Springboard

Springboard's course on User Experience (UX) Design profoundly changed my career path. Only three years ago,  I was a philosophy major at Vassar College. While I was a tech-enthusiast, I always believed that my non-coding background limited my ability to enter this field once I graduated. However, by sheer luck, I stumbled upon Springboard's online UX course and signed up. At the time, I hardly had any little knowledge of what UX was at all. Now, as a UX Designer at IBM, I cannot stress how pivotal this course in enabling me to jumpstart my career.

Springboard uses an intuitive website to guide students through the various stages of designing a mobile application or website (which may conveniently enough be used as a portfolio piece). Utilizing a mixture of articles, interactive courses, and videos, I was able to gain a firm understanding of the different design research methodologies popular in the field. This was important on two fronts. Firstly,  these techniques helped me design better applications, since tools like card sorts, interviews, and wireframings genuinely help you design better experiences and can be applied virtually anywhere. Secondly, the techniques I learnt served as buzzwords to those I interviewed with for UX Design roles that demonstrated my knowledge in the field.

On top of this, there were two aspects that made this course truly successful. The first was the weekly Skype calls with a design mentor. At the start of the course, I was assigned a mentor who was a professional in the field. Once a week I could consult her with any questions about the coursework, or any career-related questions I had. Cultivating this relationship humanized the course for me, and transformed it from a collection of videos and literature to a full-fledged course. The second aspects that stood out to me was the price. At 400 dollars a month, you really can't complain given the material you're given. I was able to go on to develop 4 portfolio pieces with other clients after the course to build my name- other popular alternatives such as General Assembly will run you thousands of dollars more.

Overall, would definitely recommend this course! 

I come from a software engineering background.  I have been developing data-centric applications for over a decade but have never did any data science.

I always wanted to take it to the next level by learning data science/machine learning, but I always found it too difficult to do on my own. There's just too much knowledge/learning-paths/etc. out there that I kept getting confused on which way to proceed.

Thankfully, I found Springboard. They have been an absolute lifesaver. The best thing about the course is that it lays out a clear path on how to get from A to Z. No more constant confusion. The mentors there really helped guide me and keep me focused on what really mattered and not get lost down a rabbit hole etc.

The course takes a lot of work. But by the end of the course I was already able to implement data science solutions for my employer. 

'Tis been an amazing experience - I highly recommend Springboard! 

I had a wonderful experience with Springboard, my mentor really helped learn a lot from this course. The combination of online classes with a human touch of a mentor is fantastic. Also, the fact that you are working with real companies/business projects that help you think from a different perspective. Overall, I recommend this course to business analytics beginners and pro's since the course help you understand each tool from the beginning to the end. I have used my learnings in my current job and in my personal business projects. 

I attended the Springboard Data Science Career Track program for ~5 months. I did some research before entering. I had some coding and data analysis experience before entering. This one suits me the best among other data science courses, because (1) It's online, so I don't have to quit my job. (2) It's mentor supported, very few if any online program offer that (3) It has a job guarantee. Overall, the experience was fantastic.

The curriculum, while not perfect, is well curated and organized and covers not just technical subjects, but also career support. I get 30 minutes with a mentor every week to review my assignments, answer my questions, etc. My mentor had similar background as I do and had gone through the academia to industry transition before, so he was able to offer valuable advices in addition to technical guidance. At the end of the course, I was required to pass 4 mock interviews and complete two capstone projects which prepared me a lot for the job hunting. I landed interviews from many companies, from start-up to large companies like Amazon, near the end of my study. Though, I have to say, the course alone won't be enough for interviews at the likes of Amazon and Google, it should be sufficient to help you land you positions at mid-tier companies.

Overall, I find what I learned very useful, the experience with my mentor pleasant, and the cost reasonable. If you are someone who is considering transition to data science, but cannot quit your job for dedicated bootcamps, I definitely recommend this program from Springboard.

I went into Springboard not really knowing very much about uxer experience besides the random articles I parsed over, but I was looking for a career change in a field that still had a lot of design aspects. I chose Springboard mostly for budgeting reasons, but found out that I was liking the program once I started. I liked that I could go at my own pace and that my mentor was able to guide me through what I should more be focusing on with the strengths I already had. I really enjoyed doing my final project and was super proud of it, plus I feel like I've been growing ever since in my design chops. Overall, I'm pretty grateful towards the program, and glad I decided to do it, I don't think I'd be in my current position without it. 

Having a B.S. in Math reduced the learning curve for me to complete the content in the Introduction to Data Science course but the real challenge and fun came from the projects and interaction with my mentor and the community. Learning and research is not a solo effort and Springboard has designed their program around that. The weekly meetings with my mentor who was very knowledgeable and motivating pushed me to keep progressing on with my project and try new things that I never thought about in my previous education. Overall the course made me appreciate the lengthy and challenging in a Data Science project and how much you really need to work with other people to accomplish tasks. 

My overall experience with Springboard was great. The most powerful part is the weekly mentor calls and career coach service. When I got stuck in my project, my mentor showed me how to overcome the problem and what companies are looking for in real-life situations. He also provided great feenbacks on my projects and my questions on real data science life. The career coach sevice was excellent and of great help on strategies in expanding networks, improving resumes/cover letters...

I really like the structure of the course and the assignments. You get to work on your own project so you are very passionate about this topic so you would put more work into it. I also enjoy the mentorship since you get feedback and you are expected to complete certain works each and every week. This is a very good medium between extremely hands-off approach where you don't have anyone to lead you and Bootcamp where you need to put 24/7 effort into it. I just only feel that the time allotted to be able to talk to the mentor each week is a little limited. But overall a good experience! I am just trying to be very self-motivated!