TrustRadius Insights for Udacity are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Valuable Portfolio Showcase: Several users have found the feature of showcasing projects in their portfolio to be highly valuable. They appreciate being able to demonstrate their skills and experience to potential employers or clients, enhancing their chances of securing opportunities.
Supportive Learning Environment: Many reviewers have expressed appreciation for the real-time feedback and community support on the platform. This creates a supportive learning environment where users can receive help and encouragement from their peers, fostering growth and confidence in their abilities.
Useful Knowledge Hub/Base: The knowledge hub/base provided by the platform has been praised by users for its usefulness. The easy search function allows users to quickly access valuable information, making it a reliable resource for expanding knowledge and understanding concepts.
Udacity is highly encouraged for upskilling at my organization. The emphasis with Udacity is to get everyone certified in different modules in the cloud as AWS, Microsoft Azure and GCP. Udacity has a good practice module to prepare everyone for learning and supplementing our internal learning system. Udacity is mainly used by associated and throughout since I work for a major IT company. It helps to solve the shortage in skills and desire to be cloud partners through Udacity prep.
Pros
Quizzes
Training
Ease of learning
Cons
More rigor in terms of assessments
More application based
Ability to ask more questions
Likelihood to Recommend
It's suited well to support on developing a project and following a set curriculum to get things and material in order. Also it has the idea of a nano-degree as the mini-certification to focus on working through a program over a course of a few months. It's more of an interactive course and best for having access for a set period of time. It helps to prepare well for exams but less beneficial when it comes to more applications I find, and should not be used to supplant any resource, but to use in conjunction with.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
I work for a large manufacturer/marketing solutions partner and Udacity is primarily utilized by our admin staff. It is also just one of several professional learning platforms we have access to within our organization. The platform offers an extensive range of courses taught by many industry professionals and flexible schedules that accommodate regular work responsibilities. While many courses used to be free, Udacity has gone away with free content in favor of a paid model. One of the key features of Udacity are the mentors assigned to each course. They enable participants to ask questions and receive feedback quickly. Overall, while not all organizational employees use Udacity, it has been valuable for many of our employees to gain experience and online learning certificates.
Pros
Courses are very high quality and updated regularly.
Instructors and Mentors are available for live tutoring.
Relevant projects are assigned in order to keep learning material fresh and top of mind.
Cons
Pricing models changed from fixed-price to subscription-based.
The student mentor-ship program feel like it has received cuts recently - the experience does not feel as robust or responsive as before.
Their Slack channels are somewhat disorganized.
Likelihood to Recommend
Udacity is great for working professionals who want to continue their education by learning relevant technical job skills. The platform offers a well-produced content library with new courses added regularly. Overall, Udacity is best suited for individuals who need to gain technical industry experience and certifications in order to better perform in their workplaces. Udacity is a very valuable resource, however, I would not recommend it for all organizations - as there are more cost-friendly options on the market.
[Udacity] Assists with ramping up and training new and current employees on technical topics related to web development. We a are a SAAS company with a customer-facing product, so it's important the customer-facing employees are not only technical, but can troubleshoot and explain frontend issues or topics to the customer.
Pros
In-depth topics
Clear, organized classes
Fun examples and exercises
Cons
To have the teachers/assistants more active in the community/Slack channels and forums
Likelihood to Recommend
Any technical topic, especially related to web development.
The course that I did on Autonomous Cars has helped me a lot. It has not only improved my coding skills, but taught me totally new concepts like mapping, new algorithms, etc. I can't thank them enough.
Pros
Excellent material.
Great teachers.
Awesome projects.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's amazing. Great material, and great teachers and teaching assistants. Scholarship definitely helps. I don't think there is any scenario where I wouldn't recommend Udacity.
I used it personally. It was not tied to my company of employment. I wanted to add skills to my toolbox that I didn't have but was seeing pop up in one job description after another. Not having those skills was impacting my ability to even get a conversation with someone about these types of jobs.
Pros
Lesson structure is short, concise, and consumable.
Frequent quizzes ensure that you are grasping the content.
Projects are structured to ensure you are practicing the skills you learned in the lessons.
Cons
Quiz questions in some cases could be made clearer. I didn't feel the questions were always phrased in a way that I could easily understand what was being asked.
Requests for support can sometimes take a very long time to get resolved.
Cost structure changed from a fixed-price model to a subscription-only model, and prices are significantly increased as such.
Likelihood to Recommend
Udacity is great for getting an introduction to, and thorough review of, concepts and skills that may be new to you. The lessons, quizzes, and projects are in most cases easily consumable and broken up into digestible chunks. It is self-paced so you can decide how quickly or slowly to proceed though there are fixed-terms in which you are supposed to complete the course itself.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
Udacity serves as a learning platform for anyone venturing into the domain of Information Technology. I have used it during my Masters' coursework to supplement my learning in the domain of data analytics and computer programming.
Pros
Interactive quizzes.
Teaching through practical examples.
Communicate complex technical concepts in layman terms and then going to advanced level.
Cons
Organization of courses is not very user-friendly, especially the sequence of courses to take should be more elucidated for a beginner.
There are some courses which are completely tool based on using Alteryx. Instead, more focus on concepts can be given.
The depth of the courses is another issue. The free courses are good for beginners but not to go to the next level.
Nanodegree programs can be better priced.
Likelihood to Recommend
Udacity is best for someone beginning a career in computer science or data analytics. The wide range of courses makes it possible to learn a wide range of topics for free and from experts.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)
I'm using it to acquire new knowledge around data engineering. It has helped me with better planning and also speaking the same language when talking to my fellow colleagues.
Pros
Practical exercises and projects definitely helps you understand how you may apply the skills and knowledge in real-world projects.
Strong Community where people are generally friendly and helpful for answering questions. Udacity has also made an effort to encourage engagement between all the people who are taking the same courses.
You can watch a video, access reading materials and attempt an exercise without leaving the Udacity environment which is definitely a plus for me.
Cons
Put more background, as well as objectives of some exercises to better understand why do we work on things that way.
Some of the projects removed the tedious work required which hide what a candidate may face during real-world projects. Instead, it might be nice to design in a way where candidates need to do more readings to get things working and do the projects.
All are good but would be great if they specify some Slack channels where people who have completed the courses can still get together and attempt some real-world projects together with "classmates" to continue to build their portfolios. Would be great if projects come from Kaggle or some sample projects that help the non-profits, then put them in the Github for sharing.
Likelihood to Recommend
You shouldn't take the course if you already have experience in the field and wanted to deepen your knowledge. If you are new to the field, it will help you better in terms of understanding what real projects look like and what's needed to be effective in your new role.
Currently, I am the only one in Udacity in my company, although I encouraged another one of my colleagues to take some classes also and I believe he will. I am studying Machine Learning, AI and Python. I have completed 1 nano degree and found it both challenging and fun. The courses are put together very well and I have been able to go through the training and complete the assignments without needing help from the mentors or instructors. They just put together a very good curriculum. I am in my second course, Machine Learning in Natural Language Processing. Just finished building my first part of speech tagger and I am moving on to the optional project on building a simple question and answer system using IBM Watson's NLP services. I love the courses and what I am learning. They give me great confidence that I can code my own machine learning models.
Pros
The online courses are very well done and cover the topics so you truly understand them and can have confidence working on the projects.
Their projects to validate what I learn are very challenging. I spend days on them, but in the end, they come out nice so there is a great feeling when you know you have accomplished something difficult
They have great responsive mentors. I have asked a few questions here and there when I get stuck and they respond quickly, it just always works out for me after I ask the question I go back to try it again and I figure it out. Still, I follow the chats and they provide a lot of good help to students.
Cons
When building neural networks and working with the data you have to manipulate the data or convert it into numerical forms in dictionaries, lists, numpy arrays, etc. Some of these data structures can be fairly complex. My only suggestion would be if they could provide a sample of perhaps what the head of the data file might look like as that would make it easier for me to figure out what I need to code to get to the goal. Some of the nested dictionaries in Python, which look like JSON files to me, are sometimes not as easy to visualize just from a written statement of the task to do.
I would also say more references to other reading materials related to what we are learning would be great. I search for a lot of them on my own, but I am never sure if I am reading the good stuff or not. Recommendations would be great.
Likelihood to Recommend
I already recommend it to people regularly. I can only speak to the dozen or so courses I have taken, including 2 nano degrees, but they do a great job in getting someone up to speed in coding and building advanced systems. I have just loved learning at my own pace and how good the programs have been.
