Web uni says it will get you a tech job or your money back. So our man Kieren signed up...

Parisian e-learning outfit launches in US

El Reg goes back to school

You are assigned a mentor qualified in the field and typically have a one-hour weekly session with them in which you talk through your struggles and how to address them. They help you work through projects up until submission – at which point a subject matter expert takes over to assess them.

This is all sounds good but what's the reality? We decided to try it out and, courtesy of OpenClassrooms, enrolled in the product manager path.

The overview looks right. It walks through all the aspects required of a team boss in a tech setting, from a basic understanding of how it all works – including server languages – to hands-on projects such as building a website, developing UML diagrams for specific project needs, carrying out product and market research, and building working prototypes.

This Reg scribe has only done the first out of ten projects but got a good taste for how it all works. At the heart of the course is an extensive – and professional – video library that walks you through each part of the course. This is supplemented by online quizzes and small projects that build on each aspect – rather than simply require you to regurgitate what you heard. Links to relevant resources are provided in the explanatory notes to each part of the course.

On one, we were required to mark three other students' work on the same topic before our work was supplied to others for grading. This was, surprisingly, an oddly effective approach: not only did it reinforce the lessons in our mind but also prompted us to provide helpful and thoughtful summary responses explaining the marking. You are, after all, fellow students.

The mentoring session – with Maria who lives in Kansas – was done over Google Hangouts and set up as a weekly regular event. Maria made it plain the approach is flexible, and the first session revolved around a discussion about what were realistic goals in terms of course progress.

Her students vary from people effectively working as full-time students to people trying to reskill themselves while in existing jobs.

Useful

And that, to our mind at least, is where OpenClassrooms may have a real impact. From what we have seen, the product manager course looks to give you a really good foundational knowledge on which you could build in a job.

In that sense, it could be useful both for coders looking to edge into product management, or product managers looking to break into the tech sector. We're not sure that someone from outside either field could do the course and then wave their OpenClassrooms certification and land a job.

Likewise, product manager is a very different job to hardcore coding. It's probably fair to say, without wanting to be too James Damore, that a good percentage of the population is not suited to programming. Is it possible that Americans looking to scoop the rich pickings that come from the tech sector would sign up to a $300-a-month program despite lacking the skills necessary?

OpenClassrooms could see its course completion rate drop significantly if so. Or, worse, it could see financial pressures force it to put unqualified people into the marketplace, or be required to pay back lots of fees while still paying qualified mentors. The mentors are paid on a per-session and per-assessment basis.

But broadly we are optimistic: there is huge potential in online learning, as even traditional universities have recognized. We will keep on with the course and may come back with an update later.

Of course, what everyone really wants to know is: what is the value of an OpenClassrooms "degree" in the US job market? And at the moment, no one knows. But with more than 600,000 unfilled tech jobs across America – something experts have warned represents a "chronic shortage" – we are likely to find out soon. ®