Workshops

A how-to guide

Workshop Goals

Workshop Goals

1. Prepare the attendee to pass the exam​​
   • Teach them concepts tested on the exam
   • Make them comfortable with the exam platform
2. Make the process interactive and fun
3. Give them confidence to ace the test
4. Portray certificates.dev as a professional, high-quality resource with approachable humans behind it

Workshop Structure

Workshop Structure

Workshop Structure

Workshop Structure

Sections Example

From Vue Bootcamp

Sections typically revolve around 1 topic and get progressively more advanced

Day 1

Sections are broken up into multiple days

Day 1

Depending on time, sections sometimes fall on different days

But all sections follow this flow:

• 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

• 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

• Solve the same exercise live on screen 
• Use it as a teaching opportunity:
  • "Next, we'll do x because y... etc"

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

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 👇

https://certificates.dev/vuejs/dashboard/training/certification-training-level-1

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?

🙋