Take a Cadence Masterclass and Get a Badge

Many of us are locked down, working from home, or at the very least not going to go and sit in a lecture room all day. Not least because that option is probably not available. But one thing you read about almost everywhere you look is that we should all take this as an opportunity—an opportunity to learn something new. Most of these articles that I've seen have been written by the sort of people who write self-improvement articles in places like Medium. They are thinking of a foreign language or a musical instrument. A common suggestion is to start by getting a subscription to Masterclass and learn cooking from Thomas Keller and Gordon Ramsay, learn writing from David Mamet and Dan Brown (really!), or sports from Serena Williams and Gary Kasparov (is chess really a sport?). But I've got some other ideas.

Digital Badges

Instead, perhaps you could improve your job skills by taking advantage of Cadence training classes. A Cadence masterclass. We can't promise you Helen Mirren—what does she know about electronic system design anyway?...although she did show up at the RSA security conference last year. However, we have our own black-belt instructors. You even get digital badges (see the image) to show you passed your finals. You can use your digital badge(s) at places like LinkedIn, or in your email signature, or wherever you like to show your competence. Like your old Boy Scout or Girl Scout badges, the badges are yours personally and don't belong to the troop (or, in this case, your employer). Or even Cadence. The badges are verified by a third party. You can read about how the whole digital badging works in my post from last year Badges—Not Just for Scouts Anymore. Note that the list in that post is very out-of-date and we now have many more.

As I said in that post, the short version of how you get a badge is that you pass the appropriate test. That's how you can get a badge for something in which you are already proficient. But that is not learning something new. To get a badge for a topic that you don't already know well, the post lays it out in more detail:

1. You sign up for a course that has a digital badge exam.
2. You complete the course. If it is an internet course, you go at your own pace.
3. Take the digital badge exam. This is about 50 questions, so will take an hour or an hour-and-a-half.
4. Complete the post-exam survey.
5. You will then get a digital badge from Cadence. It is verified by Credly so it can always be confirmed, and it describes the course and exam you completed.

Blended Training in EMEA

If you are based in our EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region, we have introduced what we call our "blended training solution". This combines the best of all our training methods and allows you to take the course wherever you are. This includes:

• Live lectures with Cadence expert instructors via modern meeting tools such as WebEx
• Self-study lab work with instructor support—our labs are hands-on exercises that also offer high practical value for the attendees’ own internal projects
• Corresponding training material provided
• Software temp keys are supplied if needed—for the duration of the training class
• Students can attend the training—where ever they are, home office included—with just a computer, internet connection, and access to the Cadence software
• The course schedule/flow can be set up per the needs of the attendees/group
• A blended training class will be conducted with a minimum of four attendees—instead of eight—making it easier to get your teams trained

For more details on the Cadence Blended Training Solution, see the product page. Note that currently this blended training, mixing live WebCasts with offline work, is currently only available in EMEA.

Cadence Academic Network

In the above section, I used the word "student". That just meant a student on the training course. If you are really a student, meaning studying at a college or university, then there is training available through the Cadence Academic Network. Kira Jones has just started a series of blog posts on the most popular courses in digital and signoff, starting with synthesis and test. See her post Digital Design and Signoff Training Deep Dive: Part 1 – Synthesis and Test. Top of the charts for Academic Network Training is Basic Timing Analysis. After all, you aren't going to get very far with synthesis or signoff if you don't have a working knowledge of timing constraints: clocks, timing paths, the idea of slack, and much more.

Many of these academic network training courses offer digital badges.

To enroll, if you are in EMEA, then visit the iLS booking portal. Elsewhere, email universityprogram@cadence.com.

So Many Courses

At this point in this post, you might expect me to list all the training courses. But we have too many. Instead, we have learning maps that give some structure to the offering. Even those are too complex to try and include everything here. To see the full map, click here or on the banner at the start of this section. That will get you the PDF of all the learning maps that you can print or look at offline.

To give you a flavor, here's the learning map for digital design and signoff:

Learn More

The starting point for everything to do with training and certification is the Become Cadence Certified page on our website. It has a complete list of all the courses. It also details how to sign up for courses, which depends on where you are based.

 

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