{"id":26721,"date":"2022-07-01T14:12:20","date_gmt":"2022-07-01T21:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.springboard.com\/blog\/?p=26721"},"modified":"2022-11-16T09:59:47","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T17:59:47","slug":"learning-in-public-build-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.springboard.com\/blog\/news\/learning-in-public-build-network\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning in Public: Springboard Students on How to Build Your Network and Take Charge of Your Career"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Unsure which direction to take her career after graduating with a degree in English literature, Abby Morgan decided to keep her lucrative bartending job as she considered her next move.  While she was eventually promoted to bar manager\u2014overseeing inventory, invoicing, and a team of 5-10 bartenders\u2014Morgan didn\u2019t plan to stay in hospitality long-term. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after she and millions of other service industry professionals lost their jobs during the first wave of the pandemic, Morgan enrolled in the Data Science Career Track<\/a> at Springboard. A brief stint working as a COVID-19 contact tracer had afforded Abby her first exposure to data science, and she was hooked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months into the program, as Morgan started updating her LinkedIn profile and preparing for the job search, she was struggling to frame her prior bartending experience as a complement to her new data science skills\u2014a common dilemma for career switchers. She turned to her mentor, LinkedIn groups, and Slack discussions with her fellow students for help.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was a point during my Springboard experience when I stumbled upon this idea of \u2018learning in public,\u2019\u201d Morgan explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term originates from dev30<\/a>, a 30-day cohort-based Javascript course that teaches beginners the fundamentals of JavaScript. While completing the course, students must listen to a short daily podcast to \u201cfeed\u201d their \u201ccoding brain.\u201d They must also become comfortable with the notion of \u201clearning in public\u201d\u2014building their personal brand by posting on LinkedIn every day for 30 days along with the hashtag #dev30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Is Learning in Public?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Also known as networked learning<\/a> or peer-to-peer learning, learning in public is an especially potent tool for those enrolled in online learning programs, which are often perceived as isolating and deficient in providing students with the accountability they need to complete their studies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When students support each other throughout the learning process, whether virtually or in person, they naturally embrace more of a \u201ctake charge\u201d mentality rather than passively ingesting information, while the instructor\u2019s role changes from authoritative figure to shared learning facilitator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf anything, studying online has opened a lot of doors for me to talk to a wider network of people,\u201d says Andrew McGrath, a student in Springboard\u2019s Tech Sales Career Track<\/a>. \u201cWe already communicate so much online as a society that it makes sense to use social media and messaging apps to build your network.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practicing networking techniques while studying\u2014cold-emailing seasoned professionals to request informational interviews, working on problems with other students during virtual study groups, and posting about the learning journey on social media\u2014reduces the perceived scariness of actual networking when it\u2019s time to job search. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students also emerge with a network of their own contacts including fellow students, alumni, as well as formal and informal mentors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLearning in public means being open, vulnerable, and humble about your learning experience, but at the same time being confident enough to share what you do know and ask for help when it comes to things you don\u2019t know,\u201d says Morgan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"YouTube
<\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/div>

Alongside 11 of her peers, Morgan was one of the first Springboard students to join the Community Advocates Program<\/a>, a group of current students and recent alumni who mentor other students and organize virtual community events on a volunteer basis.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile I was enrolled in Springboard, I began to appreciate what a community does for someone\u2019s learning experience,\u201d said Morgan. \u201cSo the prospect of being able to give back to other students really excited me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peer organizers run events<\/a> for students to connect with each other including study groups, workshops, fireside chats, panel discussions, hackathons, and more. There\u2019s even a dedicated mental health meetup that convenes monthly on Saturdays for students to check in with each other. With the majority of Springboard students working full-time while studying at their own pace, having the support of those who are in the same boat goes a long way towards ensuring students finish their studies even when life gets in the way. Since the program started in April, over 40 community events have been hosted by students and Springboard staff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe program came about because historically many Springboard students and alumni have taken the initiative to form study groups or come back after graduating and offer advice to current students,\u201d says Annalicia Anaya, a community lead at Springboard. \u201cWe wanted to work with students who cared a lot about community-building to design a program and identify resources that would make it easier for others to give back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Simulating On-The-Job Situations <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

While classrooms often try to simulate the work environment, they can\u2019t prepare students for every conceivable situation. For example, what do you say if a senior executive disputes your data insights? Or if you push new code to production and it breaks the server? Or if your A\/B tests return lukewarm responses for both<\/em> versions of your designs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSoftware development is not usually a solo sport,\u201d says Dave McConeghy, a student in Springboard\u2019s Software Engineering Career Track<\/a> and a peer organizer in the Community Advocates program. \u201cSo I\u2019ve been focused on creating opportunities to put students side by side and give them coding challenges which they can work on together.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

McConeghy runs weekly Leetcode sessions on Zoom to practice the types of challenges job applicants typically encounter during technical assessments. Problems are taken from the Blind 75<\/a>\u2014a list of the most commonly encountered interview questions regarding data structures and algorithms. Participants split into breakout rooms in pairs to solve challenges in Javascript or Python. After 20 minutes, groups return to the main room for discussion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These sessions give would-be developers the opportunity to engage in pair programming, an agile software development technique commonly found in industry settings. Two programmers sit at the same workstation, taking turns to be the \u201cdriver\u201d (the person who writes the code) and the \u201cnavigator\u201d (the person who provides the overall direction). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, these collaborative skills are so universally demanded in the tech industry that McConeghy says that students from the Data Science Career Track<\/a> often take part in his Leetcode sessions to practice coding in Python. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been really helpful to meet people from other career tracks as well as students who may not be active on Slack for whatever reason,\u201d says McConeghy, a former religious studies professor. \u201cThese hands-on exercises provide them with a space for community and collaboration.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also hosts occasional Saturday hackathons where all participants work from a single codebase and practice test-driven software development. Students not only learn to get comfortable with writing code in front of another person, but brainstorm edge cases, discuss inputs, and write tests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Panel discussions with seasoned industry professionals, group study sessions, and AMA (Ask Me Anything) events with Springboard graduates help students learn the real-world applications of the concepts they\u2019re learning. For design students, the weekly design support\/stand-up meeting is a chance to get feedback on design projects and practice defending design decisions\u2014another situation most students encounter only after landing a job or during the interview process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fireside chats are intentionally open-ended conversations for discussing industry developments, sharing the travails of career switching, and socializing with fellow students. In a recent data science fireside chat, participants discussed the news of a Google engineer being put on leave after claiming<\/a> the AI chatbot he was working on had become sentient. A debate ensued over the feasibility of Artificial General Intelligence\u2014the notion that advanced neural networks can reach the level of human cognitive abilities, including emotional intelligence and self-awareness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you ask an AI model, \u2018Are you sentient?\u2019 of course it\u2019s going to say yes. If the model said \u2018No, I\u2019m not sentient,\u2019 maybe we should be more worried,\u201d joked one student. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While most of the community events at Springboard are peer-led, the career services team hosts group coaching events for recent graduates who are active in the job search to offer advice on staying motivated and finding their \u201cwhy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building Connections for Life on Social Media  <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Building a personal brand can be as simple as cultivating habits that help you garner greater visibility within your professional network, such as posting career updates on LinkedIn, answering questions on Quora, regularly pushing code to a Github repository, and participating in industry-specific Slack channels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be shy about announcing your career change on LinkedIn; tell people what you\u2019re working on, what you\u2019re learning, what you hope to achieve,\u201d says Matthew Dillon, a front-end developer at LaunchBadge and a graduate of Springboard\u2019s Software Engineering Career Track<\/a>. \u201cIt took me a year to finish the bootcamp because I spent 50% of my time networking on LinkedIn, Twitter, Discord, and other dev communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These habits of learning in public can make the difference between fruitlessly cold-applying to jobs for months on end and having industry contacts who can make referrals on your behalf\u2014which is especially important considering that an estimated 70-80%<\/a> of jobs are never published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Savage, an alumnus of Springboard\u2019s Data Analytics Career Track, landed a data analyst role at MOOC provider edX after joining a Slack group called Locally Optimistic<\/a>, where current and aspiring analytics professionals discuss their experience of working with data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShortly after I introduced myself in the Slack channel as a former schoolteacher and administrator, my now-boss sent me a message,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before that, she joined Lunchclub<\/a>, a social networking platform that connects like-minded professionals over 1:1 video meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLunchclub is a great way to practice your networking skills and talk to people who are in the field you\u2019re aspiring to enter,\u201d she said. \u201cI received a lot of advice about how to frame my former experience as an educator by emphasizing my customer-facing skills.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5 Tips for How to Learn in Public <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Learning in public isn\u2019t just about vaunting your achievements on social media or answering Slack messages. It\u2019s about open-sourcing your knowledge. According to what scientists have dubbed the \u201cprot\u00e9g\u00e9 effect,\u201d<\/a> the best way to understand a concept thoroughly is to teach someone else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some ways you can build your personal brand and participate in online communities while you study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n