Lift-off: The MDN Curriculum launch

Today marks an exciting day for web education! The
MDN Curriculum is now available on MDN, providing an important tool for those learning front-end development and also for those teaching it. In this article, we’ll review the journey that led us up to this point, talk about the curriculum’s key features and how to use it, and give you a sneak peek into the potential next steps.,Last August, we
announced our plans to create a front-end web developer curriculum aimed at improving the state of web education. In particular, we wanted to address the problems highlighted in our discussions with web developers and educators through community conversations and more formal research. These problems included:,We decided to focus on creating a high-level curriculum – a single resource that lists all the fundamental and supplementary topics that front-end developers should learn about, along with trusted resources to get started on each of these topics.,,Getting started modules: While the subjects outlined in these modules aren’t strictly web development topics, they’re useful for anyone wanting to learn front-end web development. Learning these topics is not required before moving on to the core modules, but we believe students will have an easier time if they spend some time on these topics first.,Core modules: These modules cover topics that every web developer should have a good grounding in. This includes all the information needed to design and build responsive and accessible websites that follow modern best practices and to manage and deploy code using tools like GitHub.,Optional extension modules: These modules constitute useful additional skills for web developers to learn as they start to expand their knowledge and develop specialties.,Our curriculum is useful to two main groups, students and educators.,Students can use our topic lists as a structured roadmap that outlines what they should learn and the order of topics they should follow. Using this guide can not only ensure their skill set is current, but can also help them in identifying any gaps in their knowledge. This is applicable to both individuals new to the tech industry pursuing a related qualification and existing web (or non-web) developers aiming to “level up” their skills.,Students should go forth and learn the topics outlined in our modules either via self-study, by enrolling in a course or boot camp, or by using a combination of these methods. Either way, upon completing a conforming course, students should be able to pass an examination that tests their understanding of the topics they have studied.,With the MDN Curriculum launched, we are planning to explore several potential next steps: