Your Personal Roadmap: Understanding where you are, knowing where you need to go.
Oct 9th 2017
đ New Feature: Progress reporting for members.
âOnline learning is hard!â
~ Wes, at nearly every CG Cookie Live Event
You can do it in your pajamas, so it shouldnât be too tough, right?Â
Wrong. The challenging part of online learning is that youâre in charge - and itâs all on you.
Learning online means you are the student and the teacher at the same time: sticking to a schedule, keeping motivation and discipline up and distractions down (no more cat videos!), deciding what areas to focus on and when to get critical feedback. Plus, making sure you never run out of coffee.Â
The question that most online learners canât answer
And even if you rock all of the above, there is one area where most independent learners lack: progress review.
Are you on the right track to your goals? What have you achieved so far? What makes sense as the next area to focus on?
Unless you know the answers to these questions, you arenât using your learning time in the most efficient way. (And that means less time to watch those cat videos. Yikes!)
Introducing CG Cookie Progress Tracking
The newest feature weâve rolled out to help you with your journey is designed with one purpose: give you the information you need to answer those essential questions.Â
Head to your Dashboard and check out the tab âYour Progressâ to quickly see where you left off, which training youâve completed, and where you need to put more work in. Â
âYour Progressâ:Â Review Your Personal Roadmap
The home page of the Progress Report shows all the Learning Flows, Courses and Exercises youâre participating in. Itâs your âOh wow, look at all the stuff Iâm doing!â section.
What this tells you: this is a birdâs eye view of whatâs currently on your plate. If this feels full, you might have a little too much on your plate. Time to re-focus, and choose your priorities.Â
Want to dig a little deeper? Click on the arrow buttons next to each Learning Flow or Course to see your granular progress report.
Completed: Know What Youâve Covered Already
If youâre like me, you like reflecting back on the things youâve done in the past.Â
This could be reviewing your workout log or all the memes youâve created in the past 3 months (send us your best ones, obviously!). In other words: reviewing and celebrating your accomplishments.Â
What this tells you: Visiting Your Progress > Completed page shows you all the CGC learning youâve worked through. As you continue down the Cookie path, this page will appear nicely full of colors and checkmarks. So pretty...
Let Me Ask You an Interview-Type Question
Now that youâre equipped with the knowledge of where youâve been and what youâre currently doing, you can get a sense of where youâre going.Â
I love the exercise. Imagine yourself 5 years from now. What does your life look like, what type of work are you doing, do you have a pug as a dog, are you wearing a tweed hat, are you an evil supervillain?
Now, instead of thinking, âone day that will just happen, I will get my breakâ, begin connecting the dots proactively. Decide what you need to do every day to get there.Â
Stick to it, and in time looking back at your completed progress on CGC will be just one reminder of how far youâve come. The Progress Report is a tool weâve created to help you along the way.
I know I personally love this, but what do you think of it?Â
I am a online student... not because I've always loved it, but because I need it. I don't have time for regular education methods, anymore... have a family, a little daughter and it seems for me to be impossible to come back to a classroom.
One thing that I've learned (in the hardest way) is: "Never learn things without a target!" I used to learn from different sources, reading about different subjects, doing different things and one day, I discovered that I was going nowhere with all that effort... I'm graduating in an online course now and I could see that this is the best way to learn online... with a target, with a defined box of disciplines, with methods... and CGCookie has made a great favor for us creating this progress track feature! In modeling and animation I used to be a free tutorial seeker! Now, I have a target, I know what flow I need to follow and I can track it! Thanks a lot... This is just great!
one word: "Awesome"!
Great feature - and other than Home, probably my most visited page. I always get excited and jump into lessons that are above my skill level, so this is great for helping stay focused while still giving us the freedom of exploration without losing our place. A very useful addition!
This is something i think i have needed for a while. Trying to use the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Realistic and Time based) way of making goals for yourself is much easier with this. I always struggled with the specific and measurable bit. This should be a great help with that.
I'm a sucker for birds eye view, I love this feature. This gives me the feeling of Assassins Creed maps, where you have a lot of markings of things to do and you feel the pull of going on by one and completing them all, so at some point you can look at the whole thing and see it all done and Ahhhh so sweet, every tower has been climbed, every contract done, every thief has been stopped, every treasure chest collected.
Even though I've watched every tutorial over the years, it shows all empty for me. :(
But it's ok, let this be an opportunity to revisit things I haven't seen in a while. Fresh up the old lost knowledge at the edge of my brain.
just been having a look through the progress tracks, and its definitely making me feel like I have to chip away at the path i want to take. in my case, its a good visual motivational tool.
I'll check it out! It may be VERY helpful for me, even though I'm filled with...lots...to do.
Thank you....this is a great idea....:-)
I love the "Your Progress" section! It has been so helpful in keeping track of what I'm actually working on (I couldn't believe how many things I've left undone).
great news !