BrainStation

The education team is great and very helpful. BrainStation really knows what they're doing and how to deliver such an intense program.

At some points in the program, there are moments of doubt and questionable thoughts:
-Should I quit, should I drop out?... Read More Is this really for me? I don't want to fail out of the program.
-What is going on? Do they know how to teach and layout the material? Why didn't they just teach us this from the beginning?

In the end, after going through the entire program, everything worked out and the pace and style of how the program is structured is great.

A fully online program has its challenges but so does everything else.

I actually wish I started studying in their Part-Time intro the Web Dev course-program because I was looking at programs for a very long time. It probably would have made the full-time program a little bit easier on me too since I come from a background with very little coding experience.

My advice to anyone that enrols in the full-time program:
-Trust the program and listen to the education team.
-Ask questions.
-Help fellow classmates.
-Use an Apple computer.
-Plan and prepare that you will do nothing else for the entire length of the program.
-Put in the time, effort, and work.

And lastly, if you are taking a long time, thinking and considering, about whether or not to take a full-time program then at least take the part-time Intro to Web Development.

The course was set to provide the perfect balance of content learning and practice. I was able to practice what I learnt in class with assignments/homework with more advanced questions available for those who want to push themselves. My instructor was... Read More patient and welcoming as he ensured that each student participated in class discussions and understanding concepts. All questions were answered in class and our instructor made himself available for extra help outside of class hours. Our practice with the applications and software was enough to allow us to get started and perform the many tasks you would get as a Data Analyst. As a class, we tried out each application with plenty of practice examples.

I would recommend the course and BrainStation overall. I learnt a lot and feel ready to take on more challenges.

I took the User Experience Design course at the BrainStation Toronto location. If I had to summarize my experience in a few words, I would say: modern, inspiring, relevant. I've taken numerous courses from many different schools, but none were as engaging... Read More as this one was. It starts with the Learning Experience team who are always available to help you be prepared for each class, whether its addressing technical issues or sharing suggested resources that get you in the right mindset for class participation. In class, it became obvious very quickly that the instructors are highly passionate about their craft and that they are genuinely interested in helping students learn not only new skills, but more importantly, how to think critically and how to develop their careers. I highly recommend BrainStation for anyone looking for insight into a particular career path or for anyone looking for what specific knowledge is critical for career success.

I signed up for the online version of the SEM course with some wariness - full days online? How could that possibly work? (This was last summer, pre-pandemic....little did I know.....)

The entire experience was fantastic. My class was small - only 6 people... Read More in that session - and the instructor was able to answer all our questions and be a real resource for anyone having difficulties. It managed to feel personal even though we never "met".

The course was really well paced and covered a LOT of material. I took pages of notes (apparently, I'm "old school") and using our real-world companies as the subject for our individual projects meant that I had actionable learnings to implement right away.

I'm self-employed and investing in learning for myself while my company is still growing is a difficult choice to make. I was grateful for BrainStation's scholarship program that allowed me to take this course.

Being a passionate UI designer, what motivated me to enhance my digital skills was to build the base it needed in terms of experience and knowledge. I wanted to fine-tune the knowledge I had, and at the same time also learn the basics of UX principles.... Read More One of the most important aspects of UX I learnt from this course is to understand the business goals and the user needs before you start thinking about solutions. The lead instructor, Frauke Seewald demonstrated valuable knowledge and insights from her real-life experiences in the industry while explaining the UX theories and principles. Her guidance and feedback helped me elevate the level of my work from the beginning until the end and even after the completion of the course.

Learnings
To conclude, the course will help you establish the foundation you needed and motivate to do your best.

I thought the program was very good. It was very useful in utilizing live lectures (with an option of going on campus as well) where there is always the live interaction component, the engagement of asking questions, and specially getting quick answers... Read More is much more efficient than looking up questions online, which saves a lot of time. The Brainstation team including the Lecturers and Teaching assistants, are very well knowledgeable, and are very involved in their fields, which gives a great opportunity to explore the industrial side of the field. Overall, it is a different experience than a Bootcamp or a MOOC (These are great for building up the basic skills). Brainstation program gave me the opportunity to apply my skills, get evaluated on the spot, and communicate closely with more experienced members of the field, which provided me with a great boost of confidence to know what to expect going forward in the career. The most important stage in the Data Science methodology is Understanding, Pre-processing, and Transforming data. I have been heavily involved in topics that include utilizing Python for cleaning, and exploration of Data (formatting types, identifying outliers, dealing with missing data etc.), and other topics that focuses on Statistics, Probability and Hypothesis testing (A/B testing), and how they can all be brought together using Python Libraries and algorithms, to be later fed into a Machine Learning model Creating my Machine Learning models including different Regressions, and Classifications (Naiive Bayes/Decision Trees/Random Forests) and using Neural Nets, was very rewarding, and was accompanied with Statistical Evaluations including Hypothesis Testing (T tests, P values etc.). My favorite part was to bring the entirety of the model, and shine its significance with delivering Data Stories and Insights, through interpretation of different variables, and comparing various measures (R2, MAE, MSE etc.). In conclusion I highly recommend the program, but definitely it is recommended to have basics of Python and Statistics to dive into the course smoothly (They also provide some pre-requisites preparation course that come free with the course) Good-luck and Happy Learning!

I knew I would learn the technical skills involved in web development but I got so much more out of the experience than I ever would have expected. BrainStation has made me a more confident person and has helped me find what I really want to do with my... Read More career path. The culture in the classroom is unlike the culture I've experienced in traditional schooling - everyone is a lot more supportive of one another and not only focused on their own progression. I learned how to learn quickly and apply quickly - a lasting skill that will definitely be beneficial in the web dev industry in the long run.

This course boosted my knowledge and skills with data through a focused curriculum, experienced instructor, and inviting classroom environment. The assignments and tasks were relevant to the work world and follow-up with the instructor was welcomed. I... Read More would highly recommend brainstation to anyone who wants to quickly gather data analysis skills and confidence to apply them in their day job.

My learning experience has been extraordinary. My instructors were not only great professionals in the industry but also highly skilled in new trends and tools, always there to answer any questions or doubts and great at encouraging us to learn more and... Read More more every day. My learning experience was A+++, and I am coming back to start a new course. Thank you, BrainStation!

I just completed my second BrainStation course. Last summer I took the Product Management course on campus in Vancouver, BC and this summer I took the User Interface course online. They were both one night a week for 10 weeks.

The quality of both courses... Read More was excellent. I like the 10 week format because I need time to really absorb what I am learning. The product management course is offered over 5 full time days (or was last year anyway) and I really don't think I would have learned as much. With the 10 week format there was enough time to actually do the homework each week. If you keep up with it one night a week of doing homework is enough, but for me it is hard to find time. I actually tried to do a 5 week accelerated program, the User Experience Design course, but I got sick and only went to 2 classes. Still that was almost half of the course and it was way too fast. I just barely got the homework done but didn't really spend enough time to absorb what I was doing. If you are used to taking courses and/or are not working full time you should look at the 5 week accelerated programs though. They are the exact same material as the 10 week ones, just twice as fast.

My teacher in both of the courses I finished were really great. They were both working industry professionals with a ton of experience. One is a VP even! This was the part that I liked the best, they both shared a LOT of information in addition to the slides such as showing us real documents/designs/roadmaps/etc that they had worked on for various projects. Being able to see what the real work looks like really helped me understand the topics we covered in each lesson and also gave me confidence at work that what I was producing was the correct thing or in the correct format. Also both courses had teaching assistants and I liked both of them a lot too. It was good having two different instructors available because we got to hear two different experiences.

The only downsides I can share is that the online course just had way too many people in my class but that is probably because it was the first session after the pandemic started. The 5 week course I started was also online but had 2/3 the number of students. But overall everyone is really great there. In fact I withdrew from that 5 week course halfway through and then was allowed to register in the UI course instead once I was no longer sick and that was

As far as diversity goes I had 2 white instructors, an Indian instructor, a Black instructor, and an Asian instructor. All my instructors were men but in each of the classes I would guess half of the class was female. I know that there are female instructors also as I know a couple but my instructors were all men. All of the BrainStation employees I interacted with aside from teachers for all 3 courses were women. So I would say I interacted with an equal number of male and female employees at Brainstation and of all ethnicities.

I really learned a lot in both courses and I 10000% have used stuff from these courses at work! I had to take on the role of Product Manager for 6 months at the planning phase of a new product while we looked for a full time PM and I was completely armed and prepared to do that. There were some bumps along the way, especially as I learned to translate the "student project" level of my knowledge into real business deliverables -- and learned how to make slide decks from scratch! (BrainStation final projects come with a template you can use if you want so you don't have to be great at that stuff to do the course) I can safely say that I outperformed expectations of me and I owe the credit completely to the Product Management course!

The User Interface Design course that I took I finished it just recently after handing off the role of PM to our new permanent product manager. I took this one for me, not for work. I always had this mental block against graphics, I was convinced I couldn't do anything that involved graphics. So I decided to force myself through it by taking this course. Don't get me wrong, I struggled. This design stuff does not come to me naturally and although the software is pretty straight forward when there was something that I couldn't figure out it was really hard. Plus my designs were not great. But by the end of the course I was using the software and my designs were pretty good! I am not a natural talent, I'll need to keep working on it if I really want to get to a professional level, but where I'm at now is pretty good! The app I designed looked better than a lot of apps I've seen. I was pretty happy with what I learned and how much I grew and got over my fears in this course.

There isn't a lot of instruction on how to use the programs nor how-to's on making designs/graphics themselves but instead the course teaches a lot about the theory of User Interface Design and you do designs as the course goes, working on your final project a bit each week, applying what you have learned. For some people that worked out well. For me it was hard because I spent a lot of time trying to learn the software. I ended up buying a $15 Udemy course on how to use sketch and I spent a week watching that. After I did that I found I was able to really apply what I was learning and doing the designs wasn't as frustrating (or pointless) as before.

I am a mobile developer so I already had the code part but whenever I tried to make an app it was always extremely ugly. I'm really looking forward to using my design skills and product management knowledge to plan some apps!