For some technical skills, a single three-hour class is sufficient to gain practical understanding. For instance, you might need to learn just enough about Linux/Unix system administration to take care of systems you manage at work, but you don’t need to become an expert. You can get a practical start with a single 3-hour micro-class.
But for some skill areas, three hours isn’t nearly enough time to cover the topic. For instance, consider test-driven development (TDD). There’s quite a lot to it beyond the red-green-refactor cycle that everyone has heard of. How much of that do you need to achieve your goal? How much of the initial material can you safely skip? Do you need all the intervening courses between your starting point and your goal, or only a subset?
To support this need, we have the idea of a learning path. It’s the sequence of microlearning experiences you need to undertake to go from where you are now to where you want to be. We try to provide resources to help you determine where you should begin and how far you need to go to achieve your learning objective.
There are self-assessments you can take to help yourself understand these things. We’re also here to help you determine exactly which courses might be useful for you.