A free full-time 7-week coding course in London

by dsofer • 12 years ago

43 37 12 years ago

dsofer16• 12 years ago

This is a course I am involved in, but I am hoping a free course of this kind is unusual enough to be of interest to Hacker News readers.

netcan• 12 years ago

It is, but this is a little light on information.

The course: What's the ciriculum. What's the structure. Will it be focused on building a project? Is this one-on-one instruction, classroom based, mentorship based, mostly self taught? What's the target/prerequisite level of student experience?

The Free: How is it free? Donors? Volunteers? Is this the pilot for a for profit project?

wyclif2• 12 years ago

http://foundersandcoders.org/curriculum

dsofer16• 12 years ago

It is part of a larger project funded by from public sources. It is not a pilot. The June course will be the third one we have run this year. We are exploring funding from various sources. We may end up charging at some point, but the model we are trying to pursue is to keep the value/cost ratio as high as we can.

mrcdima• 12 years ago

Here's another useful link http://camdencollective.co.uk/academy/ There's a video in there and some other current info.

The main website should incorporate more of this information though. Right now details are scattered around twitter feeds, multiple websites, semi updated pages and this thread (hn is probably the best source of info right now).

paul_f• 12 years ago

Who is funding this project? Hard to believe anyone would run a free 7-week course because they like to teach.

This is similar to a course taught by General Assembly here in the US, but that course costs $11,500.

dsofer16• 12 years ago

We have a bit of funding from Collective, which is a project in Camden Town offering free workspace and support to creative startups, which is in turn funded by the Mayor of London.

I am not sure that what we are doing is exactly comparable to an offering like General Assembly, which is a very well-structured course and has many links with industry. What we are doing is much more seat of the pants. We are grabbing learning resources off the web and stitching them together into a patchwork of useful learning exercises and projects and holding it all together with daily seminars, paired programming and code reviews. We hope some of our students will be ready to apply for membership of Collective when they finish the course and can bring new creative ideas and energy to Camden Town.

alixaxel• 12 years ago

This is so cool, well done!

jschuur• 12 years ago

There's a General Assembly here in London too. Their 12 week, full time web development course clocks in at £8,000 (about $13,500).

Alex3917• 12 years ago

"Hard to believe anyone would run a free 7-week course because they like to teach."

Seth Godin ran a full-time free six-month MBA program because he likes to teach. There are a ton of smart people who really enjoy teaching, most just don't have the money to do it full time for free.

SidKetchum• 12 years ago

Is it an entry-level course? Which are the skills that will be learned?

dsofer16• 12 years ago

It is entry level. Primarily, it's going to be JavaScript--both backend (node) and frontend, plus HTML, CSS, and Git.

wyclif2• 12 years ago

Open to non-UK citizens?

atat• 12 years ago

This looks like a great initiative! How much competition per space are you expecting? Any chance of accepting text applications as well as video?

dsofer16• 12 years ago

At this point we are not sure, but since the HN posting the odds may be about to lengthen. We will accept text applications if you have a good reason for not doing a video.

alexpogosian• 12 years ago

This is a very interesting project. I wouldn't qualify since I've been working as a web developer for several years. But I'd love to see something like this in my home country (Republic of Georgia).

I wonder if it's possible to do it without any teaching experience?

dsofer16• 12 years ago

Like you, I have no teaching experience, but have been working as a web developer and project manager for many years before taking this project on. I encourage you to give it a go. A really good way to start is to organise Coursera meetups (http://www.meetup.com/Coursera/), which is what I did last year and where I got the idea for starting "Founders & Coders".

keithpeter• 12 years ago

I am a teacher and I have been involved with teacher training in the UK at College and University level.

If you have been working with others as a Web developer, you will have acquired coaching skills and the ability to explain technical information.

I would suggest that you start with small groups of people (4 to 6) in a local coffee bar gain experience as to the things they find difficult by using materials easily available in the appropriate language.

A couple of workshops will give you an idea of what you need to focus on.

Basically, start and iterate. I hope the OP posts their materials as I think this is a nice idea to start in other cities.

woodylondon• 12 years ago

Great idea! However, have you thought about a weekend / evening version for people working, but wanting to get out and do their own thing? I would so love to do this, but work full-time in a management role and the impossible just to not work for 7 weeks. I have so many ideas, but never really coded before and struggled with self learning.

dsofer16• 12 years ago

Thank you for the feedback. We will be doing more stuff later in the year. I struggle with self learning, too. Peer pressure makes such a difference. Please follow @selforganising for updates.

ruggeri• 12 years ago

We (App Academy) did a free iOS course in 2013. It was fun and helped kick-start our business. I hope you have the same experience!

We broke even because we were able to collect some placement fees from companies that hired students. Even if we hadn't, the financial risk was not super high, since our time was the biggest investment.

If people from the US are interested in a similar program, you might want to look at [App Academy](http://appacademy.io). Our class is no longer truly free, but beside a refundable deposit, we don't collect any tuition until a graduate finds a job (and none if they don't).

weisser• 12 years ago

Is this restricted to London residents?

dsofer16• 12 years ago

Mainly intended for London residents, but we would consider strong applications from elsewhere.

andrey-p• 12 years ago

This is excellent, a friend of mine based in London was specifically looking for a way to learn programming on the cheap. I've sent him the link.

One thing - you should probably add a loads more prominent link to the foundersandcoders.org/intro page on the entry page - my friend isn't a sceptical HN reader, and he would've missed that link (and loads of useful information) very easily.

dsofer16• 12 years ago

Link added to navigation bar. Thanks for the suggestion :-)

icedata• 12 years ago

Curriculum looks similar to Coursera's Startup Engineering, which I am doing (although it isn't currently officially offered). I think this is an interesting initiative, would like to try something like this in Toronto.

dsofer16• 12 years ago

That is no coincidence. I organised a meetup for Startup Engineering last year in the same place that I am now running Founders & Coders. It's a great course. Good luck with it.

ZenPro• 12 years ago

This is outstanding; Providing for free what some startups are attempting to charge >$15K for.

As a London-based startup employee (Marketing, Business Dev) it makes me proud to point to these kinds of initiatives in my city.

If you need any additional teachers for marketing/pitching/sales/lean then drop me a line. I already volunteer at Coder Dojo and am a mentor at a few others.

dsofer16• 12 years ago

ZenPro, I really appreciate the feedback. Contact me. There's a link on the website.

mistakoala2• 12 years ago

What have previous cohorts gone on to do?

dsofer16• 12 years ago

The first cohort graduated in February. One is interning as a developer at Hogarth Worldwide--after only six weeks and from a standing start--but he was an outlier.

Of the others, one has got a job with a tech startup, one is working as a business analyst, one is freelancing with Google, some have returned to their own startups from which they took a sabbatical to do the course--but none of them are in pure developer roles.

We are not in the business of pretending we can turn people into software developers in a few weeks. I am re-orienting the course away from the unrealistic goal of turning out market-ready software developers and instead I am aiming to jump-start people who want to work on their own projects.

This might kibosh my funding sources, but it seems to be a more interesting and worthwhile direction to go in.

mistakoala2• 12 years ago

Sure. I like the sound of encouraging people who want to explore and jumpstart their own projects. I feel that there's an implicit push by bootcamps to acquire students who are certain about going on to developer roles, so to see a programme welcoming students with ambiguous objectives is good to see.

A free full-time 7-week coding course in London

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