Udacity Nanodegree

The world is digitizing at a rapid rate, and the education sector is one of the earliest sectors to adopt this digitization process. Chances are, you have already heard of Udacity. If you haven’t, you will find this article helpful.

What is Udacity?

Udacity is an online education services provider that primarily engages itself with Massive Online Open Courses or MOOCs. It is the fourth most popular MOOC platform to exist, providing up to 200 different courses and with around 11.5 million learners accessing its services. Udacity focuses its courses around job and technical skills training more than other MOOC providers. The Udacity platform offers micro-credentials in the form of Nanodegrees and the courses which extend these Nanodegrees are often free.

What is a Nanodegree Program?

The Nanodegree programs offered by the online learning portal – Udacity, has been designed to bridge learning and career goals. Udacity partners with industry leaders and experts to learn about the skillsets which register the most demand in the current job market and then provides ways for individuals to train in these skills. For example, when you choose to study a particular course on Udacity, you are not only displayed material exclusive to it. You are also prompted to complete a series of projects or sign up for support courses that help you build a holistic suite of job-related skills for you to convince your future employer to make you that job offer. Services that are provided related to this micro-credential program sometimes include moderated forums, classroom mentorship, project reviews, and moderated forums to be able to provide a personalized experience. You may also be able to enjoy additional facilities which will duly be notified in your Udacity course’s Program Details page.

Udacity vs Udemy

How does Udacity match up to Udemy, another massively popular digital education provider? Let’s find out.

Udacity provides high-quality academic courses affiliated with industry partners, whereas Udemy provides a variety of short courses which are more low-investment in nature.

Udacity courses are more thoughtfully designed; Udemy courses are not as well-designed.
Udacity courses are job-oriented in nature and offer students the ability to interact on a one-on-one level with mentors; whereas Udemy courses are designed to facilitate individual learning with less of a time commitment required from the student. Udemy courses are also generally not recognized academically by institutes or professional organizations.

In conclusion, if you are looking for an avenue to enable self-directed learning, Udemy will serve you well. However, if you want to take a MOOC to impress your future recruiter, you are recommended to invest in an Udacity course. Also, the free courses on Udacity provide rich value and are not necessarily a medium to sell their paid courses, as is the case with Udemy.

Best CS 101 and Python Learning MOOC

If you’re looking for tech courses to take online, there’s no better choice you can make than Udacity. Udacity provides an extensive introductory course for both Computer Science and Python Programming curated by experts in the field. A beginner looking to acquaint themselves with the basics of coding and programming language will find these courses extremely beneficial. The CS 101 and Introduction to Python Programming course will also help them enhance their employability further.