Interesting Links regarding IT Certifications

[BMWGuinness]

University Credit for Your Certification

CBT Planet - American Council on Education (ACE)

DANTES Education Program Handbook Part III Certification Programs

Learning Tree International - Continuing Professional Development

Walden - Transfer Equivalency for Professional Certifications





CertMag.com IT’s Academic

Certification for College Credit
A great deal of U.S. universities and colleges accept a range of IT certifications for college credit. Finding out whether the school you’re considering accepts them is a simple process, and in many cases, schools work with incoming or current students to determine how to best credit them for and design their educations around certifications.

The American Council on Education (ACE) is the major coordinating body for all the higher-education institutions in the United States. ACE dedicates faculty teams to evaluating certifications in all sorts of disciplines, including IT, and providing written recommendations to schools of what and how much credit certifications should earn.

“Of course, every college has its own degree programs and curricula, so they look at the recommendations that we’ve provided and see if there’s a match or not and then see how that might transfer in, whether it’s credit for a particular IT course or an elective that might be in the program,” said Mary Beth Lakin, associate director of special projects for the ACE’s Center for Lifelong Learning.

Lakin explained that some schools look at the recommendations and require further investigation. “Other colleges and universities might look at the certifications and say, ‘OK, I want to review these a little bit more. I want better information before deciding whether it will fit into our particular program,’” Lakin said. “They might require additional written information from the student or ask that a student do some kind of test out or put together a portfolio and describe the certification and the work they’ve done in the field.” Lakin observed this process herself in running prior-learning assessment programs for many different universities.

“On a particular college campus, I ran into IT certifications all the time because students came in with those all the time,” Lakin said. “At that particular university, certifications could meet entry-level requirements and some other requirements for the major, but then, when you got beyond that, and you were looking at courses where faculty members felt that there was quite a bit of theory and much less application, that’s where issues and questions could arise.”

In these situations, the additional methods of prior-learning reporting described above were employed, usually with a student working in concert with his or her academic adviser.

Lakin also said certifications generally are seen as part of and not exactly parallel to a course, depending on the level of the course.

“That’s where the course-by-course match is tricky because a lot of the certifications and the kinds of experience and training that adults have don’t neatly fit into the courses,” Lakin said. “When there’s a little bit of flexibility in the degree program, there’s room for electives in the major, and that’s sometimes where certifications can be put to their best use.”
Lakin said it’s essential that individuals who seek an IT degree consider how their degree and their certifications will best interact and to coordinate their educations accordingly. Students who fail to do so are “sorely disappointed” with the result, she said.

“If I were in a program and thinking about certifications that might help me academically, I would really work with the people in the IT or computer science department to see how certifications might fit or supplement my program,” Lakin said. “The academic adviser within the computer science or IT program or other faculty within the program are good folks to get advice from, so you’re not putting out a bunch of money both for the certifications and for what you’re doing in coursework and not seeing how they all fit together for you — careerwise and academically.”

–Daniel Margolis, dmargolis@certmag.com