Exam Prep: Claude Certified Associate - Foundations (CCA-F)

Day 1: Foundational Interactions, Validation, and Model Mastery

Day one covers the core mechanics of interacting with Claude, analyzing outputs, and making platform decisions.

• Domain 1: Prompting and Task Execution
• Instruction and Demos: The instructor will explain how to write structured prompts for task types such as analysis, research, drafting, and brainstorming. The lesson covers task decomposition techniques to structure complex requests and iterative prompting to improve output quality.
• Hands On Exercise: You will write prompts for business scenarios, apply task decomposition to multi step requests, and iterate on your prompt designs to improve output quality.
• Domain 2: Output Evaluation and Validation
• Instruction and Demos: The instructor will teach methods to assess outputs for accuracy, identify hallucinations or biases, and apply fact checking protocols. The session details how to format outputs using Artifacts, inline responses, and structured data, as well as how to edit and refine outputs for specific audiences.
• Hands On Exercise: You will evaluate Claude generated text against reference materials, flag inconsistencies, organize information using Artifacts, and decide when human verification is mandatory.
• Domain 3: Product and Model Selection
• Instruction and Demos: The instructor will explain how to choose among model types including Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus. Lessons cover selecting product features like Projects, research mode, chat, and Artifacts, as well as managing context constraints and memory limitations.
• Hands On Exercise: You will evaluate professional tasks to select the appropriate model and feature set based on cost, speed, and quality constraints.

Day 2: Workflow Integration, Projects, Governance, and Troubleshooting

Day two focuses on operational scale, managing secure environments, policy alignment, and performance optimization.

• Domain 4: Workflow Integration and Solution Design
• Instruction and Demos: The instructor will show how to apply Claude to process optimization, integrate the tool to augment workflows, and communicate capabilities and limitations to stakeholders.
• Hands On Exercise: You will map a business workflow, identify where to delegate tasks to Claude, and draft stakeholder guidelines detailing system limitations.
• Domain 5: Configuration and Knowledge Management
• Instruction and Demos: The instructor will show how to configure Claude Projects, write system level instructions, connect external knowledge sources, and manage uploaded data.
• Hands On Exercise: You will build a Claude Project with custom instructions and document libraries, testing how changes in source material affect output durability.
• Domain 6: Governance, Risk, and Responsible Use
• Instruction and Demos: The instructor will discuss organizational artificial intelligence policies, data sensitivity, regulatory compliance, and privacy boundaries.
• Hands On Exercise: You will audit usage scenarios to classify data risk and document acceptable use compliance measures.
• Domain 7: Troubleshooting and Optimization
• Instruction and Demos: The instructor will cover methodologies to diagnose underperforming prompts and poor outputs, adjusting approaches based on feedback to optimize workflows.
• Hands On Exercise: You will troubleshoot flawed prompts using feedback and optimize processes to make efficiency gains persist.