Cool. Let's start off by scheduling 1 or a few sessions and if you are keen we can make it more regular:

https://calendly.com/peerprogramming/1hr

To get straight to the point I would like to test a concept I believe will help people learn how to code in fun & interactive way. This will also help me and everyone in the pilot upskill our programming skills. In a nutshell, this would start off with peer programming sessions. Where we schedule a live, online session to pick a few programming challenges, pseudo code solutions together, write solutions independently and then compare and discuss our solutions regularly.

We are going to start things off with JavaScript,

Let me know if you are keen to do some peer programming sessions. I can share my Calendly for you to pick a time that works best for you. Let's fast track our learning!

Hi Everyone,

We are launching a platform to help users build projects for your portfolio and to master your craft.

We collaborate with experienced data scientists, data engineers and BI/Data Analysts to compile projects resembling real world projects. We are looking to have a free tier and paid tier. The free tier will give you access to projects, case studies and datasets. The paid tier will give you access to mentor guided projects. You can view multiple videos from our mentors guiding you. The videos walk you through the project problem statement, possible considerations to make, what models you may want to consider etc. In addition to this, you can post questions regarding any challenges you are encountering and receive quick feedback from our mentors. You can collaborate and chat with other users and lastly, if you submit your project you will receive feedback to help you figure out what you need to improve.

Our mentors are experienced data scientists working for big companies across Africa and abroad. We charge a monthly fee of $15 for our paid tier.

Interested to know what people think about this. Granted I haven't shared the link and only just walking you through how it works.

How do you see this platform helping you in becoming/upskilling your data science/data engineering skills

Having run a bootcamp (and utilizing multiple edtech platforms) to learn data science, we learnt that the most effective way to learn a new skill requires three pillars;

1. Personalized Feedback
This can occur in the form of having a live instructor to interact with, get personalized feedback from and help you gauge your progress

2. Collaborative
Learning with peers encourages greater engagement and keeping you more consistent

3. Practicality
Working on projects, applying the skills you learn to have a more practical understanding

We built a marketplace of live courses merging these pillars (that you would typically get from a bootcamp) with the optionality and flexibility of MOOCs, enabling you to take on courses with a high level of personalization for a cost effective price (fees start as a low as 5000 Naira). In each course learners are placed in study groups (online and offline in the near future) to give you 'study buddies' to learn with inbetween your live tutorials and we are hoping to establish learning centers in the near future to give learners in certain areas spaces to work from and collaborate with other people in person (in person collaboration is just so much more fun). Our courses are created and hosted by experienced professionals and companies, maximizing their real world practicality; covering topics in Data Science, Analytics, Data Engineering, Product Management, Software Engineering, DevOps and No Code.

Interested to ask a few questions;
1. If you are looking to get into tech, does our platform sound like a viable platform to learn through?
2. What are the biggest pain points you have encountered learning a technical skill online?
3. What are the key factors you consider before deciding to pay for a course?

We are launching a marketplace of live low-cost online marketplace of technical courses covering topics in; data science, analytics, data engineering, software engineering, no-code and product management. The objective of this post is to gain an understanding of the pain points you encounter learning technical skills online and getting a better understanding of whether our value proposition as it currently stands offers a substantial enough value as we believe.

Live
One of the biggest pain points I struggled with was getting direct feedback from an instructor live. Having tried MOOCs, bootcamps, gamified code platforms, online universities and self-learning to name a few; I found myself learning far more effectively when I had a mentor. I found that it wasn't necessarily about having a 1 v 1 mentor and moreso about having live tutorials weekly with an experienced (I was learning data science) Data Scientists. This enabled me to ask questions, get immediate personalized feedback, have concepts broken down to me in a manner more tailored to my understanding and have a measuring stick to gauge my progress. Because of this I learnt a lot more from the traditional online bootcamp type model which gave me this experience.

Courses on our platform offer this level of personalization.

Learning in small groups
In addition to this, we believe learning happens best when individuals are put in small groups of peers working towards the same goal (same learning goal) because this encourages greater collaboration, peer to peer learning and just far more engagement. I personally don't have a problem with learning on my own, but I do find learning in groups far more engaging and motivating. The more engaged I am, the more fun I have learning, the more time I spend learning and ultimately the more I learn.

Courses created by senior professionals
We don't create the courses ourselves. We already have a marketplace of senior talent across the continent and in some cases in the US. We believe enabling senior talent to create courses results in substantially more practical courses based on skills actually used in the work space.

Low-Cost
I personally greatly believe in making personalized human touch online education as accessible as possible; blending the personalization of platforms like Lambda School while retaining the commodified marketplace type model (ie. Udemy) that also enables you to follow you curiosity as opposed to getting into a 6-12 month commitment sometimes having to re-learn things you already understand, while keeping this as affordable to as many people as possible. We aim to have courses starting as low as $10.

Project Based
It goes without saying that every course must include a project (you will get feedback on this). I strongly believe Learning a technical skill without applying it through a project is superficial at best.


Interested in learning more about;
i. whether this value proposition resonates with you, specifically, is this a learning format that you believe would accelerate your learning progress
ii. what kind of courses are you specifically looking to learn?
iii. how valuable would you find personalized study plans; giving you a list of recommended courses on our platform based on understanding what your objectives are (ie. our data science team would recommend what courses you should do after finding out what you want to achieve)

Let's chat. We already have a few pilot courses running, but want to accelerate our learning process to build a better experience for everyone and ultimately build a platform with multitude of courses aimed at upskilling Africans with highly scalable skills

Hi Everyone,

We run a platform intelligently and instantly matching companies to curated data (science/analytics/engineering) and SWE talent across Africa; The Gradient Boost. We have been building the upskilling wing of our platform enabling users to join affordable live courses led by instructors who have experience working for companies such as AWS, Coursera and numerous other tech startups in Africa.

These courses are live - giving you access to an instructor to engage with and get immediate feedback from, the courses are cohort based -enabling you to work with small groups of peers, practical - focused on skills that are relevant to work and affordable - starting as low as $10.

The first batch of classes will include;
- Introduction to Data Engineering
- Building data pipelines using Airflow
- Introduction to Data Science
- Introduction to Machine Learning
- SQL case studies
- Project builds (building projects with a mentor)
- Introduction to Software Engineering
- Building with NoCode
- Introduction to Product Management
More classes will be added soon

If this is something you are interested in please fill in the form below. We will be awarding 3 scholarships to people who complete the form, giving you access to a course of your choosing.

Form: https://thegradientboost.typeform.com/to/G6nAG1nU