Become a KNIME Certified Trainer

It is exciting to see the increasing numbers of people who want to learn KNIME.

It’s equally inspiring to see how many people in the KNIME community have also had their KNIME skills certified by taking our L1, L2 and L3 exams.

We’d like to bring these people together to expand our educational outreach.

The KNIME Certified Trainer Program will enable people who have L1-L3 certification to have their teaching skills evaluated and become a KNIME Certified Trainer. Our aim is to expand the group of trusted trainers who can teach KNIME to the ever-growing community. By enabling individuals and organizations with excellent teaching skills to connect with the people who want to learn, the KNIME community can continue to develop more easily.

The program is designed for both individual users to become KNIME Certified Trainers and data-savvy companies to become KNIME Certified Training Partners. It has two main objectives: To evaluate and certify trainers’ skills and at the same time to support and upskill their teaching capabilities.

For example, an already expert KNIME user and experienced teacher can simply proceed to the certification exam to get their expertise certified. If, though, this KNIME user feels that their instructional skills would benefit from some extra preparation, then they can attend our “Train the Trainer” course before taking the certification exam.

To validate this process, we ran a pilot program, which produced the first batch of KNIME Certified Trainers: Keith McCormick, Christophe Molina, John Emery, Kathrin Melcher, and Lada Rudnitckaia. Read more about their skills and expertise on KNIME Certified Trainers.

We are now opening the KNIME Certified Trainer Program to all KNIME users. If you would like to become a KNIME Certified Trainer, we would like to invite you to register.

Let’s move on to some additional information about the program to answer some questions you might have.

KNIME Certified Trainers are the leading technical and instructional experts of KNIME Software.

Join this worldwide group of professional individual KNIME Trainers to be:

• Officially recognized and certified as a trusted instructor to teach courses around KNIME software. A badge and a certificate are awarded to showcase this achievement.
• Listed on the KNIME Certified Trainers webpage, together with details of your most popular courses
• Part of the Educators Alliance, if not already. The Educators Alliance provides trainers with access to a full repository of official KNIME teaching materials as well as substantial discounts on books and exams for your learners.

Upon completion of this program, a partner organization gains an additional partner competency badge, demonstrating they are a KNIME Certified Training Partner.

For the KNIME partner organization, this means:

• The partner organization is officially recognized by KNIME to independently run L1, L2, and L3 trainings (as well as selected L4 courses)
• Partner trainings will be promoted on KNIME’s official events page
• The partner organization’s page on KNIME’s website will receive a "Certified Training Partner" badge, which prospective customers can use to search for training partners
• Yearly training delivery planning with KNIME

For more information about becoming a KNIME Certified Training Partner, contact either your dedicated partner manager or reach out through the Become a Partner page.

To ensure that trainers are able to provide the best training possible, the KNIME Certified Trainer Program has defined some requirements for both individuals and partner organizations.

Many years of experience teaching KNIME has enabled us to outline the minimum expertise a trainer needs in order to teach well. A trainer’s knowledge of KNIME software should be sufficiently sound to be able to answer course attendees’ questions proficiently and deliver these explanations clearly and concisely. Similarly, skills with KNIME software should also be recent enough to answer questions about the latest KNIME features.

To prove these skills we therefore require:

1. Completion of the L1-L3 KNIME certification, and stay current every two years. Some of the exams require paying a fee. Registering for the KNIME Certified Trainer program makes it possible to take all certification exams for free.
2. Demonstration of instructional skills by participating in a KNIME-hosted session as an instructor or speaker. The audience feedback will be taken into account for the final evaluation. Depending on the trainer’s degree of comfort in speaking in front of a large crowd, a few options are available: a co-hosted KNIME webinar, a presentation in the trainer’s native language at a local Data Connect event, or an ad hoc workshop on KNIME e-learning course platform. The topic remains the trainer’s choice.

For partner organizations, the following are additionally required:

• The organization is at least a Standard KNIME partner. Organizations that are not a KNIME Partner and interested in becoming a services partner of KNIME can find additional information on Become a Partner.
• The organization must have obtained KNIME Ready status
• The organization must have at least one KNIME Certified Trainer in their workforce

No problem! KNIME offers a number of supporting programs for trainers to upskill their KNIME and/or teaching skills.

If a trainer doubts whether they know enough about the whole KNIME Software offering, then they can take one of the free KNIME e-learning courses.

• L1 courses prepare for the L1 certification exam around the creation of basic workflows with the KNIME Analytics Platform.
• L2 courses prepare for the L2 certification exam around the usage of advanced features of KNIME Analytics Platform to develop more advanced applications
• L3 courses prepare for the L3 certification exam around testing and the productionizing and collaboration existing applications via the KNIME Server

If a trainer thinks that their teaching skills are not the best yet, then they can take advantage of our newly created “Train the Trainer” course. This course will help them gain the necessary teaching skills to pass the teaching evaluation. The course consists of:

• A self-paced theory part where experienced tutors of KNIME courses explain which parts of the KNIME Software are the most complex to explain to new learners and discuss best teaching practices they have mastered over the years to get the message through
• A practical workshop where trainers have the opportunity to practice a presentation and receive feedback.

Together the theory and practice will help prepare trainers for the teaching evaluation. To find out more about the course, contact us via the KNIME Certified Trainer registration page.

See where you are on the KNIME Certified Trainer program and how to take the next steps.

Join the worldwide group of leading technical and instructional experts of KNIME Software and help develop the growing international KNIME community! Are you ready? Take your first step by registering for the KNIME Certified Trainer Program.