The First Month of DeelabAcademy.com

On 26 June we opened the new DeelabAcademy.com. Forty-one days later, 112 learners have made 185 course signups, and they have left enough ratings and written reviews for us to say something useful about how the first month went. This is that summary, with the numbers as they stand.

DeeLab Academy is the training arm of DeeLab, the data annotation company. We label data for AI systems as our core business: images, video, audio, text and 3D point clouds. The academy exists to teach that same work properly, starting with courses that are free to take.

What people signed up for

Most of the first month's activity went to the Data Annotation Basics programme: six free, self-paced courses covering text, image, audio, video, image segmentation and 3D point cloud annotation. Of the 185 signups, 174 were to these free courses, and 108 of the 112 learners created their account this month, so almost everyone arriving is new to us.

Related article Data Annotation Basics: Six Free Courses Data Annotation Basics is DeeLab Academy's new free programme: six self-paced courses, one for each main type of annotation. Each teaches the principles of its... Read more →

The pattern in who signs up is consistent. People come to the Basics courses because they want to understand what data annotation work actually involves, usually with a view to doing it as a job. One learner put it plainly in a review of Text Annotation Basics:

"Going in, I only had a vague idea of what a Data Annotator did. I now understand the job." John, Text Annotation Basics

That is the purpose of the programme in one sentence. Each course takes one type of annotation and works through the concepts, the methods and the rules a working annotator follows. In Image Segmentation Basics, for example, learners cover semantic, instance and panoptic segmentation, and when to use polygon contours rather than pixel masks. These are the distinctions that come up in real client projects, because the courses are written from the same playbooks our own annotation teams use.

The week everything sped up

For the first four weeks, signups arrived at a steady 16 to 24 per week. Then, in the week of 27 July, they jumped to 75, roughly three times the earlier pace, and the first two days of August added another 31. We are watching to see whether the new pace holds, but the step change is clear in the chart above.

A note on how we count: the numbers exclude our own test accounts, and the August bar covers only two days. We would rather show a smaller honest number than a larger padded one.

What the reviews say

Across all our courses, 136 ratings have come in so far, averaging 4.78 out of 5. Of those, 109 are five stars and 24 are four stars, which is 98 per cent of the total. Three people gave three stars. Nobody has given one or two.

The highest-rated courses at the moment are Audio Labeling Essentials, Image Segmentation Essentials and Text Labeling Essentials, each holding a 5.00 average.

The written reviews follow the same lines as the ratings:

"I really enjoyed this course. It explained the fundamentals of text annotation in a simple and easy-to-follow way, making it suitable for beginners. I learned about different text annotation techniques and gained a better understanding of how annotated data is used to train AI models. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to start a career in data annotation or artificial intelligence." Ugwuoke A., Text Annotation Basics

"Loved this course! Hannah is a very patient and knowledgeable teacher!" Joana S., Video Labeling Essentials

Where this fits

Every AI model that recognises an object, transcribes speech or reads a document was trained on data that people labelled first. That labelling is skilled work with its own methods, quality standards and tooling, and it is usually learned on the job, unevenly, project by project.

That is the gap the academy fills. Because DeeLab runs annotation projects commercially, the courses are not abstract introductions; they teach the categories, edge cases and quality rules that client work actually demands. The free Basics tier gives anyone a genuine starting point, and the paid Essentials courses go deeper for people who want to build on it. Going by the first month, the free-first approach is doing what we hoped: it removes the risk of trying a new field, and the ratings suggest people find the teaching worth their time once they arrive.

Related programme Certified Data Annotator Earn the CDA credential in 6 weeks through 30 live sessions, platform tasks, and supervised assessments covering courses from image labeling to 3D point cloud. Read more →

What happens next

We keep publishing. Text Labeling Essentials starts on 10 August, and more courses are in production. The Basics programme stays free.

If you are curious about the field, the Data Annotation Basics programme covers text, image, audio, video, image segmentation and 3D point cloud annotation in six self-paced courses at deelabacademy.com. No payment details, no deadline.

One more thing before we sign off. For a while now, we've been building the answer to the question our graduates ask most: "I'm certified — now where's the work?" Soon, the skills you earn here will have somewhere to go: real projects, delivered by vetted, certified people, in managed teams — with your certification opening the door. We're launching very soon. Watch this space.