Improvements to Tracks

Seriously. It has made all the difference. I actually canceled my subscription after a few months, not because of content but because of the overall experience. Now I've resigned up and would recommend Treehouse to anyone,

Great to hear it, Tedd! We're definitely working hard to give you all a better user experience as well as better tools to make learning simpler/faster. There's some really fantastic stuff in the works, so stay tuned!

Awesome, I'll definitely be sticking around for awhile this time ;) Can only hope you guys have some Python courses planned for the future!

Working on a fix now, thanks Kevin!

Should be fixed now :)

FYI: The 'unsubscribe to post' button on emails doesn't work; Mike the Frog informs you the request doesn't work....

Yes! I don't understand that buttons

I just posted about the same thing! Super confusing, right?

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I'm betting this is a bug that just needs to be worked out, because it makes super no sense at all.

Hey guys, I'm looking into this right now - sorry for the trouble! Definitely not intentional that things be out of order like that.

I'm having the exact same issue. I liked the flow of the "Become a web developer" track (just completed the CSS section), but I'm now on the Rails track which is a bit confusing.

Thanks! And farewell :)

Thanks so much!

Facing issues with the PHP Development track as well. It is completely out of order!

Hey Miguel Wood:

Part of the point of this iteration was to focus students on their current Track, which means that we eliminated the "show every Track you've ever been on" aspect of your Home page so that we could show you the new focused Track snapshot view.

That said, let me mention two things:

1) You can visit our Tracks page (click the map icon in the sidebar, or visit http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks) to see all of our Tracks - the ones that you've completed will be marked as such there.

2) We still have a lot of work we want to do on Tracks, so this isn't a finished product by any means - this request (and any other feedback/requests anyone else would like to provide) will be reviewed by the team working on the next round of Tracks updates. We're making these changes to try to make Tracks more useful to our students, so how you all respond to these changes is going to be an important part of our considerations moving forward :)

Sorry about the PHP Track, folks, that was entirely my fault. When Travis and Adam posted that the Rails Development Track was out of order earlier, I did a sweep of all the other Tracks to make sure there hadn't been any other migration errors... and apparently I accidentally skipped PHP :(

It should be fixed now. Sorry for the trouble!

Were you not automatically placed into one? If not, what Track were you on before?

The old web developer is nor Rails - http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks/rails-development

I might be wrong about this, but I believe the old Become a Web Developer Track is more similar to the new Rails Development Track than the new Web Development Track. The new Web Development Track is now instead more appropriately named, and focuses on front-end web development (emphasis on Javascript); we have broken out back-end development into Rails Development and PHP Development.

Hey Daniel,

There's been a couple threads on this topic, but I figured I would post here since you responded.

I definitely agree with you that a more guided approach is beneficial to the learning experience here at Treehouse. The new layout looks great and organizes the content more logically, which is really helpful. The criticism that myself and some others have had, is one of convenience.

Having to switch back and forth between Tracks and the Library doesn't really seem to serve a purpose. When I want to check out a future lesson referenced in one of the video instructions, I now have to leave and go search for it in the library rather than simply clicking on the lesson in my track.

Additionally, when new content is added at the beginning of a Track, it locks you out of your current section. For example, I started Treehouse in January and I'm almost finished with CSS Foundations. In February, the 'How to Make a Website' deep dive was added. Now with the new Track system, I'm locked out of CSS Foundations until I go back and complete this entire new section. I understand that I can still access everything through the Library, but the whole process just seems less intuitive.

Ultimately this isn't a huge issue, but I wanted to explain from a user's perspective, why this lock-out structure is a little annoying.

Thanks!

Patrick — we just released an update that unlocks content in your Track that you've previously started or completed. Hope this helps!

Patrick - it sounds like what you want is to be able to create your own playlist of sorts, for the content you want to consume and not necessarily how we want you to consume it? If so, we're working on something, but it will not be a part of Tracks. Tracks are a focused, on-rails way to progress through our curriculum, but we definitely want to add some flexibility to the Library for those students that Tracks don't suit well. Thanks for the feedback, and for being a student!

Thanks Kyle and Dan. The new changes definitely help. Much appreciated!

Andy, appreciate your feedback, think we've addressed it all here: https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/tracks-reimagined (see Update 2).

Agreed with Andy, and also I want to add, why we can't click on the steps in grey? I don't want to follow and complete all steps if I only want to see the middle one for example.

Anita Mercado I have to ask, why are you using Tracks? The purpose of Tracks is to be a guided path, not a general curriculum guide for you to pick and choose what you want to do. I think that is definitely a usecase, but it is an incorrect one. We are thinking about implementing some kind of queue/playlist functionality for the Library, however. That seems to be what you're looking for?

Thanks for the response Daniel. Good to know you guys are making lessons easier to get to. Still I fell it's a mistake to lock lessons. For me it's a matter of consistency. If I see a section is locked, I'm going to assume it's locked everywhere. In fact if I hadn't read it in the comments I would never had known about the library workaround. I think something as simple as an alert saying "are you sure you learn this lesson out of order?" would be enough to coax students along.

Thanks Christian!

Hey Jon, you're totally right. We just released an update that unlocks individual courses you already have progress in within your Track, even if you haven't unlocked that level yet. We also updated Home to include any courses you're working on that may be a part of your Track but aren't unlocked yet. We hope these two changes make it easier to continue your progress on our site. : )

As for the scheduling question, the time estimates take into account your current progress and are based on average completion times for all of the content that makes up a course—videos, quizzes, and code challenges. These are definitely estimates; you may find you complete things either more quickly or quite a bit slower than the estimate, and that's okay.

It's actually a different color completely, but I can see why it's confusing (I had the same thought a few weeks ago). We'll look into maybe changing the color of Dev Tools. Not super high priority though :)