Designers have a need for speed – not only in their designs but also in their learning curves. Keeping up with the latest information about Xilinx® products and services is a critical part of getting your product out of design and into the market.

“Knowing what and how you need to learn in order to increase performance is vital in today’s global economy, where lack of knowledge can spoil your competitive edge,” said Patrice Anderson, Xilinx Education Services manager. “It’s no secret that specialized training on Xilinx software tools can help you reduce your time to knowledge and gain an advantage over your competitors.”

Education Services understands that effective training is critical to a designer’s improved productivity and performance. Although our website already addressed many customer training needs, we realized that we could make improvements.

Xilinx formed a team of experts to analyze the website and as a result determined that a self-service portal was the best solution. The “extreme makeover” included features to reduce your time to knowledge more than ever.

The new training catalog on the Education Services website gives you a speedy, personalized, low-cost, flexible, and quality training solution at your fingertips anytime, anywhere.*

Improved Navigation
The makeover team, which included web developers and designers, programmers, system administrators, usability experts, instructional designers, and technical writers, put their heads together to increase the usability of the aging and content-heavy Education Services website. Since its last redesign three years ago, the site was beginning to show wrinkles, and the navigation had become complicated.

The team wanted to create a quicker route to course descriptions and registration. They also wanted to augment training services and course offerings to help decrease knowledge gaps among Xilinx designers.

In addition to streamlining the navigation, the team also set out to redesign the online enrollment process, changing keywords in the search menus to provide a more intuitive registration experience. Now you can find instructor-led, live, and recorded e-Learning courses more easily by curriculum paths based on your design specialty. From course description to enrollment, fewer clicks get you where you need to go faster (see Figure 1).

“Our usability studies showed us where we could make a significant impact on our customers’ training experience,” said Rohan Thompson, web redesign project manager. “The subsequent overhaul to the Education Services website reflects what our customers told us they wanted.”

Easy Payment Methods
The training catalog now offers more payment methods to offer flexibility and quicken the enrollment process. Simply use your credit card when registering for courses in the training catalog, or apply your company’s training credits or purchase order number toward training services.

Be sure to check with your company representative to find out whether you have low-cost payment options through a Xilinx Productivity Advantage (XPA) agreement. The XPA offers all Xilinx software, education, support services, and IP cores in one package customized to meet your needs. Quite a number of training modules in the training catalog require no payment at all.

New Services
Education Services currently offers more than 14 instructor-led courses, five live online courses that together include 17 hands-on labs, and 14 recorded e-Learning modules to help you maximize your productivity and get your designs to market faster. Register for any of these learning opportunities in the training catalog or take advantage of new online services such as skills assessments, personalized learning plans, and more free recorded e-Learning modules.

You can preview classroom courses from your desktop and meet the Xilinx instructors, all experts in their fields, via the “Presenter’s Bio” link in the training catalog. Offered at no charge, these online services are perfect for every budget and require absolutely no travel at all.

Philip Nowe, a hardware designer and consultant in Canada, said he is a big fan of online services, especially recorded e-Learning modules, because they maximize his time. “The modules give me the ability in one hour or less to get most of the information I need about a particular tool or software,” he said. “I usually get answers to any very specific questions I might have from my local FAE, or I register for a full course on the subject.”

Management and Business Workflow Processes You can maximize your productivity and time with a solution that lets you or your engineers get Xilinx training right when you need it for immediate application on the job. The training catalog is open 24/7 and allows training to be an integral part of the design process.

Education Services’ recorded e-Learning fits especially well into the workflow learning model. The recorded modules are typically less than an hour in length and help to familiarize you with Xilinx technologies and short topics. In some cases, the modules offer you a preview of the content covered in multi-day, instructor-led courses.

Some recorded e-Learning modules cover topics that simply did not fit within the time constraints of an instructor-led course provided in the classroom. Aibing Zhou, a design engineer at Juniper Networks™ in Sunnyvale, California, recently took the ChipScope™ Pro free recorded e-Learning module during a training break at work.

“The ChipScope Pro recorded e-Learning was very helpful to me to catch up with the tool,” Zhou said. “I was able to apply the learning immediately to gain field experience. When I have a problem, I look for e-Learning courses for more in-depth training on that tool.”

Empowerment
Managing your own training is like driving a car. You have the freedom to go whenever and wherever your wish. You get that kind of power everytime you visit the training catalog.

You can take control of your training with the self-directed features in the training catalog, such as self-registration; self-paced, recorded e-Learning; and self-managed training plans. Feel vested in your training by completing online course evaluations to let Xilinx know how it can continue to improve its services and products.

Nowe said that he prefers self-registering for courses online. “I like to search for courses on my own without the help of a registrar because it’s faster,” he said. “The training catalog also makes it easier for me to keep track of courses I’ve already taken and find new ones that interest me.”

Conclusion
The training catalog is an empowering solution that meets your needs for a personalized, speedy, flexible, low-cost, and quality experience. Find out how Xilinx training can trim your learning curve. Contact Education Services at 877-XLXCLAS or registrar@xilinx.com, or visit www.xilinx.com/education/

. * The training catalog is available to all Xilinx customers; however, registration for instructorled courses is currently available in the North American region only.

Reduce Time to Knowledge with the Xilinx Training Catalog

Search courses by curriculum paths Maximize training expenses Assess your skills and take only the training you need when you need it Redeem training credits purchased via the XPA program Learn from Xilinx-certified instructors

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