Khan Academy is a non-profit organization headquartered in Palo Alto that offers free online course content for students.
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Pluralsight Skills
Score 9.1 out of 10
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Pluralsight Skills is a skill development solution that enables employees to build in-demand skills in a way that’s personalized to their current knowledge and preferred way to learn. The course library includes content on software development, DevOps, machine learning, security infrastructure, and cloud, as well as certification practice exams, hands on learning experiences and cloud labs, and skills assessments.
Khan Academy is a great supplement for things you already have learned, or as a mid-level course (versus a deep dive or high school/university level course). It is great for a paced learning environment if you want to casually refresh yourself on a subject or learn something new. I don't think this should be a replacement for structured learning, or if you struggle in self-paced learning environments. There have been times I would like to have been able to ask a professional (like an instructor) when struggling with a subtopic, which is possible in a classroom setting.
Awesome tool for teams looking to gain new skills or refine and update existing skills. I love the convenience of using this tool for recertification credits (i.e. PMP). Instead of identifying which classes I need to take, I can identify my interests and have recommendations presented for what paths I should take. It is a really helpful tool to create ladders for my team to transition from one role into the next. I think this is going to be a really beneficial tool.
Pluralsight has hundreds of authors that are constantly producing new content, which is valuable for the tech industry that is constantly moving at a brisk pace.
Many content authors are respected leaders in the topic they're presenting. You are able to trust that their content is thorough and authentic.
Niche expert-level topics are presented in a curated video format which is difficult to find anywhere else.
Companies don't change technologies in their products often. For example a product that was built on AngularJS is still viable and the company may have no plans to upgrade it. Pluralsight could do a better job of providing new courses on technology that's still useful, though somewhat dated; like AngularJS for example.
Pluralsight has a bad habit of throwing all their courses in a large bucket. For example, when I log-in and look to see what new I often have to wade through courses on tools that a web artist or designer would use. I wish Pluralsight would categorize course and let us (their customers) flag what types of videos we wanted to see, or better yet exclude from our view.
Years ago, Pluralsight would let its customer download the courseware and that was great. I was disappointed when they stopped this feature.
I'd love to see more course where the goal is to build a particular type of software. For example, lets have one where you build a blog using ASP.NET and deploy it to Azure. Let have one where you build a survey application, etc. Learning technologies is great, but I'd love to see courses where the goal is to build a particular type of application.
I've only had to seek support one time. There was a glitch in one of my lessons and I submitted an email. The glitch was fixed by support within a few days, but I would've liked for it to be faster. However, I don't have a big complaint there because it is a free service.
I personally found Khan Academy much better suited for adult learning of difficult or larger topics. Not so much for smaller changes that can be communicated via email. But it was more engaging and I found the information easier to digest. Change management can be tough but with the right tools it can be a breeze.
Before using Pluralsight, staff was using YouTube to help them with developing certain aspects of their knowledge. However, YouTube is much less structured/organized than Pluralsight. Pluralsight has a very wide offering of courses and it has lot of good content. One quick search and we can get started.
One positive impact is it has kept our employees engaged in the material they work with every day. Instead of becoming stagnant and complacent, they are actively searching out ways to develop skills and do more with the tools available to them.
It saves money when it comes to offering training and development opportunities company-wide. It would be much more costly to invest in specialized training for that number of employees.
One potential negative is the amount of company time spent on coursework over work responsibilities. A balance must be struck and individuals should be encouraged to explore the training on their own time.
