Joaquim Valente is the CMO and co-founder Stuk.io. In this blog post, as a first in a series introducing our partners, he introduces the platform he co-founded. Read on if you’d like to learn about the new web dev education platform he’s working on.
There are many paths that one can follow to become a software developer. At first glance there are a ton of code schools, teaching methods and programming languages to choose from. It is easy to get lost with such huge and diversified offer! However, the average course completion rate is only 3%. That’s a solid indication most paths aren’t really that good. That’s where Stuk.io is bringing a new and more engaging approach to coding education.
One of the best existing education platforms out there is undoubtedly Udemy. In the first quarter of 2014 the current Stuk.io team launched the “Create and deploy a rails app in 3 hours” course over there and in just a few months it had more than 3 thousand enrolled students! This huge success led the team to better understand what exactly was so precious in that course that organically triggered such a strong response from Udemy students.
After hammering the student base with surveys and video calls the team knew that something was missing in the coding education market. It is all about great content, student engagement and continuous improvement. Those 3 pillars are the foundation of Stuk.io.
The three pillars
1. Great content
Stuk.io focuses on Ruby on Rails. Why? Because it just kicks ass in many areas:
- It is the best framework to build working prototypes and see fast results;
- There is a huge demand for rails developers;
- It is a solid framework that will continue to fly high.
However, we go way beyond Ruby on Rails as we also teach HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Wireframing basics & tricks so that our students can feel at ease when building their own personal projects. Everything is taught step by step and in a self paced way so our students always feel comfortable with what they are learning and one thing is for sure: we teach no bull shit but all the really important concepts are there!
2. Student engagement
Stuk.io is all about student engagement. Our stats are completely off the chart when compared with the industry average and that’s in great part because we teach our students how to build really amazing web apps. From the surveys that we did we understood that most of our students would love to develop their own apps to start their own businesses and that there were some clear trends pointing to some specific types of apps like, 2 sided marketplaces, social networks, directory/review websites and others. So we make it easy and engaging to develop really robust apps even for beginners.
On top of this we teach how to customize these apps by adding amazing new features like PayPal or Stripe integration, Pusher, Google Maps, Admin panels and others. Building top notch custom web apps on Stuk.io is just as simple as combining puzzle blocks!
3. Continuous improvement
There are many cool and cheap coding education platforms out there that just offer introductory courses to software development. However when students complete those courses they don’t have a phase 2 to move on to to continue improving their skills. Most of them end up getting lost and eventually quit learning. At Stuk.io we release a new web app course and 2 Stukcasts every month so our students can continuously learn new concepts and ways to add great features and become a ruby ninja. No need to be jumping around from school to school. The entire learning path is covered.
Increase your chances of landing a great job
We typically have 2 kinds of students at Stuk.io:
- The career shifters — the ones that want to get a first job as software developers
- The career enhancers — the ones that are already software developers but are looking to build portfolio and get a better paid job
Today there are hundreds of thousands of software jobs waiting for qualified applicants. Becoming a software developer is increasingly becoming the best option for those wanting to change their career. With so much demand for developers, companies struggle to find even rookie level developers to fill their open positions. Stuk.io offers a great opportunity to get the technical knowledge needed to apply for these positions.
On the other hand those that already have a job as a developer might not have the best portfolio to show off. Either because of company NDAs or simply because their portfolio isn’t that sexy, many are looking at Stuk.io to improve it. With the knowledge acquired at Stuk.io courses and Stukcasts, our most senior students can build really amazing portfolios showing off robust and custom made web apps that are sure to inrease their value in the job market and help get better conditions in their new company job.
Conclusion
At Stuk.io we keep a close eye on our students and the more courses and more custom apps they do the more confident we are in recommending these students to recruitment partners like .
Becoming a software developer has never been so sexy and we truly believe that Stuk.io is the best solution to land that dream job not only for complete newbies as for experienced developers.
Cheers,
Joaquim Valente
Twitter: @valentetweet
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