Constructive criticism for treehouse

I noticed but that doesn't bother me.

Feedback on learning improvements though:

• many learners are highly visual. I sometimes have trouble absorbing both the spoken explanation for why code is written some way AND the written output (talking about jquery here). Would like to see on screen captions for key explanations - just some subtle text

• sometimes get lost in the sea of code, and whilst the instructor is giving some highly important explanation like "we must call this variable here because otherwise blah" I am looking for his cursor to see where he's working. Some highlighting method would be nice.

Sometimes I am like "Ok, he said we 'need' to do that, but WHY". While I am happy to see links to the API for specific concepts (below the video window), it would be nice if key concepts were tagged in the video play line, so I could scroll from key concept to key concept. I find myself pausing, alt-tabbing between the jquery API site, the forums, and the videos, and the ability to find my spot in the video could be improved.

Enjoying it, over all.

We certainly appreciate your feedback! @Guy, this is a great piece of feedback that I will definitely keep in mind and share with the other teachers:

sometimes get lost in the sea of code, and whilst the instructor is giving some highly important explanation like "we must call this variable here because otherwise blah" I am looking for his cursor to see where he's working. Some highlighting method would be nice.

We want to keep you all happy and learning and are working on ways to measure and improve our effectiveness as teachers. The feedback loop is an important part of this!

I'd like to add that the jquery stage in my opinion falls victim of the speaking problem. Don't really know how to describe it. I suppose it's like overacting. There's a definite lack of why we're doing something which is why I made a post about if there could be a jquery foundation to explain why we use a function and how it works. What does $this mean etc. I had to go elsewhere to fill in the gaps in this knowledge which shouldn't be necessary from a paid for service. Everything should be here on the site. I'm paying because I want a top notch education rather then youtube videos and having to collate a lesson for myself from a dozen different blog posts or info sites.

A perfect example was the lesson about the google maps. Andrew is talking about copying in the code from google so he does it in about 3 seconds and then the code challenge is all about coding what Andrew copied. It hadn't actually been taught. The code in the challenge is simplified as well and makes no sense.

I've kinda given up on jquery for now and moved onto PHP with Randy which is a fantastic series of videos. I'm back to loving my lessons and not been able to get enough. Everything I'm been taught I'm learning instantly so I can implement it and start experimenting on my own practice sites. It was the same for Nick and Allison's teachings. I even went through both series with Jim about programming and Javascript which has given me an understanding of why we do things in jquery but still not enough to be able to work out how to do things for myself. I'm noticing a lot of similarities to PHP so I'm hoping I can go back, do the whole interactive websites section for a third time and actually start to understand what I'm doing.

It's no problem with Andrew at all, it's just there isn't enough explanation to the why. I think, and this happens in everything else I've watch, we should be taught what we need to do to make this happen, how we do it and why we do what we're doing so we actually learn the principle behind the code to be able to work out how to do something for ourselves.

Thanks to Nick and Allison's teachings, I'm able to work out for myself how to code HTML and CSS. I can sit here and go what do I want to do and work out how to do it.

I got zero response on my other post so am hoping for something this time. Maybe it's I suck at jquery but I'm hoping not. :)

I agree about the overacting... Initially I put this down to my default cynicism... so glad its not just me :)

I signed up because I wanted to get my JavaScript nailed - I've been using jquery for years (written a few plugins etc) - but due to my dependency on jquery, never consider myself to be a 'proper' javascript developer.

So I went through the Javascript tutorials and found I knew a lot more than I first thought.... Its given me the confidence to dive into server side javascript.

I searched for node.js and found two videos - both require gold membership to view. So I upgraded.... and... learned nothing from them. Youtube, blogs and irc channels have been far more helpful. So I'm just wondering if my time on Treehouse (less than 1 month) has run its course? There appears to be a lot of content pitched towards the beginner - but not much for those hoping to dive in.

I appreciate you've got to start somewhere - and it makes sense to start at the beginning - where you can grow your audience and provide more advanced content as they grow with you.

I'm just hoping for some more meaty stuff, which doesn't feel like its designed for children's television..

Cheers, Rob

While it's not on our near-term roadmap yet, jQuery Foundations is something we definitely want to do. We're building toward more advanced content in each topic area, and we'll keep exploring "cutting-edge" technology in our workshops.

If we don't have exactly what you're looking for yet, then let us know (like this post!) and keep checking in as we update our roadmap as soon as plans firm up. We have a lot of topics to cover and each teacher needs to chart out a course that covers the most important stuff for you members as timely as possible.

I'd just like to add that since posting, I have been working through Rudy's simple PHP project. His teachings are actually helping me understand how Jquery works to the point I woke up this morning thinking about how I would do what I wanted to do with jquery. Simple thing like have the first few lines of a post visible and when a button is clicked, the rest of the post slides down, pushing content down the page. I'm not quite worked it out but this has definitely come from the PHP teachings.

I think treehouse is awesome. And that's genuine. As I've said before, I've learnt 100x in two weeks then I have in the preceeding month and treehouse is keeping me engaged and excited to learn so 10/10 to you there guys.

Just need some more basic stuff to help complete beginners move onto the more advanced stuff and have the British teachers talk more naturally. I'm British before anyone comments. :p

Thanks to the staff for reading this post and taking in the ideas that some of the other guys have talked about. Top notch!

Thank you all for the incredibly valuable feedback! We really appreciate it :) I've shared this post with the rest of the teaching team, just in case they missed it.

Allison

Thank you guys for the feedback. We really appreciate the criticism as we are constantly trying to improve the way we teach so that you can get the maximum benefit from Treehouse. As Ben mentioned we are going to be doing a course on jQuery Foundations later this year. As for the acting, it's always subjective but we will take whatever steps necessary to improve on it. Once again, thank you!

Awesome response guys, thanks.

I know how easy it is to take forum posts with a bucket of salt and ignore them a little.

I sent an email to the feedback section the other day with many of the same grievances. While each instructor has his/her little quirks about them, I have slowly begun to tolerate them more. I also realize that if I were a video instructor of some kind, I'd probably be 1000 times more obnoxious than any of them on their worst day. This reminds me to cut them all a little slack.

As for the site, I started out wondering if it was worth the money. With each day I'm feeling a little better about it. If this site helps me find some kind of rewarding and fulfilling work in the future, I'll love it forever and stay a member for life.

I'm two stages into the iOS dev course, and I have to say the most limiting factor of the course are the processing shortcuts used when entering the code.

I realize the value of shortcutting (copying and pasting quickly), but it's getting to the point of literally jumping around the screen in a manner that is surely a personal preference--without ANY explanation as to what is happening. Following along this way is painful. It's wonderful to be that efficient, but as an instructor when it lacks consistency and annotations it's not fun at all. A good example of this is not knowing a the key commands to switch between xCode's .m and .h files. I had been using the navigator on the left pane to see verify where we were. That window doesn't change when keyed back and forth. The result was 3x reviewing the material to catch up.