New courses and certification offerings from AWS Training and Certification in December 2023

We’re back with the December course launches and certification updates from AWS Training and Certification to equip you and your teams with the skills to work with AWS services and solutions.

There is a lot to be excited about as we close out the year with 21 new digital training products on AWS Skill Builder, including seven new game-based and interactive trainings and certification preparation courses to help you build AWS Cloud expertise, from AWS Industry Quest: Manufacturing and Automotive, AWS Card Clash, to the new AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam prep resource, AWS Escape Room. You can also recertify for your AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner by playing the beta AWS Cloud Quest: Cloud Practitioner Recertify – no need to take an exam. We also have four new learning plans with digital badges to guide your knowledge-building, and for executives, we’ve added cloud education for Chief Human Resource Officers and for executives wanting to build their cloud security know-how.

The holiday season may also be a perfect time to try the 7-day free trial of AWS Skill Builder Individual subscription* giving you access to our most immersive, hands-on trainings, including 150+ AWS Builder Labs, enhanced exam prep resources, AWS Cloud Quest, AWS Industry Quest, AWS Jam Journeys, and more. There’s something for every cloud learner, from brand new builder to experienced professional. *terms and conditions apply

New AWS Skill Builder subscription features

AWS Industry Quest: Manufacturing and Automotive enables you build solutions for the manufacturing and automotive industries. This game-based simulation uses scenario-based assignments to help you develop practical skills for virtual prototyping with CAD tools, robotics data visualization, converting industrial protocols at the Edge, and more.

AWS Card Clash helps you gain knowledge of AWS Cloud architectures in an engaging way. This 3D virtual card game uses strategic, turn-based game play to explore AWS services and how they relate in real-world applications, and helps individuals at all skill levels learn about AWS architecture and solution design.

AWS Jam Journey provides a gamified, experiential learning path to build your AWS skills with real-world challenges. Jam Journeys are comprised of highly-rated, hands-on challenges in each track, providing you an opportunity to test your AWS skills by solving various challenges created by AWS experts. Explore our three newest Jam Journey offerings from re:Invent 2023:

• AWS Jam Journey: Best of All In re:Invent 2023
• AWS Jam Journey: DevOps re:Invent 2023
• AWS Jam Journey: Generative AI re:Invent 2023

AWS Certification preparation and exam updates

AWS Escape Room: Exam Prep for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner prepares you to become an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner in an immersive virtual escape room adventure. Answer exam-style questions, build solutions in hands-on labs, and solve interactive puzzles to escape. Escape Room is one step in a four-step plan you can use to prepare for your AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam with confidence. AWS Escape Room is available in AWS Skill Builder subscriptions (Individual and Team); a demo version is also available for free in AWS Skill Builder.

AWS Cloud Quest: Recertify Cloud Practitioner (beta) is a new game-based recertification* option available to you at no cost, now through May 31, 2024. Individuals who have six months or fewer until the expiration date of their AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner status qualify to use this guided, self-paced game on AWS Skill Builder, with no exam prep or exam needed. Once all challenges are completed therein, you’ll be re-certified as AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner for another three-year time frame. This option is now available in English and Japanese.

*Existing exam-based options to re-certify for any of the AWS Certifications, including AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, are still available to you, depending on your circumstances and preference.

Exam Prep Official Pretest: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) (90 min.) helps you prepare for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam. You’ll begin your preparation with an official, full-length pretest, created by the experts at AWS, to help you identify where additional study time is needed based on exam topic and help you assess your exam readiness. Looking for guidance from start to certified? View your full Exam Prep plan here. Exam Prep Standard Course: AWS Certified Security – Specialty(6.5 hrs) helps prepare you to sit for the AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C02) exam. You’ll follow a step-by-step plan to prepare and gauge your understanding of topics and concepts from each task statement grouped by exam domains.

• Take your preparation to the next level with the subscription-only version:Exam Prep Enhanced Course: AWS Certified Security – Specialty (14.25 hours), available with an AWS Skill Builder subscription (utilize the 7-day free trial!). The enhanced prep course includes hands-on exercises and exam-style questions to reinforce your knowledge and identify any learning gaps. You’ll explore learning strategies to identify incorrect responses by interpreting the concepts that are being tested in the exam using the question explanations. Then determine your readiness to take the exam with an AWS Certification Official Practice Exam. Looking for guidance from start to certified? View your full Exam Prep plan here.

Free digital courses on AWS Skill Builder

Learning plans with digital knowledge badges

Events and Workflows Knowledge Badge helps you build technical knowledge on event-driven computing and AWS Serverless concepts with a focus on AWS Step Functions, Amazon EventBridge, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). Once you feel prepared, take the assessment at the end of this learning plan to earn your digital badge and share with your network.

Amazon EKS Knowledge Badge helps you build technical knowledge on running microservices and container workloads with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). Once you feel prepared, take the assessment at the end of this learning plan to earn your digital badge and share with your network.

Compute Knowledge Badge helps you build technical knowledge of AWS Compute concepts and services with a focus on Amazon EC2. Once you feel prepared, take the assessment at the end of this learning plan to earn your digital badge and share with your network.

Amazon Braket Knowledge Badge helps you build technical knowledge of Quantum Computing with a focus on Amazon Braket. When you pass the online assessment at the end of the readiness path, you’ll earn a digital badge to share with your network. Once you feel prepared, take the assessment at the end of this learning plan to earn your digital badge and share with your network.

Fundamental courses for technical learners

Trails for AWS CloudTrail Getting Started (60 min.) teaches you the basics and business and technical challenges that trails for AWS CloudTrail can solve, including how to archive, analyze, and respond to changes in your AWS resources. A trail is a configuration that helps deliver CloudTrail events to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket that you specify.

AWS Organizations Getting Started (60 min.) teaches you how to manage accounts and consolidate billing capabilities to better meet the budgetary, security, and compliance needs of an organization. As an administrator of an organization, you can consolidate multiple AWS accounts and manage them centrally.

Amazon Lex – Getting Started (60 min.) teaches developers about the benefits, features, typical use cases, technical concepts, and the cost of Amazon Lex, a fully managed artificial intelligence (AI) service. You’ll review an architecture for a chatbot solution that leverages conversational interfaces for voice and text. You’ll follow a guided tutorial to create an Amazon Lex bot using the visual builder in your AWS account.

AWS Wickr Getting Started (30 min.) teaches you basic onboarding to AWS Wickr, how to create a Wickr network from the AWS Management Console, as well as use cases and accreditation when looking for a privacy-focused messaging application.

Fundamental courses for executive and non-technical learners

Cloud for CHROs (50 min.) is designed for human resources leaders responsible for developing and executing human resources strategy in support of the overall business plan and strategic direction of an organization. This course includes an interview with Ian Wilson, AWS VP of Human Resources, who discusses human resource strategies through digital transformation. You’ll learn how to implement talent development strategies and build high-performing teams in a successful digital transformation, gain a better understanding of the impact of generative AI on the future of work, and how HR can help IT leaders on their cloud journey.

Cloud Security Essentials for Executives (7 min.) provides executives and line of business leaders who create and execute business strategies, introduce policies, and ensure an organization reaches its goals, with a high-level explanation of cloud security. You’ll learn the importance of building security guardrails into your product life cycle, focus on security outcomes compared to security tools, and how to build a compliance program on AWS.

AWS Classroom Training

Networking Essentials for Cloud Applications on AWS (1 day) helps AWS customers and AWS Partners learn how to design a networking infrastructure and configure networking services for a highly-available, resilient, and scalable application. An expert AWS instructor will dive deep into implementing a networking infrastructure and networking best practices aligned to the AWS Well-Architected Framework. You’ll apply what you learn to design, configure, and optimize network infrastructure on AWS.

Practical Science with Amazon SageMaker (1 day) has been updated and helps those in a developer or DevOps engineer role at AWS customer and AWS Partner organizations understand the basics of machine learning (ML) and the steps involved in building ML models using Amazon SageMaker Studio. An expert AWS instructor will walk you through how to prepare data and train, evaluate, tune, and deploy ML models.

AWS Training for Partners

AWS Partner: Accreditation (Technical) (5 hours) teaches AWS Partners the technical fundamentals and best practices of AWS core services that comprise the building blocks of a foundational AWS architecture, including compute, storage, networking, database, and security. Upon completion, partners will earn an Accreditation Badge.