The End of Sitecore Training?

Over the past five years, Sitecore has trained thousands of marketers, designers and developers in our main course offering -- Sitecore Certified Developer Level One (SCD1). The course was an ambitious one: two days of training covering data design, presentation development, workflows, publishing, security, media, multilingual features and much more. Earlier this year, as the release of Sitecore 6 drew near, we decided that Sitecore training as we knew it had to come to an end.

Our approach to SCD1 had been extremely successful. We received great feedback on our training curriculum and our instructors. The positive results of the training were evident in the thousands of sites developed by Sitecore partners and customers in countries across the globe. As an instructor, I was often struck by the ability of students to digest the curriculum, labs and certification within the short span of the training.

When we began developing Sitecore 6 curriculum, we took seriously all of the positive feedback and experiences we had with SCD1. We also took a 360-degree view, consulting with the Sitecore support team, sales, our customers and partners to understand what might be missing from our standard training and what could be improved. The feedback we received was that -- in aiming for comprehensiveness -- the SCD1 training was too broad. So much was covered in our two-day training, students sometimes found it difficult to retain all of the information. The training challenged students; but it sometimes overwhelmed them.

As an interim response to this feedback, additional trainings were developed in some regional markets. In the U.S. and Canada, we offered a day of prototyping, where students took the core concepts from SCD1 and applied them in a "start from scratch" website. This was an invaluable opportunity to get hands-on, instructor-led practice without introducing any additional content. A common exercise in the day of prototyping was to build a section of the customer's or partner's existing website using Sitecore data structures, .NET and/or XSLT.

With this experience and feedback in mind, we asked ourselves the following question: How can we best use our trainings to support our customers and partners in developing successful solutions? Several insights came from our discussions with the various training stakeholders:

1. Each training needs to provide a digestible amount of content.
2. The developer training needs to include as much hands-on prototyping as possible.
3. We need to offer more trainings that cover critical topics in greater detail.
4. We need to improve our documentation so that topics not covered in training are comprehensively described on the Sitecore Developer Network.
5. The Sitecore Certified Developer exam needs to target experienced ASP.NET developers.

These ideas led us to design a training program that provides more courses, more focused courses and better supported courses. The training program will ultimately include twelve unique courses ranging from one to two days each. An average customer or partner will only take one to three courses, depending on their requirements.

Our initial rollout of this program includes two courses -- Sitecore .NET Developer (SND) and Sitecore HTML Developer (SHD). Driven by our new philosophy, each of these courses will spend at least 50% on hands-on prototyping. Students will leave these classes with a strong understanding of Sitecore fundamentals and extensive experience with instructor-supervised lab work. A typical student will take only one of these classes, depending on their skill area (i.e. .NET or HTML/XSLT). These courses cover fewer topics than SCD1; however, they will result in greater mastery.

In addition to the new trainings, Sitecore has produced new documentation on Sitecore fundamentals, as well as new features specific to Sitecore 6.

Finally, the Sitecore Certification exam has been completely revised. The new exam focuses on the intersection between Sitecore and ASP.NET. Developers will find the new exam highly challenging and thought provoking.

With the release of Sitecore 6, we bring one era of Sitecore training to an end. As we embark on our new training offerings, we will continue to revise and renew as we receive feedback from our trainees. If you want to join the excitement, contact your Sitecore sales representative or partner manager to schedule your next training.