It’s rather common to discuss how we enjoyed the movie when stepping out of the cinema. Were the effects believable? Was the soundtrack any good? Did that old guy in the third row actually snore? Most importantly — was it a time well spent? The same goes with leaving a year behind.

While choosing their party outfits and stocking up on fireworks, most of us also take some time to think: what was the year actually like? For us here in BitDegree, the year was impressive, to say the least — and it’s not just our New Year’s resolutions we accomplished! We worked hard to improve our user experience, introduced new approaches, and all the effort has paid off in tremendous ways. Make yourself a cup of cocoa, snuggle up under your favorite quilt, and listen carefully: this might just resemble a Christmas fairytale…

Going full steam ahead to make learning fun

In 2019, the BitDegree learning platform got a total revamp. The Octalysis Group — worldwide leaders in gamification — visited our headquarters in June. Working with them, BitDegree has created a fun and engaging world of e-learning. The new and exciting features were gradually introduced throughout the year, and in December we can finally say we’re there!

Now, as soon as you finish your profile calibration, you get a much coveted spot in the BitDegree City. From here on, you are free to power up and unlock new districts, following your progress on the city map. There’s a story to every district, so get ready to do some wandering! You might also find some puzzle pieces along the way. Make sure you get them, as a completed picture always means a reward. Feeling unsure where to start, or it simply gets lonely on your own? Get to know your personal companion Astra! Guiding you on your BitDegree City walks, she will help you navigate and find valuable loot chests, as well as remind you about the quests that await.

If Astra’s not enough, you can always find more friends in the city. Did someone catch your eye as you were reading community forums that are now available for every course? Or maybe you feel like you have a lot in common with a person who left a comment for a tutorial you enjoyed? Now, you can review their profile and add them to your friend list! Being social is the way to live in a city, after all!

All in all, it’s clear gamification makes learning more fun. However, it does much more than simply lift your spirits! With tasks, goals and achievements adding to your motivation, learning becomes way more engaging. Step by step, you can acquire a solid set of professional skills — all while feeling thoroughly entertained!

Become a part of the community and help in molding it

We all know appetite grows with each bite. Same goes with learning: the more you know, the more you understand there is yet to find out! Lucky for you, this year BitDegree has introduced a new feature to help you satisfy your hunger!

One of the important elements of gamification is receiving rewards for your effort. In BitDegree, you are awarded with tokens every time you take an important step in your journey. Using them, you can fund the courses you would like to appear on the platform. Take a look at the Community Votes section — does any special topic spark your interest? If so, don’t hide it — let’s join forces and get it on the platform! By showing your support, you let us create an e-learning platform that is not only engaging but also ready to cater to the true needs of the audience. Not only do we keep in touch with hundreds of professional instructors all around the world, but we also have a talented in-house team of experts. Your wish is their command — all you need to do is click the green button that says ‘Fund Course in Tokens’!

Here at BitDegree, we are all about building a community of passionate learners. That’s why this year we also improved the ways you can interact with other users. You already read about the way to create and polish your very own friend list. Did you think that was it? Think again! As of 2019, you can invite your friends to try out the BitDegree platform. Not only will they thank you sincerely for helping them to discover an innovative approach to being their best selves, you will receive a reward from us simply for sharing and caring! Also, having completed a course, you can now become a mentor to other students, as well as let them make an informed choice by rating and reviewing courses. Your opinion will be displayed next to the description of the course!

Speaking of tokens…

Long gone are the days you could only pay for services in crisp green cash. The online world keeps offering more and more methods of payment to accommodate every user. In 2019, we decided to take part in this as well! Since December, we are ready to help other companies implement BDG tokens in their systems of payment using an innovative CoinPayments.net solution. For more on this, visit a detailed tutorial we have prepared.

The first to get dibs was Hostinger. This company currently offers cloud web hosting solution to almost thirty million users all around the world, who can all find something valuable in the website development courses on the BitDegree platform! However, you can offer a chance to pay in BDG tokens to your clients as well — no matter the field you’re working in. Feel free to hit us up at [email protected]!

Vilnius University: helping us help you

All e-learning platforms encounter the same problem: the number of students that finish their courses is much lower than the number of those who start. To understand the reasons and find out the ways to improve the course completion rate, this year we collaborated with Vilnius University to work on a research project funded by the EU (project funding No. J05-LVPA-K-04–0133).

Our journey began in the first quarter of 2019. Now, we can honestly say the steps we took helped us learn a lot about the way students approach e-learning platforms. We organized surveys and interviews, and analyzed the students’ opinion on various motivational tools. This allowed us to grow a lot more confident in our plans to make BitDegree as attractive as possible and revolutionize the education system. Gamification was also one of the ideas we tested out here first — so if you’re enjoying the BitDegree City now, you can thank the students who took part in the research project as well!

Acknowledgments that matter

Another thing that made 2019 special for us is being noticed and appreciated worldwide. In the last weeks of the year, we received fascinating news: BitDegree has been chosen as one of the best five Education & Learning solutions in the World Summit Awards 2019! Needless to say, it’s a great honor to be able to stand out in the crowd of contestants from over 180 countries!

Of course, that’s not all: we were also nominated for Blockchain in Education Use Case Awards and became semi-finalists in the Global EdTech Startup Awards. Even though the crowns went to other companies (kudos to them!), we are always proud to be noticed and mentioned among the most impressive contenders in the global scene. Actually, we love being seen on the national level, too: in October, Accenture named us among the best five Lithuanian startups!

However, we didn’t just attend events in hopes to fill up a nice shelf with awards this year! First and foremost, 2019 was all about learning from experts in the field and sharing our own knowledge. In January, we presented BitDegree at the BETT and LearnIt World conferences in London. The U.S. Department of Education initiated the summit on Blockchain application in Education took us to Washington in July. We also took multiple trips to Brussels to contribute to a study initiated by the European Commission. Collaborating with experts from all around Europe, we offered our insights about the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Bringing sponsors and talents together

It’s no secret some of the brightest minds out there might need some assisting to jump over the boundaries keeping them from achieving their dreams. In September, BitDegree decided to make education more achievable by introducing the idea of global micro-scholarships. The system is simple: you choose a course you would like to take, then roll up your sleeves and write a little message to show just how motivated you are. A sponsor can then decide to fund your application. If they do, you get access to the course materials and a reasonable deadline. If you manage to finish the course successfully before the time runs out, you receive both a scholarship and a certificate proving your effort.

The platform of micro-scholarships is blockchain-based, which means there’s no middle man taking a commission to themselves. If the student fails to reach their goal, the sponsor gets a full refund! Another piece of good news is that most of the sponsors are companies looking for young talents. Why not prove you’re a worthy candidate by learning hard and shining bright? Click here to apply for a scholarship, and get ready to turn your career upside down!

By the way — if you’re a company looking for some new blood, this year we got something more to offer. In January, we launched a talent acquisition platform called Learn to Earn which allows companies to use BitDegree as a hiring tool. As applicants complete the courses designed with an exact position in mind, the employer can choose the best performers and give them some offers they can’t refuse. To motivate the candidates even further, there might also be a small monetary reward…

Going international, uluslararası, интернациональный, quốc tế

The world is huge and colorful and… Terribly complex. It’s not uncommon for a foreign language to become an obstacle to reaching your goal, be it watching a movie, meeting a person… Or learning online. Understanding the importance of internationality, BitDegree has worked throughout the whole of 2019 to make learning available to global audiences.

We started translating our platform for non-English audiences in January. Then, month by month, collaborating with native speakers of the target languages, we introduced localized content to more and more countries. As of December, BitDegree speaks nine languages: English, Portuguese, Russian, French, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian. However, bringing education to the world by breaking boundaries is a big task, and we’re not planning to stop here!

When one course is not enough

It’s hard to reach your goal when you can’t find any roads leading to it, right? Getting lost isn’t too fun of an experience, not to mention a total waste of time and (sometimes) money. In June, we introduced another innovative approach to e-learning so you can get straight to your dream: Learning Paths. As of now, we have six paths for you to choose from, based on whether you want to work with data science, front end, back end, full stack, PHP or Android development.

Each path is designed to help you get all the skills required for a professional career while its stats (such as salary estimates and hiring demand) keep you motivated to finish what you started. To make sure you acquire the best available skill set, Learning Paths aren’t limited to the courses available on BitDegree. We selected the best options for various e-learning platforms so you can be sure you’re getting the cream of the crop.

Don’t forget we also have something to offer for those who wish to use more than video lectures to build their know-how! LEARN, which is one of the oldest BitDegree initiatives, received constant updates during the year. In September, we introduced a completely new page design to make LEARN as pleasing to the eye as it is to the mind. We also added useful material on more programming languages (hello, Python, Solidity, C++, and C#!), introduced a color picker tool called Pickeristic, and made it possible to save anything you create using the code editor and get a unique shareable link!

And now the most important thing — did any of this work?

You bet it did! Throughout 2019, BitDegree has been noticing incredible growth that proves the steps we have taken truly lead us in the right direction. This year, our user base has grown by 60 percent, and the average user has been spending 50 percent more time on the platform than they did in 2018.

With more and more people all around the world enrolling in our courses, reading our tutorials, and learning from our coding knowledge base, we can let out a sigh of relief: all the effort put into making the BitDegree experience more engaging and attractive this year has paid off. However, this does not mean we’re planning to stop anytime soon! Each of us at BitDegree has a head full of ideas — just wait and see what we have prepared for 2020!