How do I utilise 1 month free access to Udacity nano-degree as a software engineer
Recently lots of free online courses are released, and I have much more time staying at home. I watch more Netflix, and also think of taking online course, and find many are free, and some provide certificate.
This website collects lots of free sources:
Which course to take?
Among those resources, I pick up Udacity, because it has certificate and more advanced technical knowledge that I want to learn. As a senior engineer, certificate is not that helpful for my career, but I still want to obtain certificate to proof my effort, and the free courses provided by Coursera doesn’t fit me well as an experienced engineer.
Udacity provides 1 month free access to Nano degrees, which means you obtain certificate after finishing all the courses.
There are two perspectives to select nano degrees. I can either pick the program that’s very related to my current job, or I can select the program that is less related to my current job.
I decide to take the later and learn knowledge less related to my current job context, because my plan is to spend my leisure time and not work hours for the online course. You might think in the other direction.
One month to finish nano degree from Udacity? Seriously?
One may say the nano degree usually takes more than 1 month to finish, and this is not always true. For example, a program writes that you need 10 hours per week, and 3 months to finish. Doing calculation, this means in total you need to spend
3(months) * 4 (weeks) * 10(hours) = 120 hours.
If you spend 6 hours per day, you only need 20 days to complete.
But I have a job and have to work, so 6 hours per day is still quite a lot for me. Therefore, I select a program that I already know at least 50% of context, so it should only take 60 hours for my limited amount of time.
After I started the course, in 6 hours I already completed 30% and I cannot find similar context in other resources. So far I find the content is organised very well.
Conclusion
Taking free Udacity nano-degree has the following pros:
- Free with a certificate to proof your effort
- Learning advanced technical knowledge is always stimulating
