👋 Hi, I'm Jess. I'm a former teacher working in tech that gets really, really mad about expensive, exploitative programming bootcamps. These courses can cost tens of thousands of dollars for courses of widely variable quality. While there are some great paid bootcamps (and amazing free bootcamps) out there, I wondered how existing high quality free resources could be extended to offer bootcamp-like supports for learners.

So I sat down with Class Central and we started designing a free web development based around freeCodeCamp's Responsive Web Design Curriculum.

We wanted it to be flexible and part time, but still have the peer support of cohort based learning. So we built a cohort structure supported by a shared schedule and peer-supported forum. To keep up with the cohort, we think learners will need to do 10-20 hours of work in their own time per week.

We wanted to make sure learners had live contact with instructors and that even learners who weren't enrolled with us could benefit. So we added open weekly livestreams on multiple platforms to go over key lessons from the week, look at core concepts together and answer learner questions in real time.

We wanted to keep the risk low, so that learners who left the bootcamp or needed to take a break could keep learning on their own. So we based it around an existing learning platform and curriculum. Learners can come back to the freeCodeCamp responsive web design coursework at any time and pick back up where they left off.

Most importantly, it needed to be free. freeCodeCamp was kind enough to allow us to base our program around their high quality learning materials, which gave us a great foundation. Class Central made internal resources and budget available and I'm working on a reduced day rate. We're all very motivated to make this happen! In the future, we may explore funding options that could include tech toolmakers sponsoring optional supplementary workshops for our learners. But everyone involved is committed to keeping this and future programs 100% free for learners.

We'll be covering HTML, CSS, visual design, accessibility, responsive design, CSS Flexbox and CSS Grid. We think this program is a great fit for learners new to building the web, or folks who have taken a break and want to return in a supported way.

You can learn more about what we're doing and enroll here.

I know many of you here already have these skills. If you think this might be useful, I would be honored if you wanted to share this with friends and family who could benefit.