I was sold by the MIT people when they said I could easily learn to code with zero experience, and on a part-time basis 15-20 hours per week. It is supposed to be a self-paced kind of thing, but I don't find that's really true. I am tied to when they... Read More hold their office hours, when they respond to questions, etc. I've gone days with no response to questions only to have answers come on days I am working and cannot do school. So, it's only self-paced and on your hours if you know what you're doing and never have questions. First, a bit about me. I joined the all-women cohort in the fall of 2022. I have a Master's degree in psychology, and have worked in that field for many years. I have a special-needs child and decided that having the flexibility of being a coder, working from home, would be ideal for our needs. I am not a stupid person. I am a hard-working, somewhat older learner who spends extra time researching and trying to learn by multiple formats. I do not give up easily, and I'm tenacious when it comes to challenges. When I started the MIT course, I found it to be odd the way the material was presented. Nothing is in order. The curriculum jumps around between technologies and languages and is very confusing. The videos are outdated, and not always in line with best-practice. The support is lackluster at best. I was admonished for posting questions in certain places, while being simultaneously being told that the email system and direct message systems were down (the only alternative way to get help). It has been frustrating to say the least. The 15 hours per week is more like 30-40. Once I hit the 40 hour mark, I give up. I just don't have that kind of time every week working full time and taking care of a house and kids. I lose the points for whatever is remaining and usually crack into the wine in the fridge out of sheer frustration, telling myself that next week will be different. I expressed this to my instructor and was told I am a "bad engineer" for not asking for help sooner. How do you ask for help when they have severely limited how you can ask for help (see above), while also telling you that google is your friend? And, when I do ask for help, it's not met with "start with a line that says const a = starting button, then follow that up with the let keyword and the rest of your variables". Nope, it's some gobbledegook theoretical nonsense about generally coding practices. The course is not 'taught' by MIT staff. There are videos (really old ones) that were recorded with 5-8 minutes of information by two of the MIT professors. The information they present is often very advanced concepts and Professor Williams speaks as though we are experienced coders, not new learners. Professor Abel is better, but what do you really learn in 3-5 minutes? Not much. These videos are followed by coding exercises and some essay questions. There are usually tests in each module, too to see if you understand the concepts. then there is one or two 'faculty' who then follow through the course to answer questions and do the 'office hours'. My cohort only had one person. She is very nice and obviously a good coder. That does NOT make her a good teacher. She has yet to teach me anything about coding. On the coding assignments, my coding always failed. Even when I ran it outside their platform in VS Code or in the browser (where many times at least parts of it would work), it would still fail on their platform. There are no suggestions on what to fix, or what the code needs. It's "google is your friend." It's an absurd way to teach. The answer I got on this point is that when you are a coder, you are often alone to figure things out. Ummm, ok. When my toddler was learning, I didn't tell him that he could figure it out as that's what adults do. It's such a terrible way to teach, in my opinion. I have attended every "office hours", which happen for my class on Tuesdays. Our content drops on Wednesdays and is due the following Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. So, having that precious time with the instructor on Tuesdays isn't too helpful. by the time she posts the video of it, it is the next day and assignments are due and the portal is closed for that week. So, you can't ask questions, apply what you learn and take another crack at the assignments for better scores/grades. Another frustration. I have spoken with a former student who told me that out of the 35 women who started in her cohort, only 5 graduated. I repeatedly asked for completion data and they REFUSE to give any. This means their outcomes are bad. I could have guessed that. Here's why: I, as most of those they recruit, have zero knowledge of coding. A logical and building curriculum SHOULD start with HTML for a couple of weeks with assignments and lectures geared towards that learning. The next step, CSS. Maybe 3 weeks of this that builds upon the HTML we just learned. Then on to JavaScript for 5-6 weeks with the beginning being very basic and building into more difficulty and complexity as time goes on, while also building upon what was already learned. Then continuing with JavaScript, and rolling into Node, etc. This is how learning is best accomplished. We don't start elementary school kids who don't know their A-B-C's with advanced high school English, drop over to algebra for a while, then on over to 5th grade social studies. You have to start with the basics and build. MIT, a name which implies excellence in technology education, seems to have ZERO clue how this is supposed to work. I was being asked to debug code in week 4, without even being taught camel notation or basic JavaScript vocabulary. Talk about struggling. After week 5, the stress overtook me and I completely broke down. I'm no quitter, so I bought books, added many hours of research per week, and then even paid for more course content from online teachers like Mosh Hamedani. I learned more from Mosh in two hours than I learned from MIT in four weeks. No, I don't get anything from Mosh. I did tell my husband that if I weren't married he would have some competition with Mosh, as I was so grateful to stop feeling like a total moron. What does Mosh do that is different? He teaches me the content as though I'm a student with zero experience versus a master developer. I learn well following his course. I noticed that as he taught me in a sequence of easy to difficult, MIT would be trying to get me to master concepts that Mosh included at the END of his JavaScript course, which required weeks of prior learning to get to on his list. This reinforced that MIT does not teach in a way that makes any sense at all. It's like they think maybe if we throw the hard stuff at them something will stick. Well, for me it hasn't. And having to add his content to the 30-40 hours a week with MIT has been a total pain. I cook dinner, do laundry, take work breaks, lunch breaks, etc. all which listening to Mosh in the background. Before bed, I am watching videos, etc. to try and supplement my learning. I am learning...but not enough to keep up with the advanced topics of the MIT course. I have paid $6,000 to learn from MIT and I've had to spend another close to $1,000 in supplemental learning tools. It's not helping me stay afloat with MIT. I emailed my contacts at MIT and asked to get my money back. Guess what...they don't refund money after the third week. So, do yourself a favor...pick something else. Mosh cost me $250 for an entire year to finish as many of his courses as I want. If learning is your desire, he can teach you. At least start with something like this and master it before going to a program like MIT. I would recommend the MIT course if you already have a strong, intermediate knowledge of coding and Javascript. It is advanced, fast paced, and could be fun if I had a good base knowledge of the basics. if you expect them to teach you those things, forget it. they won't. In summary, I would not recommend MIT to most people trying to learn to code. I would start elsewhere. Coding is like anything else in life. It takes time and you have to master a certain amount of content before you can get a job doing this work. And you don't want to fake it. A friend in the field told me that the latest assignment he received was 'merge this code and that code'. No instruction, no help. 8 weeks later he had finished the task. He also makes $150,000 per year. Developers are paid well because the work is complex and you do have to know so much on your own. BUT...you don't start to learn to walk by running...and that's what MIT is trying to teach. Running before walking. Learn to walk. If coding is your dream, stick with it and build up to a program like MIT. Just my two cents! Good luck.
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Hi MIT xPRO participant,
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Erin Rosenblatt
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