How important is UE classroom learning?

Online and self-learning is currently the way to learn UE. But is classroom or real-time teaching and mentoring something that people need?

Since Gamecan is trying to develop our local UE community and in our country, there isn’t a place to fully study UE and C++ in-depth, Gamecan is opening an Unreal Engine training centre in Estonia. It’s a 9-month program and it doesn’t cost much. https://fullcycle.gamecan.eu/

Is it necessary to have institutions like this that teach UE or is online learning still the preferred option? What do you think?

“Teaching UE” can mean a lot of things. Usually people who use UE have interests like game development, creating movies or real time TV and those jobs all require relevant experience like creating art or programming. I think it would be great to use UE in classrooms where people with their own interests and specialization can work together and explore how UE works. UE has its own learning curve and sometimes certain specializations overlap a bit, for example I found that if you can do basic programming and shader creation you can create more advanced designs as a UI designer. People also need to know why they use UE over another program for their work just like you need to know and pick the right tool from your toolbox for other jobs. Self-learning is also incredibly important. People who want to progress will spend time browsing the web and reading books. Often it helps to be able to read engine source code or do basic VS debugging to really understand what is going on with the engine if things are not documented or discussed anywhere. These people need access to as much information as possible, which can be provided in online archives, because you simply not have the time to answer all questions in detail and not all questions will be relevant for the entire class unless you really only teach the UE basics…
A healthy balance might be 80% self-learning, 20% class then. If you can’t do that then it might not be for you.

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