This week we launched new support features for our Nanodegree programs designed to help our students master the skills they’re learning. Before sharing these new features with the public, we invited current Udacity students to experience our new and improved learning programs. One of those students is Mohamed Barakat, a biomedical engineer, living in Munich, Germany and currently working as a software engineer in the healthcare sector. He is enrolled in the Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree program. We had a chance to chat with him about his current Udacity experience and how this program is impacting his skillset.

Featured, How To, Learning and Motivation

Invest in Your Future: Make Your Refund Matter with Udacity

Would you invest in yourself, your career, and your future if you received a check tomorrow? With the US tax season coming to an end, many are anticipating a tax refund. According to the IRS, the average refund this year is $3,000. This is typically a time when people go out and purchase cars, clothes or go on a vacation, but what if this year was different? What if, instead of buying “things”, you invested that money in a brighter future for yourself?

“People truly respected the fact that I actually went out and reskilled, proving I was willing to gain new skills, follow my intuition and invest in myself”
Rebecca McDowall, Data Analyst at Accenture

Learning and Motivation, School of AI, Student Success

Machine Learning Improves your Shopping Experience

Machine learning is impacting countless industries, from the recent discovery of a black hole to improving healthcare, we are just scratching the surface. The retail industry is a prime example. Retailers and manufacturers are racing to figure out how they can employ machine learning to target specific consumers, monitor trends, and discover new pricing models.

While retailers and manufacturers are doubling down on new ways to target and sell to consumers, Jia Rui Ong, a two-time Nanodegree program graduate, and his team are employing machine learning to help you, the consumer, find the best price for the clothing you desire.

We recently had a chance to sit down with Jia Rui Ong and his team at Yux to discuss their product, as well as, our newly updated Machine Learning Nanodegree program.

Featured, Learning and Motivation, School of Data Science

Master Data Modeling: Become a Data Engineer with Udacity

Start Learning

Real-world projects are integral to every Udacity Nanodegree program. They become the foundation for a job-ready portfolio to help learners advance their careers in their chosen field. The projects in the Data Engineer Nanodegree program were designed in collaboration with a group of highly talented industry professionals to ensure learners develop the most in-demand skills. Every project in a Nanodegree program is human-graded by a member of Udacity’s mentor and reviewer network. These project reviews include detailed, personalized feedback on how learners can improve their work. Graduates consistently rate projects and project reviews as one of the best parts of their experience with Udacity.

The Project Journey

The projects will take you on a journey where you’ll assume the role of a Data Engineer at a fabricated data streaming company called “Sparkify” as it scales its data engineering in both size and sophistication. You’ll work with simulated data of listening behavior, as well as a wealth of metadata related to songs and artists. You’ll start-, working with a small amount of data, with low complexity, processed and stored on a single machine. By the end, you’ll develop a sophisticated set of data pipelines to work with massive amounts of data processed and stored on the cloud.

Featured, Learning and Motivation

Everything You Need To Know

What kindergarten, The Codist, and Zen, can teach us about lifelong learning, and becoming anything we want to be.

Lifelong Learning - Kindergarten - Udacity

In 1986, a rather unlikely candidate for celebrity—a Unitarian Universalist minister from Waco, Texas—published a book that ended up spending nearly two years on The New York Times bestseller lists. That book was called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, and the author was Robert Fulghum.

Probably the most famous part of Fulghum’s book today is the 16-item list in which he enumerates the life lessons he learned from those early school days.

On April 4, 2007, Andrew Wulf, author of the blog The Codist, wrote a post in which he leaned on Fulghum’s kindergarten-derived list to produce a list of his own; a list that functions as a sort of programmers manifesto.

The first item on Fulghum’s list is “Share everything.” And here’s what Wulf has to say about that:

Featured, Learning and Motivation, School of Programming

Introducing Nanodegree Program Learning Plans

Start off strong, stay on track, and achieve your learning goals!

At Udacity, our goal is to inspire you to reach your career and learning goals. To achieve this, we are constantly working to understand how to support our students to find success in their Nanodegree programs.

By analyzing anonymized aggregate data about how much time our thousands of students spend in the classroom, we’ve learned something important. Those who kick off their learning with at least five hours in the classroom in each of their first two weeks are more likely to complete their projects on schedule and graduate. Though each Nanodegree program is different—requiring slightly more or less time for the average student to complete—we’ve seen that spending five hours in the first two weeks is the sweet spot for Nanodegree program completion.

To help you start off strong during this critical two-week period—and to give you clear first steps to complete those five hours in the classroom—we have launched a new feature: Nanodegree Program Learning Plans.

Announcements, Featured, Learning and Motivation

Mindset Matters: Making The Most of Intersect 2018

From on-site interviews to learning workshops to our hiring partner showcase, Intersect 2018 offers an incredible experience, no matter where you are along your career path.

Udacity - Intersect 2018 - Mindset

There are as many reasons to attend Intersect 2018 as there will be people who attend. Lifelong learning knows no age or stage, and everyone with a passion for self-empowerment through learning will derive value from the event. That said, the conference offers special rewards for those with an eye towards career advancement.

Category: Learning and Motivation

Life as a Udacity Student: Mohamed Barakat’s Experience