You’ve invited your students to join, and you may have organized some teams. Each student now has access to a huge range of blended learning materials including video courses, Hands-On Labs, practice exams, Cloud Playgrounds, and other tools. Now it’s time to guide your students to success.
Check out the webinar Leveraging A Cloud Guru to Level-Up Your Learners (opens in new tab) for even more detail on getting started.
While you can let your students learn at their own pace, you should use the tools in the ACG platform to help you guide your students toward your desired learning outcomes.
A good workflow of these tools is:
- Use Skills Assessments to identify knowledge levels among your students
- With data from the Skills Assessments, assign Learning Paths to bring students to your desired skills levels for the topic.
- Need even more focused learning within a timeframe? Assign study groups to targeted cohorts of students to guide them in a particular course.
Tip: Not sure where to start or if this structure makes sense for you? Go back to your answers from when you made a plan for success to decide what tools and features are important to you. Pick the ones that get you to your goals.
Skills assessments
A Cloud Guru’s skills assessment helps you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your students for AWS and Azure skills. Each student is tested for their current proficiency and knowledge. The results provide you an overall assessment of your team so you can decide how to best move forward.
Check out this video demo> (external site, opens in new tab) of Skills Assessments.
Begin by inviting students to take the skills assessment and learn about how to receive progress updates and access results.
When students accept the invitation, they are directed to estimate their skill level and complete an assessment to test their knowledge. Like an exam, the assessment is timed and must be completed within a set duration. Curious what your students will see? Check out what it’s like to take the skills assessment.
Use the results of your assessments to decide on appropriate Learning Paths to assign. Suggested Learning Paths are described in the Skills assessment FAQ for admins.
Learning paths
Learning paths are collections of courses and content that guide your students from novice to expert in a chosen specialty.
Learn more about managing learning paths with this video demo (external site, opens in new tab).
You can assign your students to a range of pre-built learning paths. Visit the Learning Path (opens in new tab) tab in the Admin Portal.
To add a student to a learning path:
- Click Manage, under the Actions column to assign students to the Path.
- Click Add Students.
- Search and filter your student list to select students to add to the learning path.
To email or download the level and progress of each student in a learning path, click the Actions dropdown on the learning path tab.

Custom learning paths
Note: Custom learning paths are only available in Business Plus plans.
Your organization is unique, so the skills your students acquire should be tailored to suit the skillset most relevant to the roles in your organization.
Create your own customized learning paths, with courses and content selected by you. Instructions to create custom learning paths can be found in Custom learning paths.
Check out a video demo (external site, opens in new tab) of custom learning paths
Study groups
Note: Study groups are only available in Business Plus plans.
Study groups let you group students together in the context of a single course. This way you can closely measure the progress of a group of students following the course. You can also share progress with other students in the group.
Study groups are ideal when guiding a team toward a certification exam. Check out this video demo (external site, opens in new tab) of study groups.
Aim to have between 5 and 15 students per study group to foster camaraderie and some competition.
Segment study groups in any way that makes sense for your people and departments. You can even have students in more than one study group.
Segment your study groups based on things like:
- Role type
- Organizational team
- Department
- Location
- Onboarding date
Select study groups have access to accelerator programs. Students enrolled in a study group with an accelerator program receive a weekly guide of exactly what to learn in preparation to pass a foundational certification exam. This is especially useful when used alongside scheduled check-ins and guidance times.
Check out this demo video (external site, opens in new tab) on the accelerator program for a closer look.
Additional features for students
In addition to video lessons within courses, students have access to a variety of features to explore and get hands-on experience with specific technologies. These features are not directly managed by you, but are still valuable to the student learning experience.
Feature | Details |
---|---|
Hands-on labs | Specific tasks performed using real server or cloud environments. Many Labs are included in courses, but can also be completed as a standalone exercise. Check out a video demo (external site, opens in new tab). |
Cloud playground | Real server and cloud platform environments to practice and explore with. |
Quizzes and exams | Timed quizzes and practice exams to test student knowledge and prepare for certification exams. Check out video demos of quizzes (external site, opens in new tab) and practice exams (external site, opens in new tab). |
Mobile app | Convenient mobile access to courses. Watch a video walkthrough of ACG mobile apps (external site, opens in new tab). |
Community forums | A community forum where students can post questions and share experiences with other students, alumni, staff and lecturers. Check out a video demo (external site, opens in new tab). |
Webinars | Special episodes presented by industry experts demonstrating and sharing advice. |
Blogs | News and insights around all things cloud |
Ebooks | Analysis, research and commentary in the world of cloud. |
What's next
Chapter 5: Report progress. Keep track of how your students are doing to see how you’re progressing toward your learning outcomes.
If you need help, please contact Pluralsight Support.