Technology has pushed the education boundaries and brought teachers to students on their phone and PCs. The best universities such as Harvard and Stanford have their courses in the public domain. The students from any corner of the world can now study from the best professors in the world. This massive open online course movement gave rise to companies which offer great courses, streamlined assessments and progress tracker to enable students to get the best learning experience.
Some of the most popular ones are:
| Coursera Coursera is one of the leading American online course providers. It was founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. The courses comprise of video lectures, assignments, quizzes, hands-on project and certification at the end. Coursera brings you courses and programs in collaboration with more than 200 leading universities and companies such as Stanford University, Imperial College London, Google and IBM. The courses are specifically designed to bring in the latest skills and help in career growth. There are more than 3900 courses and specialisation. They even offer degree programs from some of the best institutes in the world. The courses are available for organisations and individual to buy. Students can audit the courses to access videos but will have to pay to get access to graded assignments and certificate. | Udemy Udemy is another American massive open online course provider. It was founded in 2010 by its founders Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, Oktay Caglar. The courses are made by experts and instructors. There are more than 57,000 instructors currently on Udemy with courses in more than 65 languages. Students get a wide variety and option to choose among the instructors for the same course. Udemy is cheaper when compared other MOOC providers possible reason being the competitiveness of similar courses by different instructors. The access to the courses is for a lifetime after the payment. You can learn according to your own pace. | Edx Edx is another very popular American massive open online course provider. It is a non-profit created by Harvard and MIT in collaboration. All the Edx courses can be audited for free. You will have to pay a fee to issue the certificate. The verified certificates can be of value as certain universities may offer credits for those courses on Edx. Edx also provides courses in collaboration with more 140 universities in the world. Some of them are Berkley University of California, Boston University, and Australian National University. They offer courses in wide domain ranging from data science, computer science, design to business and engineering. | Coding Ninja Coding Ninja is an Indian coding education company. They majorly focus on delivering content for programming languages such as C++, Python, Java, development in android, web development, machine learning, data science and interview preparation. They have various types of programs to make it interesting and interactive for the students. There are immersive boot-camps, mock interview tests, and foundation courses. They run online sessions for students in batches. They provide 1:1 mentorship to the students. The faculty is top-notch, the engineers from tech giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Adobe are there to teach students. |
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Platform for coding
Coding specifically in India has gained too much popularity among the engineering youth. The students who have varied branches other than core computer science such as chemical engineering and metallurgy are even pursuing their interest in computer science. This has been possible with the online courses available. “FAANG” is the common reason for most to pursue coding and learn development. Everyone wants to get placed in the best company. There is a greater reason for such a drift. IT industry has been growing massively in the past years. The digitalisation movement has made growth exponential. The IT sector would be a $1 trillion digital economy by 2022. This gives greater employment opportunities.
Which one to choose Coding Ninjas Vs Coursera Vs Udemy Vs Edx?
Talking specifically about coding related to placements and job opportunities, there are majorly two student groups who are currently working towards either bagging an SDE (Software development engineer) or machine learning enthusiasts. These are the major domains preferred by a majority of Indian students. Software development engineering encompasses the android development and web development altogether.
Now, the common question which platform to choose?
If you look up for the requirements with the perspective of placements, you won’t find courses on Coursera and Edx focused specifically. The reason for this is simple, the courses on these platforms are not designed specifically for Indian subcontinent but rather for a worldwide perspective. For Udemy, multiple Indian instructors have created relevant courses for interview preparation, competitive programming and programming languages. The courses are cheaper with a nominal fee considering you are already hefty fees in the colleges where you learn negligible practical skills. The issue with these courses are multiple:
1. Reliability
The courses generally lack the rating and review. You cannot completely rely on the credibility and depth of knowledge of the instructor. You might not understand the way the instructor teaches. The 30 days money-back guarantee by Udemy can be a relief to this problem yet the time and energy invested in incomparable.
2. Mentorship Lack
The courses no doubt are made in utmost detail and to the best knowledge of the instructor. The issue with practical subjects such as programming and interview preparation is that the doubts are not general. They vary from student to student. There are various technical constraints such as versions of software used, glitches, compatibility issues, and syntax variation due to different language. These need to be addressed personally with suggestions and resource recommendation. The lack of 1:1 interaction is often the major reason for student drop out of a course. They generally get stuck and even after trying hard, cannot get their way out.
3. Time Bound
A basic human rather student tendency is to procrastinate until the last night of the examination. All college students can relate to this but interviews and test at FAANG or any multinational company is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to put in regular efforts and energy to reach the end goal. You cannot learn all the data structures and algorithm in a week or so.
You need to put in regular practice, multiple doubts and concept building to finally make it your strong subject. This becomes difficult when you have lifetime access to a course and you are studying it alone. The interest slowly drops with time and the vicious procrastination cycle gets triggered. You can understand it well as many people have piles of incomplete Udemy courses in real.
4.Completeness
You as a student may not be aware of how much you need to know and learn to crack those test and interviews. The courses are made by the instructor based on his knowledge which doesn’t guarantee everything to be covered. You might need to buy multiple courses to cover everything. This may become a big bill to pay.
Why choose Coding Ninjas?
The problems with the Udemy courses can be easily dealt with the Coding Ninjas platform. The courses are designed specifically for Indian students. The courses are run in batches which gives ample opportunity to enrol throughout the year. The batches run for a specific time period. This makes the students time-bound and helps them achieve their goals and gain skills within the stipulated time period. You get no space to procrastinate. There are TAs (Teaching Assistants) on every 10 students.
You can easily solve your doubts and not get stuck with them forever. The assurance of best faculty and teachers is maintained by coding ninjas. The teachers are students from IIT Delhi and some ex-employees of tech giants such as Amazon, Adobe and Facebook. The sessions are live so you can ask for different methods to understand the same concepts in case you don’t understand.
The curriculum is designed to be complete and in alignment with the required skills and technology for interviews and placements. This keeps students mind space free from thinking about the curriculum. Coding Ninjas in collaboration with hirist gives you an opportunity to look for the best placement opportunities once you ready. I would recommend students to go for local (Coding Ninjas) to prepare for tech interviews and placement preparation.
When to choose Coursera and Edx?
I have found that there are numerous courses for data science, machine learning, AI and business analytics on these platforms. This is where these platforms have an edge. The latest and wide variety of courses are available for machine learning and data-based studies. The instructors are the professors from top universities and industry experts. I find the course intuitive and in-depth for a better understanding. These platforms can be great if you are exploring data science as a newbie you should go ahead and audit these courses. The best part is the courses are great even for beginners.
You can even find the prerequisite courses on these platforms itself. There are various specialisations too which takes you from beginner to advanced knowledge of the domain. The research-oriented students can easily get help from these platforms as the theoretical content is made easy to learn and absorb. The quizzes and assessments are great for retaining the knowledge and checking the understanding. The teaching methodology is world-class. If you are interested in statistics, mathematics-related to machine learning, machine learning and data science, these platforms will definitely help you uplift your game.
As you see each platform has its pros and cons. You can explore them and decide for yourself. Hope this article helped you make a better and informed choice and ease your coding journey.
