As the course is on blender 2.8 and onwards I think I can put this topic here just for a discussion.
On December 3 blender 3.0 was released and for me was a surprise so I downloaded the version from steam to maintain the version 2.93 version that I was using for the course. I was looking for the changelog and all the amazing things that this version has and I’ve been trying it outside of the course even if I’m on a beginner level.
One of the changelog that they had is the clear optimization of Cycles render engine, I even tried myself before touching the optimization video on the course and I have to be honest me with a 1050ti the render times are actually way better, I even looked at the documentation right here and correct me if I wrong but the manual tile modification was replaced and now it is automated in a way that checks how the memory is doing with the render, so it’s resize the tiles according to that.
And even the denoiser has changes but I don’t know if the changes gonna mess with what is learned.
Maybe not much people knows about the 3.0 but I really feel it was worth mentioned about the Cycles engine changes and I would love to have an opinion from someone with more knowledge on blender about this 
.