In early 2019 I took the Developing Blockchain Applications (Melbourne Australia) online short course at RMIT University.
The course was 8 weeks, 100% online and cost AUD$1,400.
Every week there was a 1 hour webinar with the mentors, including opportunities to ask questions.
The mentors and the other students were available via Slack.
I successfully completed the course.
As part of my previous job I self taught smart contract development and created proof of concepts.
I did the course as I wanted to fill in any gaps in my knowledge.
As part of the course I learnt:
- To develop and test Solidity smart contracts with Embark (I normally use Truffle).
I really liked the easy to create test coverage reports in Embark. - To create dApp front ends using Choo a lightweight JavaScript framework
- To store and retrieve content on IPFS
The course final project was to build a photo sharing dApp, with photos saved to IPFS. Each week in the second half of the course we added to the development of the final project.
I spent the equivalent of about 2 days a week on the course, with a bit more at the end for the final project.
Using the skills from the course I created BlockHorses, a cryptocollectible and created some mini-dApps for the Party (burner) wallet.
Looking back, I would have liked some more face time with my fellow students. I should have organised a couple of Saturdays in a coffee shop as an hour or so at the weekly hack didn’t feel like enough. Also going on a ten day retreat (#buidl_bali) in the middle of the course was not the best timing.
I would recommend the course, even paying full price.
Disclosure: I was a reviewer of the course when it was being developed so got to do the course for free, which is why I didn’t look to much further into alternatives. I’m also friends with Flex Dapps (via Web3 Melbourne weekly hack) who developed and mentored the course.