BrainStation

1. High quality instruction and excellent course format:
The most important criteria for me is the quality and experience of the instructor. Not only was our instructor Scott super knowledgeable and experienced but was also a great teacher. He broke down... Read More the concepts nicely and shared a lot of examples from his work life which made the application of all the marketing concepts very real and easier to appreciate.

Given the whole Covid situation, Brainstation’s Online Live format cannot be beat. You log in from the convenience of your home and the platform uses great collaboration tools like Zoom, Slack and their own Synapse platform which makes the learning experience very interactive and cohesive. I definitely miss that in the other online courses that are either not live or simply lack the maturity in terms of collaboration tools and software. Kudos to the Brainstation leadership team for their thought leadership and vision in launching this truly online and digital learning platform

2. Breadth of course and quality of content:

Digital marketing is a vast field and not an easy topic to cover within a 10-12 week part time learning format. This is another area where Brainstation did an excellent job. They organized Digital Marketing into 8 areas and covered all key channels such as SEO, SEM, social media and email marketing. It served as a great introduction and their slide content was great in terms of simplifying the concepts and quoting relevant examples from time to time.

3. Duration of course:

This is a key component of any online learning course. If a course goes on for too long and it feels like a drag causing you to lose interest, cut it too short and you feel like you did not get enough out of the course. I feel like Brainstation got this right at 10 week course duration. I feel like a 10-12 week duration is optimal at least for someone like me who wants to do many things and tends to lose interest easily.

4. Specialty focus on FB:

If you know even a little about Digital Marketing you know that FaceBook is the king of all digital marketing platforms and simply cannot be beat. Their acquisitions of IG and WhatsApp have only made them stronger. I love that Brainstation decided to make FB the focus social media platform and dedicates a significant portion of the course to helping understand FaceBook’s comprehensive advertising platform. I also realized that once I got a good understanding of FB, it got much easier to pick up any new social media marketing platform.

5. Sense of community and continued learning:

This was one of the most important differentiators for me. Although this was an online course, I felt very connected to the entire Brainstation community though every aspect of the course identification , admission and learning process. The Brainstation learning team has great advisors that are super responsive to your questions and do a great job of engaging you by including you in all the relevant collaboration and communication platforms. You make a lot of good connections with folks in the digital marketing world such as your instructor, teaching assistant, students, advisors and so on. It truly felt like a “campus” and you feel like you have graduated from a brick and mortar university with all the conveniences of an online set up.

I took BrainStation’s Digital Marketing Certificate course in 2020 to refresh my knowledge, and to upgrade my skills to be leading edge. As someone in branding and marketing, I like a fast-paced environment with lots to explore and learn about, so BrainStation’s... Read More course was perfect for me. The classes were 3 hours, once a week, during which I would digest the equivalent of 2 days of learning at a college. The more you make notes and pay attention, the more you’ll get out of the courses.

Pros: The professor and assistant are big industry pros, which is a make-or-breaker for whom I will invest time and money into learning from. I don’t want to simply learn from any old industry professional. They need to be top-tier so I can learn the tips, tricks, and tactics to get a leading edge. I got this during the course.

The learning system is fantastic: the education portal is easy to use and interactive, the overall ux is lovely, the staff use Slack to communicate, share ideas and inspiration, and answer any questions. It’s really the ideal way to upgrade skills and learn during COVID.

Cons: There were rarely any breaks during the 3 hours, which makes for discomfort by the end. The 20—min break-out sessions with other students were often awkward as there wasn’t enough instruction on how to work together, so we often would simply sit in silence and type until going back to class. These break-outs could be entirely removed and it wouldn’t have impacted me negatively.

I came into this course quite excited to expand my knowledge on product management. I currently work within a scrum team as a developer and I believed I would come out of this course with a greater perspective of the overall product process. I enjoyed... Read More all of the classes during this 10 week part-time program but if I were to choose a handful of topics we went over that were my favourite they would be learning how to define a value proposition, learning about Scrum and Kanban, how to build an MVP and how to build a roadmap for a product. Throughout this course, each of us created and presented on a product while having the opportunity to learn from each other and apply what we learned in the classroom. I was really impressed the products my peers created and I was also impressed by the feedback I received from our instructor, Stewart Rogers. Overall, I believe this course has been really beneficial to me and I can definitely take many of the ideas and lessons I learned to my day to day life as a developer. Stewart's experience in Product Management makes this class incredibly engaging. He was able to provide really great feedback and share stories and external resources to help articulate the course content further.

I’ve been working as a designer for the last 12 years, I got my start as an intern at a design firm where I went on to work as Sr Graphic Design, this gave me a great foundation for visual design before moving on to focus solely on User Experience and... Read More Product design. My career was mostly self-started and I felt like I reached a stage in my career where I wanted some fundamental training in User Experience design to address some areas where I thought I could improve.

As a designer it's very important to have strong instincts that will help guide you through the design process. Knowing what steps to take next could sometimes mean researching, sketching, gathering feedback, iterating or handing off designs to be implemented. It is crucial for a designer to be able to see projects through by knowing when to move into certain phases of the design cycle. On the job these learnings would come at a great cost to both the company and the designer, not knowing what to do next can really put you at a disadvantage when your team is looking at you to decide next steps.

Brainstations curriculum shows the learner how to move a project from ideation to implementation. The course is focused on the design thinking process and how that relates to User Experience design. Empathizing with the user as the first step in the UX design process helps the designer define what the problem looks like. Then using UX design principles like information architecture, sketching, wireframing, and prototyping to build on those insights. Finally testing, presenting and gathering feedback are all used to help the designer communicate their ideas in a way that allows them to iterate and push the designs further.

Additionally Brainstation’s User Experience design course helps you speak the language of user experience design so you can communicate design decisions with your product team. Vocabulary is such an important part of understanding the design industry and when you finish this course you will have an intimate knowledge of terminology used daily by ux design professionals.

My cohort features 2 instructors, one who worked at an e-commerce giant and the other who worked at a well known design agency. They were extremely engaging with the course material offering plenty of opportunities to work with the class and try out the techniques that were covered. They both gave the students a lot of room to ask questions and even stayed on after the class to answer more questions.

The class project will leave you with work that you could put in your portfolio if you are just starting off. These will make great conversation pieces in interviews because you will be able to speak about the entire process of design whereas some work that designers get when they are just starting off will be mostly visual and not include the important research steps that interviews want to hear about.

Overall the course covers a lot of material in a very short amount of time, I recommend taking lots of notes that you can refer back to. Each lesson also comes with some resources and demos of products that you can use to help you as a designer. Lastly the course is a great networking opportunity, I was able to meet a lot of passionate design learners as well as the 2 instructors and being part of the brainstation alum community gets you access to even more networking events, which is valuable in itself.

I took the 5 week part time Data Science Online Live course at BrainStation. Overall it was a great experience and I definitely completed the course feeling more knowledgeable about python and the data science field. I went into the course with 0 python... Read More knowledge, just some brief computer science introduction courses from the past. It was definitely a challenging course, but the instructors were really helpful in my learning experience.

The final project really tested your knowledge on what you have learned and definitely helped me with the learning process. Python and data science requires a lot of practice and I really enjoyed all of the exercises that were provided.

BrainStation’s program was also really organized and I enjoyed having the different workbooks in advance so we can do some pre-reading prior to the class. Communication through Slack with the instructors and program coordinators was also really helpful!

This is my second course with Brainstation and I hope to do another. The instructors or very knowledgeable and helpful and you leave the course with a wealth of new knowledge. I did not know anything about Product Management before I took that course... Read More but that was not a problem. I was able to keep up and thoroughly enjoyed the course.

I took the 10-week Product Management course at BrainStation in Summer 2020. I have also taken Data Analytics in-person, which was a great experience, but taking this class online was a fantastic experience as well. As someone who works in high-tech,... Read More I was able to gain a lot of value from this course. The course material was relevant to the industry and designed to be practiced at work. My course had two instructors with two different backgrounds in Product Management and each brought their perspective and breadth of knowledge in Product Management to the course.

The class had an amazing support network and wasn’t only limited to Canadian students. I got to know talented people from the industry and learn from their practice.

I enjoyed my time in this course and I had valuable takeaways from the classes. Courses at BrainStation always exceed my expectations and I would highly recommend their classes to anyone who is interested to grow their career in the high-tech industry.

I was happy with my Digital Marketing Course. Scott is an excellent instructor very thorough and Haeri is very helpful and very informative. I learned a lot and Ihope to invest on another course and hopefully add to my existing skills in the near future.... Read More Excellent class.

I would really recommend BrainStation. The best learning experience I have has to date. As an adult who is making a career change, I was introduced to BrainStation as an option to take courses online. I learnt more than I expected and our instructors... Read More were phenomenal. They allow you to learn cutting-edge techniques that the instructors have so much experience with while working in the field. You get to learn the most in-demand concepts, skills, and tools. You gain Hands-On Experience and work on projects in a collaborative setting (both online or in class sessions) to apply current concepts and techniques and develop your skills. The Digital Marketing course included topics like:
Brand Strategy
Social Media
Analytics
Search Marketing
Email Marketing
I would really recommend it for anyone who is busy with life, but still wants to learn something new or like many of my peers who took it as a refresher course. Things are always changing in Marketing so this is really an excellent opportunity for anyone.

Wow, what a great value taking this course has been!

I am a seasoned product designer with a background in UX/UI but my roles recently have required more product thinking, vision and strategy. I was looking to expand my knowledge about product management... Read More and decided to enroll in the 10-week online course at Brainstation.

Throughout the class, there were so many insights and I acquired through the course content and exercises. I also created a personal product project that defined vision, strategy, success metrics, go-to-market, an MVP and a prototype for my product idea. Going through the real-world examples which included lots of relevant professional experience from the instructors really helped me think about product development from a different viewpoint. Overall I've added some great skillsets to my experience as a designer.

One of the best parts of the program was connecting with other students across Canada and the U.S. and learning about and seeing their product visions come to life. It's been a great way to connect with new people outside of my circle and be inspired by their ideas. I really appreciate everyone in our class for making it such a memorable and valuable experience and to the instructors who made learning new things engaging and fun.