Beta Testing AWS Skill Builder - SimuLearn

Subject matter: 💡 Beta Testing AWS Skill Builder - SimuLearn 💡

In recent months, I was approached by AWS and asked if I was interested in Beta testing some of their new Training and Certification platform labs.

This was unrelated to both my day job and my AWS Community Builder role and was bound (at the time) by a separate confidentiality agreement. This essentially meant, not discussing it publically until it went Live.

After signing up to the Beta testing terms, I received word that some training materials would land in my mailbox soon… so the wait began.

Within days, I received an email, Beta testing for something new called “SimuLearn”.

What is it?

Taken from the AWS SimuLearn webpage…

SimuLearn gives users the opportunity to:

“Translate business problems into technical solutions — powered by generative AI.”

SimuLearn presents this:

“With 200+ trainings available select your topic, role, or industry, engage with a virtual customer, develop architecture proposals with constructive feedback, then learn to build your AWS solutions, risk free.”

At the time, I didn’t have this webpage to look at, so I loaded the labs up and jumped straight in.

Having completed all of the available Cloud Quest Badges, I quickly realised SimuLearn had the feel of a Cloud Quest lab environment, but it had something else in addition to the hands-on building, step-through configuration, and problem-solving…

The platform was powered by Amazon Bedrock Gen AI!

Before the lab environment was presented to me, I was able to develop my soft skills by talking to a “virtual customer” with a business narrative and have an interactive conversation with the customer to reveal the solution, products, and services that were needed for the environment. I also had help from an AI helper called “Dr. Newton” if I needed it, again via an interactive conversation.

Further to this, once the environment was fully revealed, I then received AI-based feedback on how I responded to the virtual customer with improvement areas identified.

This was all very cool and significantly more immersive than my time on Cloud Quest, although I did really enjoy all of my CQ adventures!

After completing the labs, I provided detailed feedback to the AWS product team, which included some very minor tweak suggestions.

Soon after this, AWS thanked me for my participation and asked for some quotes to use. I have just spotted that my quote is now sitting on the SimuLearn page, mid-way down… Groovy!!

Check it out!!

I feel I have played a small part in giving back the AWS Training and Certification journey that so many people are making, including myself and I am grateful that I had the opportunity to be involved.

If you want to learn more about SimuLearn, it is available on AWS Skill Builder Here.