Red Hat provides free learning opportunities

In these times of great disruption and uncertainty, Red Hat is steadfast in our commitment to providing accessible open source learning to those whose lives have been most affected. Due to COVID-19, many students and workers across the world are currently staying at home to prioritize our collective health and safety. Jobs have been impacted. Students are adapting to changed learning environments. During this time, we have an opportunity to invest in ourselves, build new skills, and prepare ourselves and our communities to emerge stronger. 

Red Hat is dedicated to making open source learning more accessible than ever in order to give those affected by the current situation an opportunity to invest in themselves. Here are the ways in which we are working actively to meet the needs of our communities: 

Red Hat Academy

Red Hat Academy is an academic training program that gives member institutions and their students no-cost instructor training and support, robust lab environments with flexible delivery options and comprehensive, printed, digital or online textbooks. With over 1700 academic partnerships, students enrolled in Red Hat Academy programs develop the in-demand skills employers need and receive discounted certification exams. 

Red Hat Academy and Network Development Group, Inc. have partnered to sponsor instructor-led, cloud-based labs. This is an effort to allow students to continue learning and complete the current semester as schools are shutting their doors due to social distancing protocols and classrooms are shifting to online environments.

Red Hat collaboration with SkillsBuild.org

Red Hat is collaborating with SkillsBuild.org as a content partner to develop Linux reskilling paths for workers. SkillsBuild.org provides jobseekers, including those with long-term unemployment, refugees, asylum seekers and veterans, with career fit assessments, training, personalized coaching and the experiential learning they need to re-enter the workforce. The program provides Linux, Cloud, and DevOps tracks as well as prerequisite courses for learners who are completely new to Linux, as well as learning tracks for both furloughed workers who want to learn new skills and those who are new to the job force.

The SkillsBuild platform offers digital learning content curated for specific job roles and open badges, the opportunity for learners to find coaches to improve and practice skills, and experiential learning as in participating and finding relevant projects for learners to practice and demonstrate the skills they learn through the platform.

Free online courses

As a part of our constant effort to make it easy for everyone to invest in open source knowledge, we offer a catalog of free online training courses. Since April, we have delivered over 500,000 free Technical Overviews — covering topics like Linux, Automation, and Containers. 

Through our partnerships with organizations like EdX, we are able to deliver free self-paced virtual training courses. Our courses Fundamentals of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fundamentals of Containers, Kubernetes, and Red Hat OpenShift, Fundamentals of Java EE Development have currently received over 80,000 enrollments. 

For both online training and video classroom options, Red Hat is providing free introductory trials to Red Hat Learning Subscription. The subscription is designed to help you develop the skills and knowledge demanded by a growing technology market with high-quality content designed to prepare you for certification exams.

Free OpenShift training

To help with your skills transformation during this time, we have made learning OpenShift accessible from wherever you are. Red Hat Training and Certification is offering the self-paced, online Introduction to OpenShift Applications (DO101) course at no cost until June 30, 2020. 

Introduction to OpenShift Applications (DO101) is designed to respond to the need to quickly and easily learn the basics of how to deploy container applications. This course is the first step in the container adoption journey for novice container application developers. This course teaches any developer, regardless of Linux technical skills, how to take their applications from their laptops into the cloud with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. 

The free offering for this self-paced course gives you 30 days of unlimited access to both the HD video classroom version recorded by an instructor and the text-based learning format. Additionally, you will receive 10 hours of hands-on lab time to help you build skills on real-world use cases.

Reduced cost virtual training and video classrooms

To help with your skills transformation during this time, Red Hat Training is offering a free video classroom or online course when you purchase virtual training, a video classroom, or an online course. In order to qualify, we ask that you purchase and complete your virtual training and then contact your sales representative to receive your promotional code for a free video classroom or online modality. 

Red Hat Learning Community

The Red Hat Learning Community is a collaborative online learning environment open to anyone with an interest in open source technologies. In a time when all students have migrated towards remote education, the Red Hat Learning Community provides a space for members to connect, ask questions, share resources, join discussions, earn badges, contribute best practices and stay updated on the tools, tips and documentation that will supplement their individual learning goals. 

Since its launch in September 2018, the community has shown itself to be a valuable hub for those seeking to share knowledge and build their open source skill set. To date, the community has grown to over 25,000 members.

Looking forward

The adjustment to living, working, and interacting remotely has been a challenge. We get it, and we are here to provide the training and tools to help our communities meet this challenge- it’s what we do and who we are as an organization. We’re optimists, and hope for a better situation in the near future. We are also realists, and thus are working actively to develop new ways to meet the needs of the current situation as well as potential future needs. We wish health and safety to everyone, their loved ones, their colleagues and their communities.