Tech Foundations enables you to become conversant in important tech topics. Supplement and further your Tech Foundations learning with valuable materials such as study guides and transcripts as well as translated videos.
See Tech Foundations overview for an overview of this feature as well as troubleshooting tips.
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Features overview
Tech Foundations helps you become tech fluent, regardless of technical background, in several key technical topics such as Agile, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. Each topic consists of two components: an optional topic video and an assessment. You can take the assessment before and/or after watching the topic video.
If you want to dive deeper into a topic, or review what you’ve learned in a written form, each topic has a study guide and a transcript. Tech Foundations also offers translations for all topic audio, subtitles, and transcripts, letting you learn in multiple languages.
Translations
Translations in Tech Foundations give you the opportunity to learn about technology in different languages. Translated topics are available to Tech Foundations learners at no additional cost. Translated features in Tech Foundations include audio and subtitles in topic videos as well as transcripts.
All Tech Foundations topics offer translations in the following languages:
- French
- French (Canada)
- German
- Japanese
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Spanish
To change the audio language or the subtitles of a video topic:
- Start a Tech Foundations topic video.
- Click the language settings icon.
- Choose the audio and/or subtitle language you’d like to use for your viewing session.
You can turn off or switch languages at any time while viewing the topic video.
To view the video transcript in a different language, navigate to the course details page and click Transcript. Click the Choose language drop down menu and select a language.
Tech Foundations is translated using AI. To offer feedback about a particular topic video’s translation, click Report an issue. Select your feedback type(s) from the modal and add your comments in the text box before clicking Submit.
Topic videos
Each video is made specifically for Tech Foundations and covers the topic in broad terms. Each topic video is between 30 and 60 minutes and is organized into sections, allowing you to review specific areas of a topic.
Viewing the topic video is optional. If you feel confident in a topic or you want to see your progress before and after viewing the video, you can skip ahead and take the assessment.
The video player has several features designed to help you customize your learning experience. See Video player for best practices, including playback speed and troubleshooting. Topic videos also have several translation options for both audio and subtitles.
Topic assessments
Each Tech Foundation 15-question assessment is scored as pass or fail. The number of correct answers required to pass varies by topic. You aren’t timed while taking the assessment.
If you pass the assessment, choose your next topic and continue learning. You won’t be able to take the assessment again once you’ve passed it. Each time you pass a topic assessment, you'll receive one point towards your program progress on the program page.
If you didn’t pass the assessment, you’ll see topic concepts that you need to review. These concepts are linked to timestamped sections within the topic video, allowing you to go directly to the relevant section to refresh your knowledge and prepare for another assessment attempt. To protect Tech Foundations’ question bank, you won’t be able to see the correct answers.
Each assessment allows you two attempts to pass it during a 24-hour period. If you have no remaining attempts, the assessment button will be disabled. The assessment button will show you how much time is remaining until you can attempt the assessment again.
If you start an assessment and you're inactive from the assessment for more than 72 hours, you’ll need to start over with a new attempt. Once you pass an assessment, you won’t be able to retake it.
Admins within your organization can see your assessment status (pass, fail, none), not the number of your correct and incorrect answers. See Pluralsight and data protection to learn more.
Study guides and transcripts
Use study guides and multi-language transcripts on the course details page to further your learning in Tech Foundations.
Note: Transcripts and study guides are only available in the web version of Tech Foundations.
Study Guides
Study guides are supplemental PDFs that are designed to help learners review content from one of the topic video courses and prepare them to take the corresponding assessment.
Each study guide contains:
- Key insights
- Challenges and concerns
- Benefits and opportunities for the topic covered
- Glossary of key terms.
Use the before, during, and after viewing the course video to prepare for the topic assessment.
To download a topic's study guide, navigate to the topic’s course details page and click Exercise files. Click Download exercise files and save the .zip file. Extract the PDF study guide from the .zip file. For troubleshooting tips for exercise files, see Exercise files.
Transcripts
You have access to the full transcript of each topic via the Transcript tab on the course details page. You can also view the transcript while you view the topic video by clicking Transcript on the video player side bar.
Use transcripts to search for keywords or to review material. In the course details page, click the Transcript links toggle to turn the headers of the transcript into links to the associated clip, letting you jump to a specific section you’d like to review.
To view the video transcript in a different language, click the Choose language drop down menu and select a language.
Course details page
To access the course details page:
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Navigate to the Tech Foundations program page (opens in new tab).
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Click a topic. This will open the topic details page.
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Click the video thumbnail. This will start the video.
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Click Exit Course if the table of contents is expanded.
—or—
Click Exit if the table of contents is collapsed.
Both options will open the course details page.