Certification Preparation with Learners First Approach

Certification efficacy and learners’ knowledge are the ultimate outcomes of any certification course. Still, that objective is not always reflected in the strategies companies set for their course initiatives. Adopting a learner-first approach is an effective way to ensure that the course is centred on learners and make them the benchmark for every aspect of the company’s strategy for effective certification preparation.

A learners-first approach improves learners’ learning potential through essential content preferences, learning approach, and the platform’s design thus making the certification preparation smooth and worthy.

While companies focus on high-quality content and learning resources, it is ironic that learners have the least say in terms of the content, structure of learning, and outcomes they want to achieve. Often internal business stakeholders and SMEs decide for all of the above. But, at saasguru, we decided to follow an absolute learners-first approach keeping our learners at the centre of all our business goals and strategies. The learner-first strategy values the learners’ opinions as they are the actual users of the platform who will benefit from it. That means we layout our product’s foundational and future enhancements by constantly communicating with them to cater to their specific needs—our learners’ opinion matters!

After interviewing over 500 SaaS professionals, saasguru has devised a learning model with 100% focus on our learner persona. This pathway is a five-step process that helps bridge the gap between the learning and certification day. Read more on Mason Frank’s report analysis to know the Salesforce Hiring Trends 2022. 

1. Benchmark Your Knowledge

Every learner’s journey on the SaaS platform starts with understanding the product and getting some hands-on experience. Therefore, the learner needs to go through self-paced learning through specific technology platforms like Trailhead (Salesforce), Now (ServiceNow), etc.

Once they get a basic understanding of the technology and are ready to start their certification preparation, the first step is to understand the knowledge acquired by the learner in the past, which will drive most of the actions on the saasguru platform. So for initial assessment, they can take their first free mock exam on the saasguru platform, which will help us understand the following about the learners.

• Learners will get a clear picture of where to benchmark and the level of effort required to ace the cert in the first go.
• Learners will understand how much time they must spend daily or weekly to complete the certification plan.
• Learners get clarity on the areas they need to focus on where they have scored less.

2. Get Personalised Study Plan

By analyzing the results and our deep insights from the first mock exam, the saasguru AI engine helps the learner with a personalised learning plan that automatically sets the study plan’s duration. This will guide learners with the expected actual exam date and time they should spend preparing for the certification.

Understanding that our learners have already gone through tons of learning materials and resources, we wanted to make it easy for them to consume and quickly revise the knowledge required for the certification. Keeping that in mind, the saasguru study plan consists of microlearning modules that a learner should consume within 10 mins. It is like a cheat sheet or curated notes completely focused on certification requirements.

Our learners get the following benefits with the proposed schedule and personalised study plan:

• The defined schedule helps them keep up to speed with the plan and get more done on a scheduled time.
• The schedule helps manage their time well by knowing how much time they are supposed to spend to make their goal a reality.
• This helps the learner to utilise their energy and time well by focusing on areas they need to spend more time on vs. areas they can revise and move on.
• The personalised study plan with the proposed schedule also helps the learners quickly go through all the essential and relevant information, keeping certification requirements in mind.

3. Revise On the Go

Learners often take notes while going through study materials to revise later. These notes are usually bite-size information and critical points to remember. A learner typically spends hours curating all this information, which then sits in different places in an unstructured way. After speaking with our learners, saasguru came up with the idea to provide this critical, bite-sized information in Flash Cards, which is tied to the study plan structure. These Flashcards are curated by our gurus, who are well aware of the key information to retain before sitting in the exam.

Flashcards allow learners to interact with information to make it easier to retain. In addition, flashcards are strategically designed to enhance and encourage active recall, which creates a stronger neural connection in the brain — making it a very effective method for improving memory.

saasguru is continuously improving our learners’ experience and adding more personalisation as we understand each learner has different learning styles. Soon learners will be able to get push notifications on mobile where they will be able to sort the cards into What I already know, What I partially Know and What I don’t know. And depending on these inputs and set frequency, they will be surfaced with the right information.

4. Practice Like Its Real Exam

A learner needs to get accompanied with the type, complexity, and depth of the questions they should expect to see when appearing for the actual exam. Another critical factor is understanding the time they should spend on each question and different weightage areas.

One of the feedbacks we heard from all SaaS professionals is that many unethical certification dumps are available online with no guarantee and genuineness of the questions. They don’t explain the right or wrong answers or reasoning. Moreover, they found multiple solutions to the same questions from different sources, which added to the problem.

Keeping these problem statements in mind, saasguru has partnered with industry-leading gurus who have aced over 10+ industry certifications to create mock exams and practice topic tests. These questions adequately explain each right and wrong answer with reference links, so our learners can be 100% ready to sit in the actual exams with total confidence.

Learners can choose to give practice topic tests before practising for the full mock exams to assess their micro-level knowledge, ace it, and then move to the next one.

Here are some of the other benefits a learner can get from practising mocks from saasguru.

• It is very similar to actual exam experience where the exam is time-bound; they can mark questions for review and score them as per the exact exam weightage.
• They can see the detailed score report of the exam result at module, topic and subtopic level.
• A learner can go through each question with a detailed explanation of the wrong/right answers and better understand the concepts.
• They can mark the questions as to their favourite, which they can revise later.
• Learners can know how much their score has increased or fallen short on a specific occasion.
• It helps the learners prepare for the time and pressure management for the D-Day.

5. Mentor Support

A mentor is an adviser, a trusted guide, and a friend who helps learners overcome their challenges and support their overall growth. They have been through the same road the learner is now. They understand the challenges a learner is going through and are willing to guide the long term.

When it comes to learning or preparing for certification, learners who have mentors can benefit greatly. Mentors can help them navigate the learning journey by imparting wisdom, advice, and experience.

Keeping learners’ success at the centre, saasguru offers three levels of mentor support with the help of our gurus:

• 1-1 mentor support: The learner can book a 1-1 mentor session from the pool of gurus on career guidance, technology feature support, certification pathway, etc. This is powered by our deep learning algorithm, which guides learners in areas they need mentor support.
• 1-n master classes: Our gurus also run live masterclasses where learners can get first-hand experience in specific technology areas, ask questions, and clarify their doubts.
• Slack Community: Learners can also opt to be part of our fastest growing community to break out of the general channel and follow certification-specific centred discussions. Our gurus worldwide constantly support our learners to answer any doubts, keep everyone up to date with the latest technology updates, post updates regarding certifications, etc.

To Summarize

Obtaining certifications demonstrate your commitment to professional development. Check out the benefits of getting certified and get to know how do certifications help advance your career.  Although, getting a certification is a challenging task due to the numerous online training resources. But nothing should hinder you from progressing in your profession when the right opportunity knocks at your door.

saasguru and its customers have greatly benefited by adopting the learner-first learning model on our certification preparation programs. Our happy customers have received tailored content, apt delivery, and personalised support. Moreover, we can constantly improve our product without losing sight of the most important aspect of our platform offering – our learners.

Never regret choosing the right platform to ace your cert prep with saasguru. Sign Up for Salesforce certifications, Now!