Now that you have a clear vision of what you expect to get out of your training program, let’s visualize the journey you’ll take to get there: your path!
Identify the Components of Your Path
What exactly is my “path”?
Your path is a 100% online program leading to a qualification in which you’ll develop the skills you need for professional life by working on real-world scenarios.
In practical terms, your path will be made up of several key elements:
Projects
Courses and educational resources
Mentor sessions
Assessments
Let’s explore these in more detail together!
Projects
Your path is made up of a series of projects. These are professional, realistic, and practical assignments and by completing them you’ll be able to develop your skills. The projects are inspired by the real working world and were designed with input from experts in the field.
This is what we call project-based learning—you’ll learn by working on real-world scenarios where you try to solve a problem for a company, client, or colleague. In each project, you’ll complete tasks and produce documents that aim to meet professional standards. We call these documents deliverables.
You can use these deliverables to build a portfolio of completed projects that showcase your newly learned skills. The projects in your portfolio can easily make you a more attractive candidate to recruiters when you start looking for a job.
There are several advantages to project-based learning:
It’s an effective learning method that relies on active learning. Our brains learn by doing—making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, and trying again. That’s exactly what you’ll be doing on these projects. You’ll read your project brief, explore some possible solutions, see what works and what doesn’t—until you get it right! And that’s much more effective than a theoretical approach, especially when we’re looking to develop practical skills.
It helps you develop soft skills. Soft skills are transferable skills that are useful in any working environment. By completing projects, you’ll develop:
problem-solving skills. You’ll learn to ask the right questions and find solutions to real-world problems.
organizational skills. You’ll learn how to manage your time and break down projects into stages.
communication skills. You’ll learn how to present your work clearly, listen to feedback from professionals, and integrate that feedback into your work.
In this video, Alexandra and Virginia reflect on project-based learning and how it has helped them progress in their career:
Courses and Resources
When it comes to completing your path, you won’t be left to your own devices. For each project you work on, you’ll have access to:
One or more courses designed by OpenClassrooms. Created with input from experts in the field, our courses will give you the concepts and methods you need to complete your project—with engaging, high-quality content to boot!
External educational resources, carefully selected by our team with the help of experts.
Mentorship
From the beginning to the end of your path, you’ll have a mentor. Your mentor is a qualified professional who’s there to support you, guide you, and help you develop your skills.
You’ll have one session with your mentor each week via videoconference. These mentoring sessions are precious opportunities to discuss your progress, ask questions, get feedback on your work, and make sure you’re on the right track.
Assessment
At the end of each project, you’ll present your work during a project assessment. An assessor (someone other than your regular mentor) will analyze your deliverables and your presentation. These assessments will give you an outside perspective on your work, and you’ll get helpful advice for moving forward.
Once all your projects are validated, a panel of professionals (also called a "jury") will meet to review all your deliverables and project assessments, and to confirm that you’ve acquired all the skills you need to obtain your diploma or certification (depending on your path). And then you can finally say you’ve successfully completed your training program!
Discover the Projects in Your Path
You’ve familiarized yourself with the components of your path. Now it’s time to dive into the heart of the matter: What will you be learning in your projects, and when?
Go ahead and look over the projects in your path, paying particular attention to the skills you’ll learn.
For each project, try to determine where you stand by asking yourself these questions:
How motivated am I to develop the skills in this project?
Are these skills completely new to me, or have I used them before in another context?
Over to You!
In your start-of-training worksheet, make a list summarizing what you learned from this exercise, including:
the projects that motivate you the most.
the projects that look more difficult to you at first glance and might pose a challenge.
This initial list will serve as the foundation for planning your training schedule!
Set Target Dates for Completing Each Project
To start off on the right foot, we recommend that you set time-based goals and plan estimated dates for your assessment, for each of your projects.
If you’re building your schedule from scratch, follow these steps:
Set a training end date. You should aim to do your final project assessment at least a few days before that date.
Review the projects in your path, noting down the number of hours recommended to complete each project.
Set deadlines for each project, making sure they’re consistent with the number of hours indicated.
Adjust these hours based on the initial list you made—the projects that seem more difficult to you are likely to take more time than estimated.
Write down your target dates in the start-of-training worksheet.
Let’s Recap!
Your path is made up of a series of projects. Each project corresponds to a real-world professional task for you to complete.
You have courses and resources at your disposal for each project to help you learn key concepts and methods.
Each week, you’ll have a videoconference session with your mentor. Your mentor is a professional in the field who will guide you through all the projects in your path.
Your work will be evaluated during an assessment at the end of each project.
It’s important to set target dates for completing each project—starting now! Consider the estimated duration of each project, your own learning pace, and your self-assessment when setting your dates.
Now that you have a good idea of what to expect over the next few months, let’s look at how to set up an effective learning environment. See you in the next chapter!
