A few months ago, I tried a free trial of Team Treehouse and then signed up for one of their basic subscriptions. The subscription let you enroll into a learning track of your choice, and I wanted to start with Python. The Beginning Python track is 9 hours long, but it took me a few months to complete. However, today–right now, I have finally passed a major milestone in my Python learning journey!

Team Treehouse Impressions

As a complete new person to an overwhelmingly intimidating field, I really loved the clean interface and design of Team Treehouse. The videos all seemed to be professional produced as opposed to well-produced home videos from other sites.

At first, even though the quizzes were a surprise, I was really happy to have them. The quizzes were also intimidating, but it helped my brain learn how to comprehend the lingo of this new realm. Also, the payoff of correctly answering a quiz question when you think you’re lost was a nice additional motivator.

Later on in the course, I quickly realized that different teachers teach different subtopics in each track, and some include different quiz methods and teaching methods.

Quizzed Out

Since I’m a stay at home / work at home mother, after a while, the quizzes were a really big disruptor in my learning process and time management. I don’t have the luxury of uninterrupted time or much quiet space. So, sometimes I want to be able to power through retaining as much information as I can during my small gaps in free time. During those moments, I was very frustrated to have a three minute or four minute video followed by multiple quizzes (sometimes five quiz questions / challenges back to back).

I should probably mention that I have years of analyzing my own personal learning process, because before I taught college I had to learn how to teach, and before I could learn how to teach, I had to learn how to learn.

I’m a visual learner. I also tend to have “bursts” of energy or “pockets” of moments where I am ready to dedicate hours to a task or subject. This trait of mine made me and Team Treehouse’s pacing very off-putting after a while

This could also be partly due to the fact that since I’m self-learning, I have my toes dipped in a lot of different areas. Some books I’ve read are ahead of the beginner tract, along with some of the projects I’ve accomplished, yet still a lot of it is new. Moreover, through my troubleshooting and projects, I’ve learned that those are my quizzes. Those stick in my brain and motivate me more.

Moving Forward

I don’t mean for this post to come off as if I am completely hating on Team Treehouse. I really do think that they’re a fantastic resource, and their videos have helped me a lot. As a new beginner, I’m happy that I chose this platform because the quizzes were strict and did help me persevere through some frustrating challenges (which I’m sure is the point, to mimic the life of a developer!).

However, for myself, I have decided to take a pause in my membership with Team Treehouse and move on over to try Udemy.

Udemy Impressions

First, I love the freedom of Udemy. I can skip forward in a course if I want and from what I can tell–there are no quizzes! I will say that Udemy is more attractive to me now because I am more experienced in this realm and have already personally decided to stick with this learning journey. However, if I was a new person and unsure, I think that Udemy’s platform could be potentially intimidating and perhaps give new students too much freedom to get in over their head.

What it really comes down to is personal preference and situation. For my personal situation, I’m excited to have the freedom to be able to utilize my time as best as possible, at my own speed. That will be a big plus for me!

Onto the next goal!