Creating a course on web development from novice to employable?

I am considering creating an online course that would teach web development, from novice to employable. It would use videos, screencasts and texts. More than anything, I'd like to make it free.
Why? I have been a developer for the past 15 years. I started as a junior coder and arrived to an IT manager position in a large corporation. The twist here is that I never sat a single day of my life in a CS course. I am entirely self-taught, like many in the field. Over the years, I noticed that I have a passion for coaching and teaching developers.

At a high level, here's what the course should teach: HTML -> CSS -> Programming basics -> JavaScript -> Ruby -> Rails -> Advices on how to land a web developer's job. I'd intend this course to be a comprehensive set of skills needed to be able to apply for a junior dev position.

In order to build this course, I would need to take 3 months of unpaid leave. I would also need some trivial resources like some software licenses, a good microphone, etc. My idea is to start a crowdfunding campaign to first see if there's an interest for such a course and of course, to have the resources to work full time on it.

What do you think? How would you tackle this and spread the word about the crowdfunding project (no, I don't have a large following on Twitter and the likes)? Is the idea completely stupid, and why?

Thanks for your input! Before jumping in, I'm interested in getting some feedback from various forums, so why not ask the Apple crowd

chown33 said:

Do you know who your competitor's are? Have you looked at their offerings?

Do you have a clear idea of how your offering would be better? Not just slightly better, or in some parts, but comprehensively better?

If your offering is free for users, how will you fund the resources (server, ISP, maintenance) to keep it running? Ads? Donations? Sponsors?

Click to expand...

Thanks for your comment.

Yes, I know what are the current online courses offerings in web development and I think I tried and evaluated most of them.

My offering would be better for several reasons:

- one place to go from novice to employable, teaching a variety of required skill. No need to jump from an outlet to another.

- I am self-taught. I've been there. I know the challenges to then join the professional world.

- I have an extensive experience in hiring tech people. I know what recruiters look for in a candidate and I know what are the real world challenges for a junior web dev.

- No gimmicks like "code from the comfort of your browser" (I will not name any but many online courses go this route). Real world developers use real tools.

- Free. Because in my opinion, education should be free.

For the financial part, and especially because I want to make it free, I need some financing. I think crowdfunding is a great place to start as it would allow me to measure interest. On the long run, I plan to sell add-ons (exercises with corrections, for example), have a donation option and maybe find sponsors if the audience is large enough.

Still, I have no expertise in crowdfunding and don't really know how to get the word out about a campaign. In my opinion, my target audience is designers, soon-to-be startup founders, people wanting a career change, maybe students. How do I connect with them?

In order to answer the various questions raised on all the outlets where I asked 'what about this idea?', I created a faq here: http://howtocode.io

Let me know what you think (I know it's ugly but the purpose is served)!