With your feedback, we’ve made some big changes to our Amazon Web Services (AWS) Certified Cloud Practitioner (CCP) course and our AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (CSA-A) course, as announced earlier this week at the ACG Community Summit. In this post, we dive into the new CCP course, what we’ve changed, and why.

When I started on the journey to make updates to our AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner course, I knew it would be special. We had the opportunity to reimagine one of the most popular A Cloud Guru courses by starting with the learning philosophy behind the course first.

We heard from you that you wanted an interactive learning experience, so we used your feedback as the basis for reimagining the course.

Today, I’d like to share with you the enhancements we’ve made to the learning experience that will help turn you into a high-performance learner that actively participates in the learning process. I bet your journey to becoming an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner will be one that you will not soon forget!

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The new AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CCP) course

The AWS Cloud Practitioner exam is geared toward absolute beginners on the technical side, as well as business professionals — project and product managers, finance resources, and executives — who are looking to build familiarity with AWS.

The latest updates, to our AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner course, provide an enhanced experience that supports an interactive and non-linear learning journey. 

What does this mean? Well, in short, no more slide decks! Instead, each lesson is presented as a web page that you are meant to interact with!

You can see this for yourself in the CCP course (which is also available as one of our free courses for the month of July). . . or you can get a sneak peek right here!

As seen above, you’re now able to click to learn more about each advantage of cloud computing.

You’ll see more detail when clicking the ‘+’ sign next to each advantage of cloud computing.

Hover over the N. Virginia region to learn more!

You’ll see more information about the region when you hover over it.

Do you know what you’re responsible for based on the AWS Shared Responsibility Model? You’ll be able to hover to learn more.

AWS is responsible for data center security for the physical building.

You’re able to use the blue arrow to jump directly to the official AWS documentation on CloudWatch.

Each section has a table of contents that allows you to jump to the lessons you care about the most. 

I think you’ll love this experience because you’re able to:

• Scroll to explore the topics.
• Click to uncover more information.
• Jump directly to the lessons you care about the most. 
• Access quick links that jump directly to the official AWS documentation so you can dive even deeper. 

And as always, the course has Hands-On Labs (so you can learn by doing) and section quizzes to give you timely feedback (so you know where to improve).

So, how can you best experience the new course? Well, the course is designed to be an engaging and relevant learning experience that meets you where you are but also pushes you to the next level.

If you have time constraints when watching the course, you can watch only the video lessons as before. But if you have more time to explore and engage with the lesson, you’re able to follow along with me and interact with each lesson using the lesson’s associated web page. There’s a web page that accompanies each video lesson!

What really is a special treat is that the web page acts as a built-in study guide, of sorts. This means the web page can be used later as a quick refresher right before taking the exam. No need to watch the lesson videos again (unless you just really enjoy the sound of my voice)! 

Check out our new CCP course for free in July!

We’ve really had fun thinking outside of the box on how we could reimagine the learning experience. So, check out the new AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner course! (Remember: It’s totally free for a limited time, so check it out today!) We hope you enjoy the new learning experience. Please let us know what you think!

Also updated: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (CSA-A) course

Here’s a quick overview of some of the changes in our new AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (CSA-A) course. Hundreds of thousands of learners have taken ACG co-founder Ryan Kroonenburg’s CSA-A course to prepare for AWS cloud certification. And now this course is getting even better.

• The new course introduces additional Hands-On Labs, and features our brand new Challenge Mode labs.

• The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification gives you a broad overview of AWS, and forms a valuable foundation on which you can build everything else you’ll learn moving forward. There’s a reason it’s been the #1 cloud certification for years running.

• The CSA – Associate certification focuses on the core AWS services, like Identity and Access Management (IAM), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), S3, and EC2. Studying these core services will give you a good understanding of how AWS approaches security, networking, data storage, and compute capability. For anyone new to cloud computing, we recommend our AWS Solutions Architect – Associate course as the next best step after you’ve gained your AWS Cloud Practitioner certification.

Already enrolled in the existing version of one of these courses? 

Our existing versions of the courses will still fully prepare you for your cloud certification exam. It’s up to you to decide if you’d like to shift to the new courses. We recommend the following based on your current course progress:

• If you’re just getting started with the course (<20% of course completed)
  We recommend shifting over to the new course to benefit from the best possible learning experience.

• If you’re >20% of the way through
  You don’t need to switch to the updated course. AWS hasn’t made updates to their certification exams since these courses were last updated, so the existing course will still fully prepare you for the exam. Do note, however, that the course will not reflect changes that have been made to the AWS environment user interface (though AWS services and functionalities remain unchanged). 

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