Here’s my experience of taking The Associate Android Developer Fast Track Scholarship Program.
In May, I signed up for an Associate Android Developer Fast Track Scholarship Program. Google has funded 500 full scholarships for the Fast Track Associate Android Developer program through Udacity for Indonesia. And I was lucky to be one of them.
So What is Associate Android Developer Fast Track Scholarship Program?
This program is designed to teach you about every skill that you need to be a Entry-Level Android Developer. You will get four months of access, which include three courses, three projects and the Google Certification Exam fee for free.
The objective of this program is different from The Android Developer Nanodegree Program. The Nanodegree Program prepares students for more Advanced Android Development, which has double content and projects while this program is designed to teach you exactly what you need to know to successfully passed the Associate Android Developer Certification Exam from Google.
Who was eligible to apply?
To received one of these scholarships, you must be a current resident of Indonesia. You must also be at least 18 years old and proficient in English.
Can I enroll The Associate Android Developer Fast Track Program without Scholarship?
Yes, You can enroll the program through this link and it costs around $750 including Google Certification fee.
The Course
The Course content curated from free courses in Udacity and some content is exclusive, but you will get more benefit in this program.
The benefits of this course itself are:
- The Course Material was created by Google Team
- Chat Mentoring
- Coach supported forum
- 1:1 appointments with mentors via video call
- Personalized feedback on projects
Cool right? not only that, I’ve got access to a slack group containing scholarship students in the same country. Udacity through its Course managers in each country also provides weekly offline group discussion meet up in each city and also held Webinar. The nice thing is Scholarship Students can also be a speaker in the Webinar by bringing the course material.
You will be given a timeline to follow for 4 months. For me, studying at the weekend is enough to follow the timeline.
Don’t forget to make a weekly check-in with your mentor to tell about your progress. You can also chat your mentor anytime if you have a problem with the lessons.
The course divided into 5 sections and 3 projects and you have to create and submit a simple project related to what has been learned in 3 sections.
Every project will be reviewed by Udacity staff and will be assessed whether the project meets the requirement. After you complete the 3 projects, you can take a certification exam that included in this program.
I like the project review section. Udacity reviewer not only reviews my code line by line but also give me a lot of references to the techniques, best practice or libraries that can improve my app.
Overall, I liked the video material, it’s easy to understand, using a good analogy and discussed very deeply.
Along with the course, you will get project practice that you can follow step by step. Don’t skip every single video in the course because it contains many fundamental lessons that should not be missed.
Curious about what’s being learned in every project? here I’ll tell you.
Project 1: Popular Movies, Stage 1
In this project, you will learn about:
- Creating first simple app with a Sunshine Project
- Connect to the internet
- Recyclerview
- Intents
In this section, you need to build an app to allow users to discover recent movies and the most popular movies playing using API from The Movie DB. This project was very easy for me, you will be fine with all the video material that has been learned. Don’t forget to handle the app when there is no network connection.
Project 2: Popular Movies, Stage 2
In this project, you will continue last project and learn about:
- Lifecycle
- Preferences
- Storing data in SQLite
- Content Providers
- Background Tasks
- UI Fundamentals
In this section, you need to continue the Popular Movies app by adding more function in detail view and adding tablet layout. This project is also quite easy for me, maybe what you should note is the content provider and persistence data using InstanceState.
Project 3: Baking App
In this project, you will learn about advanced android development.
- Fragments
- Libraries
- Firebase Cloud Messaging
- Places
- Media Playback
- Widgets
- Espresso
- Publishing your app
In this section, you need to build an app to view video recipes. This project is quite challenging. Things you should note is to use the Exoplayer efficiently, master-detail flow, widgets, and UI testing.
To be noticed, don’t use code from any other Udacity student’s or graduate’s submission of the same project. Udacity team will check your submission for plagiarism. And this may affect your enrollment or certificate in accordance with the Udacity policy. For more about Udacity honor code, you can read here.
After taking all of the material course, you can take the certification exam. All tasks on the exam have been covered by all the materials in the course.
The Certification Exam
This is the interesting part, the exam consists of a coding project and an exit interview. On the coding project, you will be simulated as a new developer who will handle the project that has been running. You will continue the previous developer work, adding new features, testing and debugging the app. You have 24 hours to complete the project. I have completed my exam within half a day. If you failed in first attempt, you can immediately retake the exam. But I think if you follow the lesson well, you will not get any obstacles.
Your submission should follow Android UI best practices. Like don’t transfer data to disk or to the network on the main thread. Abstract strings and dimensions into resources whenever possible. Don’t lock activity orientations, and preserve the user experience between rotations. Another important thing is you shouldn’t move or rename any of the classes provided to you in the original project because your submission will be graded automated by system. Want more clue about exam content? you can check here.
After you passed the exam, you are required to verify your identity, you can use the ID card, driving license or your passport. After that, you can choose the schedule to take exit interview. My exit interview was pretty fast, less than 5 minutes. You will be asked about the exam project and Android fundamental. The thing I didn’t like is my interviewer didn’t turn on the webcam. During the interview, I just saw a black screen like being interrogated, hahaha. I have got my certificate after waiting for 2 weeks. This is mine.
Conclusion
This course is a good start for you who wants to become a Professional Android Developer and learn more about Android Fundamental.
But remember, certification is just your first step to start a career or to exist on Company radar. For those of you who are just starting out as an Android Developer, you may want to learn more skill about development like Architecture Pattern, Design Pattern, Clean Code, Reactive Programming and maybe Kotlin.
If you interested in getting this scholarship, you can subscribe about the upcoming scholarship program through this link.
