  To give you an idea of what's possible here's an excerpt - just an excerpt, mind you! - of my Udemy purchase history.

Many instructors offer multiple courses on Udemy and these giveaways are "loss-leaders" so that they can market other courses to you.  But that doesn't mean you have to buy the other courses - and many of those will also be offered at a cut price if you wait a while.  

In fact, you can learn without paying a penny. There are a large number of free courses available on Udemy.

2. Sign up before you buy 

By signing up, and maybe wishlisting a few courses, you'll soon start to receive emails with the offers that feed my first point.  Registering will also allow you to .....

3. Preview the course before you buy

Once you're signed up to the site you can generally select a free preview of the course you're interested in.  This amounts to a small number of sample "lessons" from the course which you view.  Of course, these sample lessons don't tend to give away any valuable content - they might just be an introduction, or cover how to install the software tools the course uses - but it gives you the chance to gauge the quality of the production and the presenting style of the trainer. Do they speak clearly and engagingly, or do they have a monotonous delivery that you'll struggle to pay attention to?

4. Look at the course's "Discussions" thread

The main page for any course, which lists out the individual lessons, will also have a discussions panel available on the right.

Look here to see whether the instructor is engaging with their students and providing helpful feedback.  It's not uncommon to see discussion threads where seemingly straightforward questions placed by students weeks or months ago sit unanswered.  

On the other hand, the best instructors can be seen clearly taking the time and effort to provide extra value - and these are the kind of instructors who are most likely to add new material to the course over time or refresh parts that go out of date.  Remember, one of the benefits Udemy push is that you'll have lifetime access to the courses once purchased.

One more thing...

At the time of writing it looks like Udemy have now introduced pricing in sterling for UK customers - and it doesn't work in our favour.  A quick check suggests that courses priced at $99 have a sterling cost of £79 - when the current exchange rate would work out to around £65. 

So a disincentive for UK users, perhaps. Certainly another reason to always hold out for those cut-price offers.