Online learning is the new norm, and there are tons of options out there. Educative is a platform designed for developers and software engineers to upskill, master new topics, and prepare for coding interviews. Today, we want to introduce you to Educative and tell you what it has to offer. It might be different from what you expect.
Educative doesn’t try to emulate the massive online monoliths like Coursera or Udemy. Instead, we’ve worked hard to meet developer-specific needs through our courses, unique learning platform, and free content. Let’s jump in!
What is Educative?
Educative is an online learning environment for developers of all levels. It uses text-based, interactive courses, which are hand-selected by the learner. Educative’s courses cover a variety of topics related to computer science and software development.
Why was it formed?
Educative was formed by brothers Fahim ul Haq and Naeem ul Haq, former senior engineers who quit their jobs at Microsoft when they grew frustrated with the lack of continued education opportunities for developers.
The resources available were inaccessible for beginners or packed into lengthy videos that waste a learner’s time. They wanted to create a learning platform that met developers where they’re at, so they created Educative. This means text-based, self-paced, and hands-on courses.
How do the courses work?
Courses are written either by Educative’s dedicated group of technical content creators or by experienced third-party authors. Much of Educative’s content is written by published authors from their well-performing texts, seeking new outlets to share their knowledge. Authors are able to upload their own content with the help of a technical and proofreading team, so they have control over how their content is offered.
Courses come packed with interactive features that are built into Educative’s all-in-one online platform. This includes code snippets, playgrounds, quizzes, interactive graphs, and more. The Educative platform enables learners to read at their own speed and build real projects without the hassle of extra downloads.
Courses can be purchased through our Unlimited subscription, which offers access to our library of over 550+ hands-on courses and projects – with new courses published each week. Teams and organizations can purchase special subscriptions for access to courses for L&D and upskilling through Educative Enterprise.
But, there are a lot of learning platforms out there that tackle similar tech concepts, so, what makes Educative different?
How is Educative different?
There are many ways to learn how to code and upskill. Dozens of sites offer videos, instructional manuals, and boot camps. So, why is Educative standing out as an emerging leader in tech education? Why are Educative users raving about these courses?
No more video scrubbing: our courses are text-based
When developers and engineers think of online learning, they probably imagine lengthy videos. A three-hour-long tutorial on Python where someone stands in front of a screen and talks at length. For most of us, this isn’t the ideal way to learn. Videos mean you’re learning at someone else’s pace, and they offer you no way to skim, reread challenging concepts, or control your time.
Text-based learning paired with hands-on practice has proven to be far more effective for tech education. Reading is faster than videos. The average video tutorial is spoken at 150 words per minute, while the average human reads at 250. Reading improves retention and comprehension. Why do you think students take notes during lectures?
That’s why Educative’s courses are all rich text-based. In fact, results from Educative’s independently facilitated focus groups revealed that text-based courses are preferred for deep, effective learning. Devs prefer it, and science backs it.
Learn at your own speed
Developers and engineers often expect online courses to function like a university course, where there is a start and stop date, a rigid syllabus, and a pre-set time to attend. This is actually a disempowering way to learn online. This style of learning puts you at the whim of someone else’s schedule, and you lose all the content once the class ends.
With Educative’s courses, one payment gives you full access to learn whenever and however you need. Even people with full-time jobs can learn valuable skills online without changing their schedules. University students can supplement class material without enrolling in another time-consuming course. Learn according to your schedule, not someone else’s.
Educative meets you where you’re at with an embedded coding environment
Educative is here to help developers and engineers where they’re at. You shouldn’t have to jump through extra hoops to start learning something. That’s why we’ve simplified the learning experience and offer the simplest, all-in-one online platform.
Most online courses require you to download coding environments, extra packages, and all sorts of programs just to start. But Educative has a powerful, embedded coding environment that allows you to start learning the second you click on a course. There are no extra downloads. No burdensome programs. You can learn everything you need with the tools you already have.
This is also a huge benefit for L&D teams and educators, who use Educative on a larger scale. A whole team can get started without the hassle of extra purchases or downloads. Just a single click and everyone is on the same page.
This is one of the reasons developers of all levels love Educative. We want to meet you where you’re at, not the other way around.
Tailored to engineer-specific topics and needs
Many online learning platforms offer courses on just about anything. These sites are flooded with content. It may seem like a great cure-all, but this is actually a red flag: the learning platform is overly generalized. And something that serves everyone doesn’t really specialize in anything.
A developer has unique needs to learn and succeed, so Educative set out to be a platform that acknowledges those needs. We could flood our site with courses, but we’d rather be really good at one thing than mediocre at everything. How do we do that?
Firstly, we organize our courses based on three common camps that developers fall into: beginners, those looking to upskill, those looking to interview. We know our audience’s needs and try to make it easier for you to find exactly what you’re looking for. Learning isn’t one-size-fits-all, so courses shouldn’t be either.
Secondly, our learning platform uses a variety of hands-on tools, visualizations, and real-world examples to make learning more practical. Developers aren’t just looking for abstract theory. You want to build things and solve problems! Our courses strike a unique balance of theory, practice, and industry-standard examples that make you more prepared to land a job or improve on the job.
Thirdly, we let the experts speak for themselves. Rather than limit talented authors, we allow them to write courses on their specialties. That’s why we have such a rich body of courses to choose from.
Educative leads the way with interview prep
When engineers think of interview prep, they probably imagine hours of skimming through questions on LeetCode (you can read our thoughts on Educative vs. LeetCode), and frantically searching for tips StackOverflow.
This isn’t how coding interview prep should be. In fact, coding interviews often act as a gatekeeping method for those who didn’t attend top universities or bootcamps. Every talented developer has the right to reliable, specialized, and self-paced interview prep, and that’s what Educative set out to provide from day one.
Educative is the leading online learning platform for coding interviews, offering everything from free resources like CodingInterview, blog articles that tackle overlooked facets of interviews, and quality courses on interview prep/strategy.
We’re doing interview prep differently, with logically-structured courses, organized prep roadmaps, and in-depth explanations that teach you how to think strategically. We really do believe this empowers the world of tech for everyone.
Our publication process leads to higher-quality courses
A lot of online learning platforms focus on quantity rather than quality. If you search “Python Tutorial” on a massive online learning site, you’ll get anywhere from 50-100 results. This gives you the extra challenge of just picking a place to start. And oftentimes, developers simply settle for the “recommended” course, even though authors will pay for those rankings.
Educative cares about quality, not quantity. That’s why our courses launch at a much more intentional pace than massive online sites. Each course goes through an extensive technical and grammatical review process to ensure that you are learning quality content. Even well-known authors are still vetted by our technical review team.
We also curate our courses so you don’t have to choose from a sea of results. Less choice actually makes your life easier.
Educative also ensures that courses vary in difficulty, topic, and specificity. This means you can find courses written on niche topics by highly-trained experts as well as generalist classes written by tech masters. That’s why we don’t have a ranking system. We trust our courses and would never trick you into buying anything.
Get connected, get started
Educative has something for everyone on your team, from fresh graduates looking to expand their knowledge to experienced devs learning about cloud computing and machine learning. Your team may have a training budget to get you started on your learning journey, and Educative is happy to work with you to discover the best enterprise, individual, or team subscription to meet your unique needs.
Submit your information here and talk to our team to see how we can help!
Learn more
- Educative for teams: curated courses for engineering teams
- Educative for students: get 6 months free with GitHub for Students
- Educative Unlimited subscription: get full access to 400+ courses to supercharge your skills
