Workshops
A how-to guide
Workshop Goals
Workshop Goals
-
Prepare the attendee to pass the exam
- Teach them concepts tested on the exam
- Make them comfortable with the exam platform
- Make the process interactive and fun
- Give them confidence to ace the test
- Portray certificates.dev as a professional, high-quality resource with approachable humans behind it
Workshop Structure
Instruction
15 - 25 minutes
Questions
0 - 5 minutes

Hands-on Exercise
15 - 30 minutes

Exercise Solution
5 - 15 minutes
Workshop Structure
Instruction
15 - 25 minutes
Questions
0 - 5 minutes

Hands-on Exercise
15 - 30 minutes

Exercise Solution
5 - 15 minutes
Workshop Structure
Workshop Structure
Rinse and Repeat for X sections
Sections Example
From Vue Bootcamp
2. Template Syntax
4. Reactivity Fundamentals
1. Intro to Vue
3. Event Handling
5. Class and Style bindings
6. Form Input Bindings
7. Component Props and Events
8. Slots
9. Transitions
10 Watchers
11. Lifecycle Hooks
12. Template Refs
13. Plugins/Router/Ecosystem
Sections typically revolve around 1 topic and get progressively more advanced
Day 1
2. Template Syntax
4. Reactivity Fundamentals
1. Intro to Vue
3. Event Handling
5. Class and Style bindings
6. Form Input Bindings
7. Component Props and Events
8. Slots
9. Transitions
Sections are broken up into multiple days
Day 2
Day 3
10 Watchers
11. Lifecycle Hooks
12. Template Refs
13. Plugins/Router/Ecosystem
Day 1
2. Template Syntax
4. Reactivity Fundamentals
1. Intro to Vue
3. Event Handling
5. Class and Style bindings
6. Form Input Bindings
7. Component Props and Events
8. Slots
9. Transitions
Day 2
Day 3
10 Watchers
11. Lifecycle Hooks
12. Template Refs
13. Plugins/Router/Ecosystem
Depending on time, sections sometimes fall on different days
Instruction
15 - 25 minutes
Questions
0 - 5 minutes

Hands-on Exercise
15 - 30 minutes

Exercise Solution
5 - 15 minutes
But all sections follow this flow:
Instruction
15 - 25 minutes
- Teach from the slides (mostly)
- Feel free to stray from slides for clarifying examples
- Open up the exercise codebase in your IDE to quickly boot an example
- Or use stackblitz
- Open official docs, etc
- Make jokes along the way
- Be honest about what you know and what you don't
- Adjust the slides to your style
- Add in GIFs
- Add speaker notes, etc
Questions
0 - 5 minutes


- For smaller groups, answer questions directly from the chat
- For larger groups, use the Q&A tab (so questions can be upvoted)
- For smaller groups, feel free to answer during the presentation
- Be comfortable saying "I don't know but I'll find out"
- Review the exam MCQ pool and coding challenges and take the exam at least once yourself:
- Helps you know how best to answer audience questions
- Exercise doc is shared in a pre-workshop email
- I also share in the chat right before the first exercise
- Example of an exercise doc
- Let's look at the Vue exercise repo running on my local machine
- Encourage attendees to interact with team members during exercise time (ask questions, help each other, etc)
- Set a timer on your phone
Hands-on Exercise
15 - 30 minutes

- Solve the same exercise live on screen
- Use it as a teaching opportunity:
- "Next, we'll do x because y... etc"
Exercise Solution
5 - 15 minutes
Would it be helpful for me to go through a simple Vue exercise?
MOST of the workshop goes like this
The focus here is on learning the coding concepts
MOST of the workshop goes like this
Days 1 and 2 and often the start of day 3
At the end there is a
- Live Quiz
- A Feature Coding Challenge
- A Bug Code Challenge
Get's the attendees acquainted with the exam process
Live Quiz
Live Quiz
- Fun way to introduce them to how multiple choice questions work
- Helps self-evaluate what they need to continue studying
- At the end of each question, explain the right answer
- Also a nice time to explain the makeup of questions:
- some are true/false
- some include code blocks, etc
- Limit speaking while they are answering

Let's take a look 👇
(demo taking quiz, how to manage questions, etc)
Live Quiz
Currently I manage the live quiz backend infrastructure. You'll need to login with github and then ask me to set you up as an admin
Coding Challenges
Coding Challenges
- Mimic the coding challenges on the exam
- What you do depends on time
- Can give them exercise time to complete on their own and then demo solution
- Can assign as homework for day 2 and then demo solution in day 3
- Can just do one of them and assign the other as homework
- Some bootcamps have dedicated coding challenges in the exercise repos while others don't - use the trial exam in platform instead

Let's take a look at some examples 👇
- Vue Mid-Level embedded challenges (on local)
- Trial Exam on Prod
Coding Challenges
Handling Breaks
Handling Breaks
- Two 15 minute coffee breaks
- One 25 minute lunch break
- You decide exactly when based on how long it takes to get through sections
- Can skip a coffee break if tight on time
- Announce you'll be taking a break and then pause the presentation
- Leave a message in the chat about when to be back
- Set a timer for yourself
- "Shoot the breeze" for a couple minutes on return to give stragglers a chance
Homework
Homework
- Homework is assigned at the end of each day
- It consists of related sections in the training-module on platform
Homework
Let's take a look at an example 👇

Other Tips
Other Tips
- Zoom in on code and exercise app when presenting solutions for legibility
- Check the live quiz the day before day 3 and make sure it's ready to go
- Do chore dependency updates to exercise repo a few days before workshop
- When answering questions, be thorough but also be clear about what's on the exam and what's not
- Most importantly, know what's on the exam yourself!
- Make notes about issues as they arise and fix at end of day (or during exercise times)
Any questions?
🙋
Workshops
By Daniel Kelly
Workshops
- 70