Help Center

	This article covers everything you need to know about course progress, falling behind, and inactivity during your UX Academy course. Questions covered in this article: Course Progress Falling behind Inactive status

 

Course progress

If you are fully on track in your course on either the full-time or part-time track, these sessions will align with the expected cadence of session scheduling for your track:

• 2 weekly sessions for Full-time
• 1 weekly session for Part-time

However, if you fall behind by one or more weeks, it is important that you adjust your session scheduling cadence to reflect your actual progress in the course. This may mean postponing 1 or more weekly sessions until adequate progress has been made in the current Module. 

Students alone are responsible for using their sessions at the appropriate cadence and mentors are not responsible for monitoring session use on their behalf. 

If you run out of sessions before the end of the current Phase, you may reach out to the team at hello@designlab.com to purchase additional sessions. 

Mentor sessions should be scheduled in alignment with the course modules below:

Falling behind

The first thing to say is that UX Academy is, by design, an intensive experience. There is a lot of detailed material to take in, and iterating on projects—while extremely valuable for learning—can definitely be a challenge for time management.

Also, remember that you’re not alone in figuring this out, particularly at the start of the program. It could be helpful to share the challenges you’re facing with others in the UX Academy community channels to get tips from people who are in the same position.

One technique we can recommend is to “timebox” the amount of time you spend iterating on projects. It is good to iterate, but particularly in the first half of the course, it’s also important to keep your momentum and not get bogged down in details unnecessarily. You’ll always be able to revisit concepts later in the course, when they’re likely to have sunk in more deeply.

You should also continue to attend Group crit sessions, even if you have nothing new to present, you are still required to attend as attendance will be taken by the facilitator. You also need to participate, so use this time to practice offering constructive critique! 

If you’re feeling stuck on your coursework, being a part of discussions during Group Crits can help you learn from how others approach design problems. You never know what inspiration and ideas you might encounter on the next call! 

However, if you do find that you’re really struggling to get through your work within 40 hours a week on the full-time track, it might be worth requesting a switch to the part-time track (20 hours a week) or the Self-Paced track (5-10 hours a week) which will give you more breathing space and allow you to move through the material at your own pace.

Before making a decision, you’re welcome to reach out to us to help you go over options for you moving forward.

 

Inactive status

If you do not take any measurable action in UX Academy or Career Services for two consecutive weeks, your enrollment will be flagged as inactive. While your enrollment status is inactive, you’ll be unable to post submissions, mark lessons as complete, or schedule 1:1 sessions with your mentor.

Additionally, out of respect for your mentor’s time, when your enrollment is flagged as inactive, the system will free up your mentor’s capacity so that they can have the opportunity to be matched with new, active students.

How to prevent your enrollment from being flagged as inactive:

As long as you’re taking measurable actions every week on the platform, your enrollment status will remain active. Measurable actions include but are not limited to posting submissions for project deliverables, marking lessons as complete, and scheduling or attending 1:1 mentor sessions. Please note that activity in Huntr (for Career Services) or activity in Group Crits will not prevent your enrollment from being flagged as inactive.

If you’re planning to take a break from the program, the best thing to do is request a pause in UX Academy or Career Services. While your enrollment status is paused, your enrollment won’t be flagged as inactive, and when your pause is finished, the two-week timer will reset.  

How community breaks impact the activity requirement:

You are not required to make progress on your coursework during any of our community breaks. For the purpose of detecting inactivity, the platform will disregard those time periods. For example, if you don’t take any measurable action for four days, and then there is a week long community break, you will still have ten days after the break to take an action before your enrollment is flagged as inactive.

How to reactivate your enrollment:

If your enrollment is flagged as inactive and it's within 12 months from your course start date, you can reactivate your enrollment by clicking the "Reactivate Now" button in your dashboard.

If you’d like to resume the program and it's been more than 12 months since your course start date, or if you have used all of your mentor sessions, please contact us to determine the best next steps. You can either reply to the notification email about your enrollment being flagged as inactive or reach out to us here.