Free and Formal SAP Learning

Source : https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/15407

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need to know the immediate answer to an immediate problem. Sometimes I turn to the SAP Community Network, to find the answer; at other times I look to Google. It depends on the problem and the context. Of course, the results that you find on Google are not necessarily verified – you take your chances with every keystroke.

Here on SCN, thanks to the generosity of the community, there is all manner of free learning. For example:

· In this blog, Arun Varadarajan shows us how to use SQL to access SAP BW data

· In this wiki, I can quickly access Business Intelligence best practices, articles, blogs and forums as well as SAP Help

The good thing about this content is that others from the community have the opportunity to review it. While this is not necessarily a guarantee, it does give you the opportunity to check whether a particular approach has been commented on, verified, adjusted or even discredited.

At other times, our learning needs may be more formal. We may need to take a class for a deep dive into a particular topic. For example, I may be needing to understand the new enterprise data warehousing functions in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 BW and decide to enrol in this Delta course. Alternatively, this five hour SAP eLearning course may just give me enough of a BW overview to get on with my job. And while I am doing the course, I might just keep my boss busy by downloading a few of the free business intelligence papers available in the Free Content section of Leaning on Demand by SAP.

Whatever your learning needs, there are plenty of free and formal options. The challenge is not finding content that satisfies your learning or skilling needs, but integrating these into your personal career development plan.

In upcoming blog posts, I will be sharing with you some tips for doing this by creating your own personal learning environment (PLE). Using a PLE you can begin to take control of your learning and career development by integrating all these different types of learning content in a way that supports your own career aspirations.

Gavin Heaton is a Business Development Manager working on Learning on Demand by SAP.