Pluralsight
Pluralsight is another site for courses in numerous disciplines, both technical and creative, from React to 3d. The portal has a very nice design and usability, everything is made nice and neat, it’s nice to study. There are a number of very handy chips that set it apart from other resources of this type.
Skills IQ
Skills IQ is a pretty cool thing that allows you to roughly estimate your level of knowledge on a topic. This is just a test with answer choices that adjusts for you as you go. That is, if you do not answer a difficult question, the difficulty is automatically reduced. Such tests are especially useful for team leaders, who can ask their colleagues to test certain skills they need in their work and figure out who needs to tighten up, and who better to get what work tasks done.
For example, I took the tests in the disciplines I use in my work: graphic design, CSS, HTML, JavaScript. Got some pretty interesting results, some of them even surprised me. For example, I scored surprisingly high in CSS and at the same time found out that I needed to improve my HTML skills.
And shortly after that, I was supposed to be interviewed for a promotion at my office. When our most important boss, who has never worked with me directly and doesn’t know what I can and can’t do, asked me about my proficiency in specific skills, I directly quoted the test results, it was very convenient and revealing. By the way, I got the promotion 😉
Notes
It would seem to be nothing, but their notes are organized as hell. As you go through the course and watch the videos, it’s very convenient to make quick notes that are tied to timecodes, or with tags; it’s very easy to navigate and repeat what you’ve learned.
Paths
Conveniently made the so-called learning paths, when a number of different courses are selected for a particular interesting topic, you can not choose a course from a particular author, and the path, and follow it, completing the courses selected curators.
Mentors
Mentors are professionals in a particular industry who moonlight on Pluralsight, helping students for a small fee. For example, you’re stuck on some obscure topic, or you have a straightforward question that you can’t Google, or you just don’t understand anything. And here chats with live people, you pick someone who clearly knows the question you’re interested in and ask. Payment for a minute of live chatting. Super-crutans are more expensive, but they can help you more professionally, too. And you yourself, too, if you want to become a mentor.
And in general, the biggest plus – is, of course, that their library of courses is unreal huge and covers a huge number of disciplines in many different areas. But this is also the biggest disadvantage: among the very cool courses, the level of the same Codeschool, may fall and not very good.
The cost of training – 30 bucks a month, and this, of course, is the boldest minus: it’s too damn expensive. So a corporate account is ideal. If your bosses are interested in your professional growth – ask for an invitations to Pluralsight right now.