MVA

Microsoft Virtual Academy

Not many people seem to have heard about the Microsoft Virtual Academy. I hadn’t really looked at it much myself until a colleague made a comment about it at a workshop i went to during the week. The Microsoft Virtual Academy provides free online training for Windows and Microsoft Technologies through courses that have been designed by industry experts. The learning platform seems to have been pushed heavily in the USA and other parts of the world, but not at all in the UK. After signing up with your Microsoft Account, you are presented with a large variety of courses to choose from. They cover all aspect of computing, such as SQL Server, C#, HTML5, Server Virtualisation, Windows Server, Windows Azure, Office 365, Windows Phone and much much more.

The nice thing about MVA is you get points for every course that you complete, giving you an incentive to complete more courses. There is a lot of information about MVA here https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/GetStarted.aspx all the different courses are listed, and its easy to search through them with the filters. Every courses has extensive information on the given subject and after reading through the documentation, to get the points you must do a mini assessment on what you have read. I found it a very effective way of learning, and quite addictive as there are so many interesting courses available.

In addition to the courses there are also live events https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/LiveEvents.aspx I have yet to sign up to one as they run from 9am to 5pm, but ill be sure to keep an eye out for one that might be worth a day off work for.