Why You Keep Failing at Online Tech Courses

Hi friends! Today we are going to be talking about failing at online courses. This is something we all have done. Getting excited about a new technology or online course only to not complete it. I am going to share with you why this is and how to overcome it! I hope you find this video helpful. Leave in the comments other topics or questions you have.

0:00 This is how many people fail at completing online courses
0:44 What to do with so little time
2:03 This is setting you up for failure
4:41 The data behind motivational factors
5:23 Where to find motivation?
7:05 Lets get honest with ourselves
9:25 It's not you, it's the course

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// My Story

I am currently a software developer who once modeled and thought I wanted to pursue a career in the fashion industry. While I was modeling in Hong Kong, I eventually felt the desire to further my education. I decided to depart the modeling world and move back to Canada, knowing that could be the end of my modeling opportunities. I attended Ryerson University for GCM (Graphic Communications Management), as I thought I might still work in the fashion industry in another capacity. It was in my last year of university, I was introduced to a very basic coding course. I instantly fell in love. From there I knew I wanted to pursue software development but didn't have a clue where to start. I didn't want to go back to university as I just completed a four-year degree. I decided to enroll in a 10-week intensive coding Bootcamp. From there I started working at a small startup learning and growing my technical and soft skills. I then transitioned to a larger company where I am a software developer and technical consultant today.

Why You Keep Failing at Online Tech Courses

#FailingatOnlineTechCourses #tiffintech

[asznee]

I started my self taught software engineer journey 3 months ago with a udemy course, got half way into the class and i couldnt keep going anymore. With got i learned from it i went into codecademy to learn the rest. Now i know JS, React, Nodejs, SQL, CSS, HTML and python. Currently doing some leet code to get ready for some interviews.

[khairinoa]

I believe really knowing your why and reminding yourself every day of that why is the main key to success with online courses. Its hard to be motivated with dreams alone. You must have clear goals.

[andreypashinsky]

I am going through Frontend Career Path on Scrimba. More over than 80 hours of content learning HTML, JS, CSS and React. I really want to get a well-paid remote job and thinking about blockchain development after I get the basics

[blahiri]

Hi Tiffany, as always, thank you for the video. Wanted to know whether you have at any time been on the 'interviewer' side in tech job interviews? If yes, would love to hear your views from the interviewer's side of things. For example,
1. What do they generally look for in a tech interview candidate, aside from the job post specifics of course (Java, Python, Full stack, etc.)
2. Whether tech skills are paramount importance, or presentation/communication skills as well (for example, when showing portfolio projects)
3. How does the interviewer catch if somebody is trying to bluff their way through the interview
4. What are some of the common gotchas

Maybe you can make a separate video on this subject :) That would really help.

[ohwow]

Omg I have more than a dozen courses waiting for me. 🥵🥵
But your tips will surely help me during the summer. We'll see it at the end of the summer 2022 🤩

[rivermar]

Watching this procrastinating with my course

[mastershonobi]

I pick related course, max of 2. This way I’m continuously building on what I have learnt.

[nephxio]

I've used Udemy courses more as supplemental learning than actual primary learning. Oftentimes I'll look at a course that is doing a thing I need to learn (recent example: WPF) and go from there and skip around. I'm a self-taught QA Engineer and it's really fit my own learning style, I think. Targeting courses to what I think is a gap in my knowledge has really helped me

[remylebeau]

Ever happened to you that course got gazillion amount of positive reviews and you still felt it wasn't the right one for you?

Your videos lately are really God send!

[colinmaharaj]

Yeah, I started a free course on machine learning and dropped out because I didn't like python

[minamilad]

One of the most beautiful and beautiful conversations I've ever heard ❤️🌹... I'm your field colleague at cyber security. 😅😂💜

[ixtiyaragayev]

I bought a udemy course 3 weeks ago, but I could not continue the course, but now I have the motivation why I want to learn the course. 💪 Thank you ❤️

[josenari.c]

I really love the content you make! It's intriguing, and helps you see various aspects into one thing. For me it's like a lil guidebook since I'm probably going to major in computer science, so thank you ^^!

[karlroth]

Motivation success is based on the ability to break things down to its simplist parts and to build up from there. That is key to keep going.

[Imyou]

Everyone in this life has a specialty and every specialty wants you to learn it before practicing it. This is life. You have to be patient to reach your goal

[karlroth]

Learning for understanding takes time. The tech courses are great and exciting and on, however, the fast paced availability and demand is too much.

Th best courses are free. Those are the people who want you to succeed and will always help you more.

[bagery]

One problem with a few of the top rated courses I found is that they would be outdated. Fortunately, they've been updated a bit now, so I'll be able to use them as a reference in the future on any questions I may have.

To finally get through this, I had to find a course with deadlines, homework, and live assistance. It's not enough to get a job, but it's a darn good start.

[olaleyedemilade]

Such an interesting video Tiff...I will love to see your portfolio website and also I will be happy if you can show us how to build a nice resume an creat a nice portfolio

[vulpixelful]

The only courses I've managed to finish are LinkedIn Learning courses that don't have a lot of projects. The longest are _maybe_ 10 hrs, most are under 5hrs, and they convey enough info for me to get started on a work thing or, if I don't have a job at the time, any personal project.

[mingyangli]

Courses are designed as information packages, and we don't learn the most from consuming these packages alone. I've done a great deal of Udemy courses (3 is a lot for me!) when I first began learning how to code, but I learnt the most from "referring back to how they did this in the courses" when I get stuck on building fullstack projects .

I also find that completing courses also didn't give myself actual sense of acheivements. Sure there are courses that teach you building projects, but they're not your own. You might've typed everything line by line following the instructor, but you'd have zero idea why you're typing it but you kept doing it mostly for the sake of tricking the Udemy progress bar to get you closer to getting the certificate.

Courses are great if you completely starting out in the field (cos you don't know much), but please please please do not expect yourself to be career-ready once you've finished a few of them. Mostly you just need to watch them, coding along is great but there's no pressure to coding everything from the course. The point of courses are for your information input. There are still hard yards to overcome, and the best way it learn anything is creating "output" once you have enough "input" => building production-ready projects of your own, open issues on github, check issues from others when you get stuck, join slack/discord channels of the companies/communities that're behind the tools/APIs you use (I use Prisma ORM and Leaflet maping tool a lot haha).