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SkillDisplay: Is It Possible to Learn TCCE Skills in 1 ½ Days?

Thanks to Christina from SkillDisplay for sharing!

It was a tough challenge to prepare for the TCCE exam in just 1 ½ days, but three of eight students demonstrated that it is possible to learn the TYPO3 Editor skills with the help of the SkillDisplay platform in this short time. The three freshly licensed TYPO3 CMS Certified Editors, who attended the MainzificRim workshop at T3UD18, can be proud of themselves! They got lots of new skills, as well as the Certifier-SkillUp for the Editor SkillPath on the SkillDisplay platform. But also the students who didn’t achieve it can be proud, too - everyone was able to get a lot of self-, business- and educator SkillUps and therefore a lot of new knowledge. Thank you also to our partners, who supported the students and the workshop!

Now back to the beginning, what is a “UniversityDay”? What workshop was that? How did the students learn the skills that fast? How can I also achieve that?

What is a “TYPO3 University Day”?

Explained by Executive Director Florian

What's the main difference between the TYPO3 University Day and a classic TYPO3camp you ask? I pondered about that myself – and hosting the Student Days at said University Day 2018 in Mainz gave me a chance to find out.

First, there's the location that has an irresistible charm and beauty. A university often features beautiful architecture with many impressive buildings. The Academy of Sciences and Literature (AdW) in Mainz is no exception. A spacious welcome area paired with two main conference rooms featuring great interior design.

The topics were – with no surprise – targeted at employees of universities and the (sometimes unique) challenges they face in their everyday work of technical implementation. Personally, I can't say much about the sessions themselves – as I was occupied with the rest of the SkillDisplay team hosting the Student Days.

Speaking of which: working with the organizer Jörg Hambuch of the AdW and the TYPO3 GmbH (most prominently Jörg Ems and Anja Leichsenring) was a very good experience for us. They helped our team to organize the Student Days and to find accommodation for the students and our team remotely. Thank you, folks!

The TYPO3 University Day was well attended, with more than 150 participants. While I already had the pleasure to talk with prominently known members like Doris Leonhard (TUM) at other occurrences (like the Meet TYPO3 in Vienna), I enjoyed the possibility to engage with other people from educational institutions and learn about their point of view. Therefore: if you are a member of an educational facility and using TYPO3 (or would like to) – give this great event a chance.

Personally, I'm very inclined to join the University Day 2019, as it is hosted in my home city: Vienna. I hope to see you there!

The “MainzificRim” workshop

The MainzificRim adventure was part of the TYPO3 University Day 2018 (T3UD18) and took place in Mainz from the 24th to 26th of September. In the evening of the 24th September, the student teams taking part met the SkillDisplay team as well as their supporters, the head of the TYPO3 GmbH and leader of the TYPO3 Education Committee at a get together event.

Three teams - with three students each - from Linz, Vienna and Mainz accepted the challenge to protect Mainz from dinosaurs and gain as much TYPO3 editor knowledge as possible by establishing the missions. The participants of Vienna and Linz attend technical high schools, the team from Mainz consists of history students. This also shows that you can learn TYPO3 editor skills with any kind of preknowledge! TYPO3 experts of F7 Media GmbH from Hamburg, comwrap from Frankfurt and TYPO3 User Group Austria (TUGA) helped the teams if any questions or problems appeared while the adventure. The TUGA Team consists of abaton, supseven, siwa, plan2net and Reelworx. Reelworx took the role as TUGA’s representative. Thank you to all of them for supporting the teams both financially and with their knowledge.

Read on for more information about the adventure and some numbers on how much the students learned.

Learning the skills

To learn as much as possible in the short time, everyone got their own TYPO3 instance, which was hosted by jweiland.net. The skeletal structure of the crisis management platform was available – the task of each student was to complete the website with content and settings that were given in the MainzificRim adventure. The adventure was divided up into four chapters containing several missions. The missions matched the TCCE SkillPath and therefore also the TCCE Syllabus.

The four missions

  • The Tutorial
    The students learned about content management systems, TYPO3 and roles that are available in TYPO3. The frontend and backend, as well as secure passwords were also part of the first chapter.

  • The Real Crisis
    Backend structure, content elements and the rich text editor were necessary to warn people of Mainz. Also media formats and working with files was part of this chapter.

  • Prepare the Rescue
    The user group “TrustedNewsReporters” was created, so trusted reporters could submit vital information. The participants learned about extensions, especially the news extension.

  • The Secret Missions
    The most important information was translated into Japanese, so people who can not read English were able to find out about evacuation plans, too.

SkillUps

The students got the opportunity to reach a lot of SkillUps:

  • Self SkillUp, if the student thought he understood the skill.

  • Business SkillUp, if the experts who supported the teams thought the student had the skill.

  • Educational SkillUp, if the student got about 70% correct at a multiple choice test which was created for each chapter. The questions of the multiple choice test were created by the TYPO3 Education Committee and were the perfect preparement for the certificate that the students were able to obtain.

  • Certification SkillUp, if they passed the TCCE exam. At the end of the event, the students had the opportunity to take the TYPO3 CMS Certified Editor exam.

Some statistics

To show you what the students achieved:

  • 197 Self SkillUps were reached by the three teams.

  • 193 Business SkillUps were given to them by the business partners.

  • 135 Educational SkillUps were assigned to the students who reached about 70% in the educational test.

  • 81 Certification SkillUps were completed and three students achieved the TCCE exam.

How you can also achieve that

Of course we cannot promise that you can gain all the knowledge needed to pass the TCCE in such a short period of time, but the workshop proved that it is possible. To help you as much as we can, we have made the following list to help prepare for the exam.

Note

You might need a little longer if you are learning the skills on your own. During the workshop, TYPO3 experts were there to answer all questions that came up and there was an opportunity to do test certification questions. Also the motivation was very high as the students only had a short time to prepare for the exam. Take your time to learn, stay motivated and work focusing on your goal.

Use SkillDisplay to prepare

As the TYPO3 CMS Certified Editor SkillPath is created together with the TYPO3 Education Committee as well as the TYPO3 GmbH, the SkillPath contains all the skills you need to have. There are also SkillPaths for the TCCI and TCCD, as they are a little more complex, you will need more time for them.

Get help from the TYPO3 Community

The community is friendly and helpful. If you don’t understand a certain skill or get stuck somewhere, ask the community. You can find a lot of members at the TYPO3’s Slack. If you don’t know what Slack is or don’t know how to register, you can find help here.

Get Educational and Business SkillUps

To get a second or third opinion of your knowledge, ask your Teacher/Trainer or Employer to give you a SkillUp, if he/she thinks that you understand the skill. The whole thing should go work as follows:

  • The trainer or employer cooperates with us.

  • You send a SkillUp request to the verifying person via the SkillUp Buttons provided in each skill.

  • You show that you have the skill in a way that the trainer or employer decides. For instance, this could be by answering questions or showing it in a hands-on way.

  • The trainer or employer accepts the request if he/she thinks that you have the skill or declines, if he/she thinks that you need to learn a little more.

  • Go on to the next skill(s).

The most important rule

When you take exams, please note that there are different amounts of correct answers for each question. Tick as many answers as specified for each question. A question is only answered correctly, if all correct answers are ticked. Do not tick more or less!

Now it’s time to learn new TYPO3 skills!