I recently tried out a trial subscription to the online training provider www.pluralsight.com as I was hoping to brush up my HTML 5 and CSS 3 skills. The courses are delivered as online streamed video, with some basic pre and post course testing, coursework and notes for those on the extended subscription.
The extended subscription also enabled you to take the courses offline on devices such as an iPad or android tablet, although you can’t test this feature during a trial. The extended subscription is available as a one of fee for one year, offering a saving of around 10% over the cost of a monthly rolling subscription of $49. (check the website for up to date pricing)
I was quite impressed with the quality of the one HTML course that I had time to watch, the video quality was excellent and on my rural broadband connection I didn’t suffer from any excess buffering.
In the end, I decided not to change to a fully paid subscription, purely because I just don’t have a lot of spare time right now. In between the day job of SharePoint consulting, learning what’s new in SharePoint 2013 and actually enjoying some life with my wife, I didn’t feel that I could dedicate enough time to get real value out of a month or twos subscription (yes it looks like you can stop your subscription at any time, I didn’t see any mention of a minimum subscription length!)
This morning however, I received an email from Pluralsight that may make me change my mind on that decision, as they have teamed up with the chaps at Critical Path training to provide SharePoint courses (33 in total).
In case you’re not familiar with Critical Path (www.criticalpathtraining.com) training, the company was setup by SharePoint MVPs and regular community contributors Andrew Connell (@andrewconnell) and Ted Pattison (@tedpattison). If you’ve ever attended their talks at the many worldwide conferences, you’ll know that the quality of what they produce is very high and enjoyable to watch. I certainly hope that the humour and exuberance they have in their conference sessions comes across in the video training.
In fact, ask me in a week if it does, as I intend taking Pluralsight up on their offer of access to 5 of their SharePoint courses this weekend, so I’ll report back and let you know what I think!
Paul.
