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General Discussion

Marston Gould
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Marston Gould
PHP Development Techdegree Student 17,314 Points
Posted by Marston Gould
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Marston Gould
PHP Development Techdegree Student 17,314 Points

Product Suggestion: Project work

As I near the completion of my second track in about 3 1/2 months, I've really enjoyed the TTH community / product. That being said, I have noticed a few challenges:

  1. Most developers learn by doing. Certainly you can go back and repeat the projects in the classes and attempt the contests, but I don't think these really address the core need.
  2. Most developers do not work in isolation. My guess is that most people will specialize into a particular set of skills and will not want to be complete end to end - from content and design, interactivity, to back end / network ops. Most developers will need to work as part of a team. Yet none of the tasks on TTH really are appropriate for teams.
  3. I think after finishing the basic tracks, I am probably not alone in wondering what comes next? How do I know what classes to take next.

Suggestion:

  1. Create a series of projects
  2. Set each project as being basic, intermedia or advanced with suggested prior courses that should be taken by team members in order to attempt / join a team
  3. Provide videos for each project that emulate what a customer and/or product manager would provide in terms of their requirements
  4. Suggest the types of roles that should exist on a team to accomplish a project (Graphic Designer, CSS Developer, Interactive developer, etc.)
  5. Allow students to self-organize into teams (and encourage them to join based on the completion of particular courses)
  6. there could also be interesting benefits here - letting teams 'brand' themselves, have private communication, etc. - all of which fosters community
  7. Students can then approach project as they see fit.
  8. Any assets created in the course of the project: content, designs, code get stored and made available to other members of the team and the broader community
  9. Showcase results - let the team members talk about the experience and provide retrospectives
  10. As subsequent teams are formed to address the same project, they can make use of these prior assets
  11. Allow the community to provide feedback to the team on how they did in addressing the customers key requests

This would also be a good time to introduce workflow tools like JIRA as well as making use of Developer tools like GIT.

Philip Cox
Philip Cox
14,818 Points
Philip Cox
Philip Cox
14,818 Points

I really like this idea. I to recently had a similar thought. Your idea sounds more advanced than mine? I thought to have projects similar to the code challenges we have now, but without as much help in-between, and each part requires more code otherwise there would be lots of sections to get an entire project complete. So basically Treehouse sets out a project, some small some large, and you work through step by step until the project is completed by the students own abilities. They could even have collaborative projects.

Marston Gould
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Marston Gould
PHP Development Techdegree Student 17,314 Points
Marston Gould
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Marston Gould
PHP Development Techdegree Student 17,314 Points

I think collaboration is key. As I said earlier, very few people ever work in isolation.

From a product perspective, because the projects are reusable, much like the courses, TTH would be able to re-use the same projects with multiple users and in terms of their business opportunity, my guess is that this would create a stronger, more connected community of students, which in turn is likely to extend membership.

2 Answers

Aaron Graham
Aaron Graham
18,033 Points
Aaron Graham
Aaron Graham
18,033 Points

I really like this idea. There are a lot of important skills you can't learn until you work with others. This would really help build those skills.

Brian Polonia
Brian Polonia
25,139 Points
Brian Polonia
Brian Polonia
25,139 Points

I really like your idea. The items you mentioned would be awesome if implemented on TTH.

  • Brian