We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
~Epictetus
Genuine feedback is a pretty powerful thing to receive, no matter how many times you receive it. Whether you’re a seller on eBay, a restaurant on Zagat, an author on Amazon, or a band on Soundcloud, those hearts and stars and thumbs can really mean a great deal. Factor in comments, and then 10X the whole experience with social media, and suddenly, you’re sitting in the middle of a living, breathing, dynamic, real-time testing environment, with you and your work under the microscope.
The ultimate success of a dynamic like this really depends on two things: genuine investment and engagement on the part of the reviewers, and genuine responsiveness on the part of those being reviewed. Regarding the former, we’re very fortunate—ever since we added reviewing functionality to our Nanodegree program pages, we’ve been the grateful recipients of a steady stream of thoughtful, insightful, and beneficial reviews.
Some reviews are very simple: “love you SO much Udacity.” Others are quite detailed:
The iOS Developer Nanodegree is an awesome program to learn all the fundamentals and some advanced stuff of iOS Programming. The feedback reviews of your projects are incredibly useful. Furthermore, it is possible to learn good programming practices, design patterns, how to find answers on forums and on the documentation, etc. This was really important to me because I’m not currently working as a Software Engineer and all the content that is taught in the course made me a better programmer overall. Finally, this course teaches not only how to be better technically as a programmer but also how to do well in your interviews and how to prepare your resume. 10/10 for sure.
Fortunately, the vast majority of the reviews we’ve received have been very favorable. But there have been critical ones as well, yet even these have evidenced a wonderful degree of engagement, and presented us with genuinely actionable insights:
This program seems to intentionally elongate lessons. Many of the “topics” are unnecessary asides from the relevant information. The instruction that is provided is sound, and overall the student does learn a great deal. I would love to seem this program streamlined, so that the student can get to the tract they am most interested in more quickly.
One of the more fascinating things about the dynamism of online reviews—when you have the good fortunate of a passionate and engaged audience doing the reviewing!—is watching how things ebb and flow over time; this Nanodegree program hits a string of highs, that one runs into a challenge that a number of reviewers identify and comment on, this newly launched Nanodegree program gets a massive flurry of new reviews, while that “sleeper” Nanodegree sneaks in with a really important and detailed comment from a recent graduate, and so forth.
Currently, we’re really pleased to see that we’ve got six different Nanodegree programs that are all enjoying average reviews in the 4.4-4.6 stars range. Given that these six programs have received over 1400 reviews, we’re really excited! At the end of the day, there is NOTHING more important to us than supporting our students to the very best of our abilities, and if we can take from all this that our students are feeling positive right now about their learning experiences, and are excited and hopeful about their new futures, then we’re really, really, really happy!
Curious what those top six are right now? Check it out!
https://www.udacity.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Top-Rated-Programs-Blog-Latest.pdf
