Categories

Program Learning Format

Learning on Hexlet is completely independent, but we make the process as comfortable and understandable as possible. All a student needs to do is go to the Hexlet website and start taking classes in their profession. You should ask your tutor questions as you go along.

Code reviews of projects, live chats, weekly activities, answering questions about exercises and life in general - this is what distinguishes our group format from all the others.

How the program is structured

The core of the program consists of ready-made courses and projects in your chosen profession.

You take Hexlet courses right in your browser.

You complete real-world projects on your own computer. Read more about the projects at 👉🏻 Projects.

Tutors do not give full-fledged personal consultations or ready-made solutions but suggest ways for the student to identify and correct any errors.

A tutor's job is to guide you. So when you encounter a problem, be sure to talk about it in the group chat and discuss how to find the right solution.

Asynchronous learning

We have designed the course so that people of any level can be added to any group and start learning at their own pace. This means that there are always experienced students in the group and there will always be newcomers.

A tutor helps all students with their questions and conducts activities, both all-inclusive and directed toward a specific level of student. At the same time, newcomers can attend activities on advanced topics. In consultation with their community manager, experienced students can also help newcomers by answering questions in the chat room, exchanging experiences, and even conducting activities.

Additional activities

Every week you will have meetings with a tutor. These are additional activities where you can build on Hexlet's core content and share an experience.

At the meetings, your tutor will discuss various topics with you - from universal ones (naming, searching for technical information, effective code debugging, etc.) to those which are specific to a particular program. Also, during the meeting, your tutor will focus on answering your questions about the program topics, homework, and the project.

Meeting topics are determined based on the level and needs of the students or as suggested by the tutor.

All meetings are recorded and you can always review the recording later. The community manager will post meeting notes in the group's Slack chat room.

Meeting formats

Tutor activities are planned in advance, and topics are chosen closer to the event. Key activities:

  • Webinar - a presentation from a tutor or other expert. During the webinars, a tutor will go over one of the additional topics.
  • Slaconar is a text-based webinar in Slack. The presenter suggests and reveals the chat's topic of discussion, gives examples, and asks questions to the audience.
  • Livecoding - programming by a live tutor.
  • Masscoding sessions - students problem solving under the guidance of a tutor.
  • Q&A meetings - a tutor meeting with students to discuss a backlog of questions.

The tutors will also regularly share links to useful material from Hexlet's blogs (YouTube, guides, blog) and periodically hold tournaments on Codebattle. They can even hold offline meetings with students in their city.

Career Track

Career Track is a Hexlet service that allows our students and alumni to build resumes and portfolios, complete internships, and find jobs.

Invitations to webinars and other career track activities will be posted periodically for all students in the group.

Checklist for non-standard situations

Learning is a long and complicated process. We choose our tutors carefully, continually improve the learning process, and gather feedback from students. However, there's also the human factor, processes not being good enough, and the other usual problems. If something seems to have gone wrong, you can check this list:

I feel like everyone is asking smart questions and I don't want to write mine in the chat room.

Sometimes students tend to feel that they are surrounded by exceptionally smart, successful people who do everything well on time and on the first try. In reality, however, everyone asks silly or clever questions in their own way.

Questioning is a part of learning. You can find your answer in the process of writing the question. Or by asking a "stupid" question, you can highlight a content issue. That is, students' problems can be caused by trivial errors in the teaching materials.

Also, by not asking questions, students can find their problems snowballing. It's especially dangerous when everything seems to be clear. We recommend that all students be sure to chat. Answer if you think you know the answer, and ask the question if you don't know the answer.

The tutor answered my question more than 2 days later.

We instruct our tutors to respond in no more than 2 days. But there are situations where a question gets asked on Friday evening, the tutor has already left for the weekend and could only answer on Monday. Similar situations can also arise during the holidays.

To keep questions from being left hanging, they can be answered by students or another group tutor, if available.

If a tutor has not responded to you within 2 days, let your community manager know - they will advise you on the tutor's availability and help you if possible.

The tutor's answer didn't help.

Sometimes it happens that for some reason the answer to a question was unhelpful or looked like a formal reply. The reason for this can be either the question wording or a tutor's mistake. Feel free to ask clarifying questions or restate the original question.

Tutors go through a long phase of interviews, learning, and tests to come to students already competent enough to teach and answer questions. We vouch for them being experts in their field and eager to teach you.

However, if you feel that a tutor is not doing a good job, you can pass the information on to your community manager in private messages. We will then check the tutor's answers and help them overcome any difficulties they may have.

There was not enough information to complete the task.

Hexlet tutorials are structured so that students do not need to google anything, and topics for independent studying are given by additional links in the theory or practice sections. Homework assignments are also based on previous lessons, so if the previous material is not enough to solve the problem, it's our fault. Write about it in the group's channel and notify your community manager. They will pass it on to the methodology department, and we will improve the task description and expand on the theory.

It's been a few days since the last activity in the group and nothing is happening.

Each group has a minimum of two public activities per week:

  • activity with a tutor;
  • community manager communication with the students.

However, tutors and community manager daily check the chat room for questions and are always ready to help students.

Also, students can organize activities amongst themselves, such as Codebattle tournaments, discussing a Habra article, or calling to talk about a task. We support people who take initiative and can provide tools, such as a Zoom session.

Perhaps the tutor did something wrong.

If you have any doubts about your tutor's work, write to your community manager in a private message. Often, feedback from students is the only way to know that a non-standard situation or outright problem has occured. For example:

  • The webinar topic was complicated and unclear.
  • The deadlines for inspections or answers are systematically disregarded.
  • Rude or otherwise inappropriate behavior in reviews, answers, webinars, or personal messages.

We give tutors feedback on their work, but when we receive complaints from students, we respond, up to and including replacing the tutor. There is nothing wrong with demanding the quality of service that we promised you.