Non-Traditional Students Means Non-Traditional Needs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was more fortuitous than deliberate,\u201d said Leanne, when asked about her decision to learn software engineering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I moved to the United States, I initially planned on doing a UX design course. So, I signed up for General Assembly\u2019s UX Design Immersive<\/a>. I did all the pre-work and then, COVID-19 happened.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The onset of the pandemic created a domino effect on Leanne\u2019s plans. \u201cChildcare facilities closed, and my daughter was only three years old at the time,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew then that I could no longer do in-person classes. And although General Assembly offered the program remotely, it didn\u2019t come with a flexible schedule at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe school suggested that I do some GA workshops<\/a> in the meantime. I ended up doing one of the Introduction to Coding<\/a> workshops and found it really interesting,\u201d said Leanne. \u201cIt got me thinking, \u2018I already have a background in art. I understand layout and color theory. I know how to work with Adobe Photoshop, and I can probably teach myself how to use Figma.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWith my background, I can probably learn UX design on my own. But I\u2019m not going to be able to teach myself how to code,\u201d she said. \u201cIt seemed like the right choice to make.\u201d What made it even better was that General Assembly delivered a part-time software engineering course\u2014exactly what Leanne was looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leanne’s General Assembly reviews<\/a> represent a growing population of students in the United States who have been significantly impacted by the pandemic: the non-traditional learners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As The Atlantic<\/em> wrote<\/a>, these non-traditional learners \u201care not bright-eyed coeds fresh from high school but rather adults, who are financially independent, working to support themselves, and often a child or relative.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019re the serial hat wearers who likely need to go back to school to change careers but are often compelled to take off their learning hats to fulfill other roles. Learning at all is already difficult without the added weight of juggling childcare, a job, and a pandemic all at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good news: General Assembly offers viable education-to-career pathways for students like Leanne who want to carry on learning without having to strap on a backpack to head to campus and scale back other commitments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Enter, General Assembly\u2019s Remote Flex Immersive Courses<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n General Assembly\u2019s Remote Flex Immersive Courses was the coding bootcamp\u2019s answer to the increasing demand from parents and working professionals who aspire to launch tech careers without having to sacrifice a living wage or family time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe pandemic [also] exacerbated the need for highly technical skills and the need for different learning modalities,\u201d added General Assembly Product Marketing Manager Michael Tesauro, \u201cSo between user demand and industry demand, rolling out our Remote Flex Immersive Courses was vital to meeting learning needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To date, General Assembly has rolled out three Remote Flex Immersive courses. These are designed to make students job-ready in software engineering, data science, and user experience (UX) design in 24 weeks as opposed to their 12-week Full-Time Immersive courses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n General Assembly\u2019s Software Engineering Flex course was rolled out in 2018. It was the school\u2019s first attempt to make learning while working more feasible. And it succeeded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[The program] was well-received,\u201d Tesauro said. \u201cNot everyone can take classes in the middle of the day for 12 weeks at a time, so there was a real desire from a large demographic of learners for something like this.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why take this course?<\/strong> This course banks on relevance. According to a 2021 report<\/a> by Hired, \u201cbackend, full stack, and front end engineers still saw the highest demand [in 2020], making up more than half of all interview requests for software engineers.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Put simply, there is no shortage of jobs for these types of engineers. And it\u2019s these types of engineers that General Assembly\u2019s Software Engineering Immersive seeks to produce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The curriculum dives deep into the essentials of front-end development and full stack development, covering the developer tools, frameworks, and programming languages that most companies use today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By the end of the program, you\u2019ll have a professional portfolio that showcases the front end and full stack applications you built using the skills you learned from General Assembly. It\u2019s during these project-building sessions that you\u2019ll also learn how to work independently and collaboratively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why take this course? <\/strong>Data science is one of the most resilient jobs in the world of work. It, therefore, comes as no surprise why General Assembly recently rolled out its Data Science Immersive Remote Flex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Experience the data science project life cycle from end to end with this course. From exploring and gathering to cleaning and modeling data to extract pertinent insights, General Assembly\u2019s data science course hones your data skills and prepares you for careers in data analytics or data science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For every unit covered, you\u2019ll work on a project that requires you to leverage your skills in exploring and modeling a data set to solve real-world data problems. Among the data tools you\u2019ll learn are Python, NumPy, Git, Pandas, and scikit-learn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A bonus: the course reserves a unit for machine learning, during which you\u2019ll get the chance to build machine learning models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why take this course? <\/strong>The UX Design Immersive Remote Flex is one of General Assembly\u2019s recent offerings. Although a UX course, the curriculum places a hard emphasis on developing both your foundational skills and knowledge in UX and user interface (UI) design. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Halfway through the curriculum, you\u2019ll get the chance to work with a product team and engage with real-world clients in a three-week design sprint. During this time, you\u2019ll get to create new designs or improve existing ones for applications, websites, or products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This experience is especially vital during the job search when employers are on the lookout for candidates with industry experience as well as job-ready skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All three courses carry the same curriculum as their live, Full-Time Immersive counterparts<\/a>, albeit with a more flexible schedule. This extends to the hands-on training via project building, the rigorous learning experience, and the extensive career services<\/a> that all earned General Assembly its renown.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In offering the same learning elements and benefits, General Assembly ensures that Flex students are not shortchanged out of the content and quality of instruction they receive despite the difference in delivery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re committed to expanding access to our courses, and we know that not every learner can commit to a full-time course,\u201d Tesauro said. \u201cBy offering night-time and weekend courses, we\u2019re making our product available to folks who need to keep their daytime commitments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For six months, Leanne worked through her software engineering classes while balancing other responsibilities. \u201cI couldn\u2019t have done the Software Engineering course if I took it full time in just three months,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI know other people have and they did it. But for me, between trying to balance parenting, COVID-19, and everything else, there was just no way I would have been able to do the course without the flex option.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the challenge, Leanne soon found herself enjoying software engineering. She even likened the discipline to ceramic art, which was what she specialized in years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how much of my ceramics knowledge is coming into play,\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cSoftware, like ceramic art, is for human use. To engage users, you\u2019ll need to understand what it is they need.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo much of software engineering is that: understanding what people need and how they interact with things. If something breaks, you fix it. If something doesn\u2019t work properly, you improve on it. And if you want to understand a user\u2019s experience, let them drink out of a crappy mug,\u201d said Leanne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Both disciplines rely on learning by doing, building on things, and gradual refinement. Little wonder that Leanne found success in the field after completing her training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just signed on with Convercent,\u201d said Leanne, referring to an ethics and compliance software company based in Denver. \u201cI\u2019d been taken on as the content management specialist. It\u2019s a hybrid role so it\u2019s not a 100 percent coding job. It\u2019s client-facing design, training, and programming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lot of the products that we\u2019ll be developing will also involve training clients on how to use them,\u201d explained Leanne. \u201cSo it\u2019s definitely an alternative path to software engineering, which is something that I really like because there are so many facets to software. There are so many other career tracks you can take rather than being a developer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis role allows me to mix it up and use a whole bunch of my background. It\u2019s not just software engineering. It\u2019s not just creating. It\u2019s not just teaching. It\u2019s all those mixed together,\u201d said Leanne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leanne\u2019s one piece of advice for those considering the General Assembly\u2019s Remote Flex programs is this: Don\u2019t panic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you have a good support network around you, then just do it,\u201d said Leanne. \u201cI think it can feel incredibly overwhelming to do something like this. But when I came in, some of my peers had been tinkering with code a year or so before they got into the program. So, I constantly worried whether I\u2019ll be able to catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd I did. By the third unit [of the curriculum], the playing grounds were leveled. We were all helping each other out.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Education or paycheck? For most working professionals and parents who consider a return to school, the decision always seems to be an either\/or. General Assembly\u2019s remote, Flex Immersive Courses eliminate the struggle of having to choose one over the other by making both possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, Leanne has both a credential and a paycheck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI got an email the other day from General Assembly saying that it\u2019s now offering a UX Design Flex Course, and I thought, \u2018Really?\u2019\u201d Leanne said with a laugh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut if I know what I know now\u2014that the school would be rolling out a UX flex course\u2014 I still would\u2019ve done what I did,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\nGeneral Assembly\u2019s Remote Flex Immersive Courses: What Can You Expect?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n1. Software Engineering Immersive Remote Flex\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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2. Data Science Immersive Remote Flex<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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3. User Experience (UX) Design Immersive Remote Flex\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Key Features<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Home Over Halls: The Remote Flex Learning Experience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Learn On Your Terms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n