Google IT Automation with Python
Professional Certificate Project

September 2022 - January 2023

The Project

The Google IT Automation with Python Professional Certificate was designed in 2018 by Edios Media and is hosted on the Coursera.org platform. Google's initial project goal had been to refresh the Professional Certificate's graded assessments as part of a 2023 soft marketing launch across all of Google's Certificates on the Coursera platform. Google also asked for a new Career Resources section be added to the Certificate, along with a request to create internal asset documentation for the entire program. However, in the initial analysis of the overall learning program, Constance Burns noticed that in Course 1, Crash Course on Python, the program lost 75% of enrolled learners between the first assessment and the final graded hands-on lab. She determined the root cause to be a significant disconnect between the assessments and the content. At this point, Constance, Google, and Coursera agreed that the goal of the project needed to pivot to fixing this critical issue.

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The Ed Tech Design Team

Constance Burns

Constance Burns was the Learning Designer for this project. She performed the learning design analysis, wrote new technical content as a subject matter expert, updated assessments, performed quality assurance testing, and created course documentation based on Google's specifications.

Polly Burns

Polly provided comprehensive copyediting services for the content created by Constance. She also served as a course quality assurance (QA) tester from a new Python-learner perspective.

Amir Lohi

Amir served as an advanced Python subject matter expert. He consulted on options for coding customized graders that could catch specific common learner errors when coding in Python. The grading code would then output feedback to learners that was relevant to the specific error the learners made.

Learning Design Analysis

Constance centered the learning design analysis on the following processes:

examining alignment between learning objectives, assessments, and content
determining root causes of learner drop-out points and problems reported by learners
checking quality and accuracy of existing course materials

Through her analysis, Constance discovered a knowledge and skill gap between the assessments and the learning content in Course 1 of the Professional Certificate. She identified the specific content necessary to appropriately prepare students to master the course objectives and assessments.

Content Creation and
Assessment Improvement

Constance contributed the following content to the Google IT Automation with Python Professional Certificate, with Polly as her editor:

Course 1: Crash Course on Python
- 28 technical articles and assessment study guides
- 83 instructional Python code blocks, leveraging grading code developed by Amir
- 30 outlines for future technical articles, to be produced in a future phase
- 9 improved practice and graded assessments, encompassing 159 questions (Coursera provided an extra Python subject matter expert from Aptly.co to assist with 80 of the graded assessment questions and code blocks)
- 1 outline of a final graded hands-on Python lab, to be produced in a future phase
Course 6: Automating Real-World Tasks with Python
- 28 Google Career Resources articles tailored to IT careers involving Python automation scripting

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Client Testimonial

"Constance is detail-oriented, thorough, forward-thinking, and thoughtful in her writing and design, as well as highly communicative and collaborative in her process. She has an obvious passion for supporting and engaging adult learners and it is evident in every piece of work she produced."

- Dr. Maria McSorley, Senior Instructional Designer, Google

Ed Tech Design

eLearning Solutions

Google IT Automation with Python Professional Certificate Project