Today at ChefConf Online we took the wraps off Learn Chef, our new online learning platform for the Chef community. Three years ago we launched Learn Chef Rally, which brought together our online training in a single, no-cost offering. Since then, over 130,000 of you have taken advantage of our content to grow your skills and help you tackle DevOps and automation business problems.
Over the last three years, we’ve learned a lot about what the community wants in a learning platform, and how training can continue to create different innovations to provide the best training experience. The most common requests from our users have included:
- Different formats of content
- Improved hands-on experiences
- The ability to share achievements publicly
And finally…
- More content, faster
The new Learn Chef platform addresses these requests and much more. We’re launching the platform today with new courses to showcase how to use the new products unveiled at ChefConf Online, as well as updates to our curriculum for Chef Infra, Habitat, InSpec and DevOps topics. As you navigate the courses, you’ll find it easier to track progress through the courses and discover new training releases. In addition, our new courses (starting with the Test Expectations with Chef InSpec course), will feature in-browser hands-on labs. These guided experiences will let you start applying your knowledge in a real environment, without having to install a local version of Chef or deal with spinning up Docker. Working with the Product and Engineering teams at Chef, my colleagues and I in the DevRel team have been updating the courses to reflect the latest product innovations and best practices derived from working with hundreds of customers.
Along with new content and learning environments, we have made big improvements around tracking and sharing progress in an open and flexible way. Introducing a new badging system built on the Open Badges specification allows you to track your learning progress and easily share your accomplishments on professional networks, such as LinkedIn. The specification also features Badge Pathways building connections of awards into a journey of achievement. As we continue to reimagine the next generation of Chef certifications, these improvements will allow our customers and partners to share validation of learning achievements in more meaningful ways.
This is just the beginning! The new Learn Chef platform is built on Appsembler, an Open edX platform SaaS Vendor used by major universities and large organizations. Building on the foundation of an open platform gives us the tools to build, test, and deploy courses faster than ever. We have plans for many courses to release over the next few months, as well as enhanced labs and multimedia experiences for Chef learners. Consider this an invitation to check out Learn Chef, create an account, and begin your journey with a course. Finally, if there are other things you’d like to see, either in terms of new courses or features, I’d be grateful to hear from you. Get in touch at training@chef.io
Happy Learning!