Design Thinking

I started the Digital Marketing course with the idea that it would be tedious, but Day 1 of the course changed my thinking. I was pretty engaged once the instructor started the lesson and it had me doing my own reading after the first class.

After the course ended, I already started looking at other courses that Brainstation offers to see if anything else interests me.

• Each day has a lot of information, but not too much that it becomes overwhelming.
• Every time I had a question, I had the opportunity to ask it and have it answered throughly.
• Attending the course on Sunday allowed me to not change my work schedule at all.

I can't say I consider anything to be a con as of now. I have a pretty solid experience from the beginning to the end.

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 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.