This article describes learning paths in Cloud Academy. This feature is available to personal and enterprise users.
This document contains the following sections:
- What Are Learning Paths
- Learning Path Progress
- How to Start a Learning Path
- How to Complete a Learning Path
What Are Learning Paths
Learning paths are objective-driven learning experiences that combine the theory, technical knowledge, and hands-on practice to master skills using industry-leading technologies and major cloud platforms. Our learning paths can contain:
- Courses
- Quizzes and exams
- Hands-on labs
- Lab challenges
- Playground labs
- Practice certifications exams
An exam follows each learning path to ensure that learners are acquiring key concepts and skills. When you complete a learning path, you can download a certificate of completion.
Cloud Academy has built and maintains a broad and deep library of learning paths for you to choose from. Enterprise users can also create custom learning paths using Content Engine.
Learning Path Progress
Once you start a learning path, it appears on your dashboard and shows your progress through the learning path.
If you had previously completed any of the learning path courses outside of the learning path, the progress reflects those courses as already complete. However, until you start the learning path, the progress always shows 0% progress.
How to Start a Learning Path
Note: If you're a member of an enterprise account, you may have learning paths assigned to you by your administrator or team leader as part of a Training Plan.
You can find learning paths in the training library. Once you select a topic in the list on the left, you see the option to list the learning paths for that topic.
If you use the search tool in the training library, you can filter the search results for learning paths. You can identify a learning path by the icon to the left of the search result.
Click the learning path to see the detail view:
On this screen you can see details like the difficulty level and length to help you decide whether this is the learning path you want to start. If you scroll down on this screen, you can see a list of the steps.
When you're ready, click the Start Learning Path button to begin.
How to Complete a Learning Path
The traditional way to complete a learning path is to complete each item in turn until you reach the end of the path. However, you might already have expertise on the subject of the learning path. To avoid requiring you to finish courses on a subject you already know, the system lets you confirm your competency by finishing the final assessments.
In this case, "assessments" refers to exams and lab challenges. A learning path can contain any number of assessments, but you only need to pass those at the end of the learning path to complete the learning path.
The following rules explain the possible scenarios and what's required to complete the learning path in each case:
- The last item in a learning path is an assessment, and the second-to-last item in the learning path is not an assessment: passing that single assessment is how you complete the learning path.
- The last two items in a learning path are assessments, and the third-to-last item in the learning path is not an assessment: passing both assessments is required to complete the learning path.
- The last n items in a learning path are assessments, and the n-1 item in the learning path is not an assessment: passing n assessments is required to complete the learning path.
However, passing assessments that appear before any course in the learning path is not required to complete the learning path.