AWS launches a new Twitch series Monday: the AWS Power Hour: Architecting. The six-week series is free and includes quizzes and exercises to help participants pursue a certification.

This Twitch series is part of AWS’ plan to provide free skills training to 29 million learners globally by 2025. Deborah Strickland described the new Twitch offering on the AWS blog.

Scott Barneson, director of Learning Products, AWS Training and Certification, said the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification is one of the company’s most popular certifications. 

Each episode will livestream twice a week on Mondays at 7 am PDT and Thursdays at 4 pm PDT. Recorded episodes will be available on demand immediately after the livestream. Chinmay Anaokar, an AWS technical trainer from India, will host the Monday show and Adam Lenau, an AWS technical trainer from the U.S., will host the Thursday show. The content will be the same in both sessions.

Barneson said training programs take many formats — self-paced digital, classroom, virtual classroom, hands-on labs, webinars, training days and more—and are created by the experts at AWS. 

“With Twitch, we custom-build our content for the medium—it’s a more interactive, casual, and informal environment,” he said. 

SEE: 3 ways the feds can modernize job training to solve the tech workforce shortage (TechRepublic) 

Barneson said that several AWS authorized instructors moderate the Twitch chat feature so learners can use the interactive nature of Twitch’s platform to get questions answered and build community.

There will be a Q&A session immediately after the Twitch sessions when participants can ask questions of the show hosts and other community members.

Learners also have the option of participating in the Get AWS Certified: Solutions Architect Challenge, which offers a 50% discount voucher for the exam. This is AWS’ fifth training series on Twitch, and the response continues to be positive, according to Barneson. 

“We’ve seen learners go on to earn Cloud Practitioner certifications (among others) from our previous certification challenges,” he said. “We’ve also seen a huge appetite for this training as on-demand content after the livestream—there is a long shelf life for each stream.”

To gauge the effectiveness of the Twitch training modules, Barneson said his team considers how engaged participants are as well as the amount of interaction from the audience. 

Barneson said the company has seen a steady demand from people with and without technical backgrounds to build cloud skills. 

“We’ve seen that people really want to learn these skills, but they’re busy living full lives already, so we need to make it accessible and convenient for them to do so,” he said. “We also recognize that training isn’t a one-size-fits-all, which is why we are intentional about creating a range of learning options.”

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