Contact the Schank Academy for more information.
Deep Dives
This immersive online program will teach you front-end and full-stack software development. If you're a self-starter looking to dive into one of the fastest-growing careers out there, this program will teach you the skills that will guarantee you a job.
Computers, from smartphones to desktops to the cloud, have transformed how the world works. How has this happened? Software developers are a big part of the answer, creating applications for individuals, companies, and even other machines to perform myriad tasks large and small.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), job growth in software development is increasing at a 17% rate, bringing over 186,000 new jobs to the IT market by 2024. Software development courses can help set any individual, who is even moderately technically inclined, on the right track to one of these high-paying jobs.
Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.
- Roger Schank
Our Software Development program is unique in that we teach the skills needed to perform the job from day one. We call our mentored courses "Deep Dives" because from the very first day, our students dive in to an authentic role in a real-world scenario with all the complex challenges of the data-analytics industry. Our programs center around a rich, engaging story where students are given a realistic workplace role, work to achieve real goals, overcome real challenges, and explore the opportunity make real mistakes and learn from them in a safe environment. Along the way, your mentor provides resources, tools, and constructive, critical input on your work when you need it.
You will begin your Software Development education by learning Front-End Development. In the role of Front-End Developer, you will be working on the "client side" of websites, web applications, and mobile applications, developing the code that users interact with. After learning Front-End Development, you can elect to take your skills to the next level by becoming a Full-Stack Software Developer.
You, the student, play a central role in a story of professional work, in which you will achieve one or more significant objectives over a series of tasks. The roles are those that a graduate of this program might actually take on in real life. You are given detailed information about the simulated company you are working for and are assigned complex, realistic projects. You will do the same work that professionals do, and produce the same deliverables. There are no lectures, there are no grades, and there are no tests. We believe real learning comes from having an authentic, memorable experience.
In this course, you are an independent contractor who develops custom websites for small organizations. The Northside Youth Soccer League (NYSL) has hired you to develop a website for their soccer teams. You will work on this website on your own and will learn to use modern HTML and CSS to produce an attractive, informative multi-page website based on the client's requirements.
In this course, you are a developer at Code of the Web, a small software shop that creates custom JavaScript-based web applications. Transparent Government in Fact, a non-partisan non-profit organization working to increase the public's involvement in government, has hired you to develop a Congressional tracking web site for them. You will work on this web application using modern JavaScript technologies including JQuery, AJAX, JSON, and RESTful APIs.
In this course, you will again be an independent developer the Northside Youth Soccer League has hired to create an app to give their players and parents easy on-the-go access to the league's game schedules. To avoid the hassles of native apps, they would like this to be a mobile web app. You will design and develop the mobile web app, and will add features to the app that are specific to mobile devices, such as location-based features so parents can see where they are in relation to the soccer field.
In this course, you have been hired by a board game company looking to use their brand recognition to market online games with a retro touch. In particular, they want your team to create a multi-player online version of a Salvo-like game engine. Salvo was a pencil and paper game that was the basis for the popular Battleship game. The basic idea involves guessing where other players have hidden objects. This can be varied to create many different kinds of games with different user interfaces. Your job will be to create a front-end mobile-friendly web application that game players interact with, and a back-end game server to manage the games, scoring, and player profiles. You will use the Angular JavaScript library for the front-end client, and the Spring Boot framework for the Java-based RESTful web server.
As you work, you will have constant access to a unique automated mentor, employing natural-language processing technology derived from our decades of artificial intelligence research. The automated mentor can provide immediate answers to most task-related student questions posed to it in plain English, and it can provide immediate feedback on your work. Of course, human mentors will still be available in those rare instances in which you need help with a unique problem. Automated mentoring will speed your progress through the program and will significantly lower the program's tuition cost, making preparation for a software development career more widely accessible.
You will be assigned to a small team made up of fellow students, and you will meet regularly in an online environment to discuss your work. A human mentor can join your group meeting, as required, to assist in solving unique problems.
There are no prerequisites for this program.
The Software Development Program is divided into two parts:
Students can choose to attend:
The cost for this program is $7,500.
The program is subject to our Refund Policy.
See our immersive, story-centered curricula in action. This demo is actual content from an early task in this course.
Do you like building things? Do you like using apps and web sites but keep wanting to change them to work better? Do you like to experiment? You may not have a technical background, be a programmer, or know much about the web, but you are willing to work hard and to learn as you go. If this description fits you, the Software Development program may be for you.
Our courses are entirely online, but they are not like any online courses you have ever seen. You will not be watching boring video lectures and taking tests; you will learn by doing with the help of knowledgeable mentors who are always available to provide meaningful advice and feedback on your work.
Contact the Schank Academy for more information.