Goodbye Track Schedules. Hello Content Suggestion Emails!

Cool!

Just completely awesome! I need a little reminder :P

Please bring back function highlighting! It used to be that when you used a preset function in Workspaces, it would be highlighted orange, but now they are highlighted black, which is just the same as other unrecognized pieces of text. I'd really like to see preset functions get either that old color (or any other unused color really) so that I can more easily tell when I've made a mistake in my code. Thanks!

Very cool!

very cool.

I'm not against the idea. Daily works for me, as I use Treehouse daily when I am using it, but having preferences would also be beneficial to most I'd assume. But keep it up, you guys are awesome!

I like it. Email is how I tend to start my day anyway so this will be a nice little reminder for what I should be doing for the day.

It's Perfect. :) Nice addition

Interesting; I'm always open to something that encourages continuous learning like this....

I really like this! It will definitely make keeping on track easier for those of us who have busy schedules or may have to miss a few days.

I'm curious, can these content suggestion emails apply to both tracks and courses? For example, if you're doing the Learn WordPress track but also taking the Web Careers course can you be sent emails for both?

This is every exciting. I look forward to my daily emails to keep me learning. Thank you for adding this feature!

Perfect!

Not fond of this. The daily suggestion thing never works. It's been showing me that I should complete steps I'd completed over a month ago, and shows the same steps every day. Every day it always says that I've completed the suggestions for the day, which I did, a month ago. I'd rather have the schedule back, that kept me hitting things harder.

Is there any way now I can check how much content has to be digested until I finish the track? It really helped me to plan the work and measure progress, and I miss the average time per day counter...

Suggestions are OK but don't work well if you download the videos to view offline - you get only the old videos suggested.

Definitely helpful, thank you!

Something off topic but I thought I'd mention it: I'd love to see something like the forum contests to make a comeback. I really loved those!

Absolutely brilliant, good to have a reminder sent via email.

I'd like to get more content over this additional functionality so can't really comment about its usefulness atm

That's awesome.

The content suggestions emails are ok. It does point out things I've sometimes missed or make you think of what to look at next. I never realised the schedule tracker as I just try and cram some treehouse in when I have time.

I'd personally recommend spending more time on improving the app and creating more content, as opposed to these type of features which are just nice to haves. There has not been much php added of late and I find the mobile site consistently slow to load, especially if browsing the library.

There's an issue with the new system - the goals are very low, and encourage us to aim low. Yes, there's no reason that people shouldn't push forward once they've gotten their minimum target - but psychology tells us that having that target actually strongly motivates people to stop once it is achieved.

An improved system would take the current low target as a baseline but allow you to put personal multipliers on it to match the pace we wanted, sneaking the best of the previous system in the back door. It would actually be similar to how the current multiplier system let's you set your comfort level for more than x1 speed speech. People that are aiming to be ambitious could set it to x1.5 or x2.5, or crank it up to x4 if they had a few weeks off to really grind!

Hi,

Was it not possible to have both the Track Schedule and the Content Suggestions ? When I did set my Track Schedule and worked on my track, I was never sure if I achieved the time goal for the day, which I think was the reason I often ended up behind my schedule. If you had Track Schedule with Content Suggestions suggesting how many modules to complete to hit your target time for the day, it would have helped me keep up better with my Track Schedule.

I also agree the Content Suggestions set a low goals. I do motivate myself, but it helps me combining a daily time goal and self motivation.

I still love treehouse!! lol

I was buzzing along during Christmas break exceeding my schedule, but when I went back to work (communications director at a high school) and tried to begin setting up a new website for a school fundraiser, I found I couldn't remember all that I wanted to! I'm having to go back through the website class and build the site along with it. So, I think the smaller bites in the suggestions is better than the over-demanding schedule I had set before. Now I'm slowing down and applying the lessons to real life projects before zooming on. Now things are sticking better. It's hard to resist overdosing on Treehouse though, because your classes are so much fun and I want to see what cool things I'll learn next!

cool I liked it..

Really disappointed in this. I just came back about a month ago after a long hiatus and I was indeed one of those folks that one of the mods or devs or whatever would categorize as behind on their schedule. That was my own fault and the fault of life in general. Stuff comes up, it interferes and that's ok. But I was very interested in resetting my goal tracker and getting going again. Just like a daily reminder, to-do list, project folder, etc... it's immensely helpful in keeping you goal oriented and focusing on progress, no matter how small.

I find it very disheartening to see "people don't like to see that they're falling behind" as a justification for that. Yes, I get it, it's a business and you're doing what you think will most please the users so I don't fault you at all for stating that fact ("the people don't like..." part), what I DO find ridiculous is the fact itself. For crying out loud. This is the real world, delicate people. If you're off track and behind schedule your clients or your boss are not going to take into consideration that you might not enjoy hearing about it.

"How's Jim doing on the project?"

"Well, he hasn't done anything or shown any progress in 2 weeks."

"What??!! Well get on him! We need this done!"

"Well gee sir, I thought of that but then I realized people don't really like to be told that they're falling behind and I thought best to consider Jim's feelings over the clients needs."

Is a conversation that has never ever been had in any professional setting.

So why in the heck is a website that's supposed to be educating you and preparing you for a career in the field as an employee or a freelancer, tip-toeing around the idea of a harmless reminder that "hey, you said you wanted to accomplish this... you need to do this much today and every day in order to stay in line with your goals." if I recall, it even had a "you're doing great!" message in there. How 'weak sauce' are people these days? Come on...

Considering there is a soft skills course and podcasts and discussions about project management, time management, and in general just doing a good job, it's just ridiculous in my opinion that a very simple tool that could be immensely helpful in motivating some people would be scrapped. I see that only 5% of people were using it but really, I gotta ask, so what? Duolingo pulls this shenanigans all the time. Oh we scrapped this really awesome feature because only x% were using it. Yeah, and? So, to heck and back with them?

I'm curious, honestly, not snarkily, was there any attempt to change the system in order to make it more attractive to the users? How about rewards for using it period? How about setting a decay system on the lessons? miss x amount of days and lessons lose their strength/completeness so you have to repeat them to refresh the progress bar? That probably would've been enough motivation for me to at least get on once per day and complete something. The streaks on Duolingo are amazing because if you don't keep up your streak, your lessons decay in strength. How about adding streak days to a persons profile instead of just accumulated points? How about badges for staying on track with your progress tracker? how about any number of a myriad of things that could be implemented as little gamification perks to the system?

Back to the "only 5%" thing and my "so what?" question. Does something like that require that much of the sites resources as to scrap it? Is it something that really required a lot of maintenance? I'd like to ask 'why not just leave it there as an option for people to use if they want?' As I saw it, it was just an option anyway and, albeit I'm not a full time developer/coder/whathaveyou 'yet' but it seems to me that would be something that you set up and doesn't really require a whole lot of management once it's done other than upgrades to the feature upon implementation of new features or say if you upgrade the entire site. I very well could be wrong on that so I'll take my lumps if I am, but it seems, with my assumption, that just scrapping it is throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater and complete overkill seeing as how it WAS a fantastic idea.

And frankly, the whole "we recommend you do this next" thing that was, in some alternate universe, thought to be an improvement and replacement for the obviously superior and way less patronizing goal tracker, I find to be annoying and unnecessary to be quite honest. If I'm here on the site I'm coming back to continue where I left off whether it be last week or yesterday. I know where I left off. You can see all your courses and go right into your track and everything has a resume button that brings you right to where you left off. Why in the world a goal tracker was replaced with a message telling you what you already know is beyond me. It would be like me walking into my kitchen, taking the lid off my garbage can, taking the bag out of it and then my roommate says "hey, I recommend you take out the garbage." Oh, really? You think I should do what I'm in the process of doing? Thanks, bonehead.

Anyway, despite my curmudgeon like rant, I do love the site, it's fantastic and you guys do an excellent job in which I think y'all have no equal... but sorry, this is just a bonehead move and I think someone there in the office is just trying to make up things to do and implement so it looks like they're actually doing something around the office. You don't have to constantly be changing things fellas. It gets annoying. Don't fix what isn't broken.

And please smack whoever came up with the idea for me.

With love and affection, Huck.

Probably a bit off topic, but maybe this could be beneficial to you guys.

I started a track when I first signed up for Treehouse. I was really excited about this feature, but haven't used it at all. I started the web development track but I already had solid HTML knowledge before I signed up for Treehouse.

I would have loved to just skip the basic HTML courses and continue on the rest of my track. I've just been doing my own thing going through the library to find what I want, but I think the 'Tracks' functionality would have been a great motivational tool.

I really think it would've helped if the tracks were customisable in some way or form. We chose our own goals, and use the tracker app to meet them.

This looks great, but I'd still like to see a feature that let's us reset our progress. I know we can email tech support and get our entire account wiped (just once), but I'd rather be able to just reset my individual progress on a single course. Sometimes I take a break from a subject and need to refresh myself on it to complete the class.

This is cool! How do we sign up for the content suggestion emails? I looked in the Email Notifications page but I couldn't find that option in the list.

David Hernandez, it looks like we have sent 11 total content suggestion emails to you in between January 23, 2015 and today. Are you sure you're receiving emails from us in general? Be sure to check your spam folder and also for any filters you may have set up.

I'm sad to see this feature go! It was really helpful for me. While I like the content suggestions I have no idea how long that will take me to complete the track. Is there a timeline for that?

I appreciate the new system and it probably has increased your user activity which means more business and hopefully a better experience...BUT...I agree with a number of people on the board. I wish the track schedule functionality had not been lost. You can have the content suggestion emails as default and then keep the track schedule in the settings somewhere so those who want to use it can. Now I am writing my goals out by hand...not very helpful.

Hello, i like to know if there is a way to see not just the last few days but probably a longer period of time, like weeks or so. In the progress curve after completion ?