Udacity Review [Pros & Cons Of MOOC Unveiled!]

One of the students complained about one of the forums I came across with and mentioned about the unresponsive mentors.

He wrote, “The mentors don't respond to our questions and I have to send dozens of [emails] to the support team to get my query answered, and most of the time the reply I get doesn't help me at all.”

Of course, you can’t really expect a perfect course as the course creators are also humans, too. As the famous adage says, “To err is human.”

But that doesn’t mean you upload lessons with a lot of errors because the students, especially those who paid a lot to enroll, are expecting a lot from the entire course as well as the proficiency of the instructors, too. In fact, it’s been compared to Coursera.

Like the students in Udemy, there are some students who find hassle points in using Udacity in their learning. For instance, one student wrote a complaint against them.

He said, “The Udacity system is riddled with issues and bugs, for one they are unwilling to acknowledge this fact. Issues that they do acknowledge, they lie about having fixed it.”

Personally, once a certain program is accused as a scam alongside a lot of negative reviews on Google SERP means something.

It’s not because the program isn’t legit or legit but it’s about being trustworthy. For EdX and Udemy courses, they do have inevitable concerns about some bugs and problems with a refund but they don’t have the record of a “scam.”

However, for Udacity, most students wrote it’s a scam based on their dissatisfaction on the platform.

There are many students, who raised this concern on various forums and mentioned about either outdated information within these courses or low-quality.

I’ve seen similar concern with Udemy as there have also been quality control issues on the said learning platform.

Based on the complaints, Udacity tends to ask more for certain courses that can be accessed on the internet for free.

If not, the instructors seem to have no qualms showing their incompetence on the subject matter to their students. As a result, there seems to have an online protest against Udacity per se.

In relation to the previous point, there are also students who have problems with weighing the quality of the lessons they get from various instructors to the amount of money they invested for the course.

According to one of the students, he wrote “The course seems to be disorganized. The instructors add much unnecessary information, which made the explanation less clear. When I had puzzles in the projects, it's hard to find someone to help me out. The mentors are previous Nano degree students and not good enough to help you solve your puzzles.”

One student revealed that Udacity doesn’t actually give you lifetime access to the course. Instead, the learning material is only accessible when you aren’t graduating from the course.

Once you go, you aren’t authorized to relearn the subject as it guarantees “Lifetime Access” prior to enrollment and payment.

Justin Tromp, one of the students who find a "meh" experience with Udacity wrote, "[Udacity is a] good idea but terrible execution."

According to him, this MOOC has a good setup with a solid foundation on learning purpose but "half of the subject material is non-lectured."

He said that he felt grateful he had a CS background before he took a Udacity course. Otherwise, he would find the platform useless.

What I love about these types of programs is that it provides diverse learning opportunities to learners like me.

I love learning so much that I continuously read tons of stuff both offline and online and apply them in various endeavors. In fact, I wrote about it in my Udemy post.

There’s no doubt that albeit the splurging negative reviews about Udacity, they remain one of the leading MOOCs for robotics and programming courses.

"The Big Data Foundations Nano degree offered by Udacity is one of the best introductory courses on Big Data one can find.

The explanations are very simple and cover all important topics," a student named Harigovind Valsakumar stated. 

For Adriaan, one of Udacity students, the MOOC takes you from the very basic to challenging programming concepts and paradigms.

It follows a system for students to take step-by-step before they proceed to the advanced stage of the course. "The projects really get you to think and apply what you've learned. It stretches mentally in many ways," he stated.

One of the learners mentioned before that Udacity courses begin with the basics of the subject before they proceed to the advanced level.

Because of that, the intermediate and the advanced learners find this frustrating since they’re expecting the professors heading towards the lean meat immediately.

Well, in fact, there are students who need further assistance in learning the concepts to cater, also.

Surprisingly, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has a high rating A+ for Udacity albeit its failure to gain the accreditation status.

Aside from the above-mentioned platform, other forums could support with high average customer rating, though the MOOC receive quite a lot of negative reviews from the students they serve.

"Most of the courses are free of cost and the Nano degrees are worth the cost," one of the students wrote on the forum.

Albeit the number of negative reviews of Udacity from a lot of its dissatisfied students, there are still many people find its potential as a learning resource.

In fact, many are impressed with its ability to cater the beginner learners to cover the areas and teach them seamlessly in a pace wherein they can cope with before they proceed to the intermediate and advanced course levels.

Yet, this strategy frustrates most of the "smarter" learners because they see the content as low-quality and slow, even outdated.

Some of them complained about its inability to credit the courses to work, especially those who used Udacity as a learning resource with a verified certification. 

"I thought I would get in contact with many companies through Udacity degree but no one knows what Udacity is. In fact, all the interviews I went for no one recognizes them. Useless degree," a web development student named Shristi Gurung wrote on the forum.