April 2003 — Industry Perspective
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Certification: Your Return On Training Investments
The Advanced Centers for Technology and Training (ACTT) has discovered an important way to prove the value of its technology training courses: guaranteed success on The Computing Technology Industry Association's (CompTIA) A+ certification.
ACTT is not alone in using such important industry-recognized certifications to validate the success of computer training and provide trainees with valued credentials that expose them to valuable employment and educational opportunities. Businesses, schools and training centers worldwide have organized their training curricula so that it can be tied to recognized certifications. This allows training to be based on established global standards that prepare trainees for jobs, college credit and other benefits. In doing so, these organizations are careful not to spend money on training programs that do not provide the same industry-recognized, portable credentials that international certifications offer.
What is a certification? There has been a great deal of confusion in the testing marketplace about what constitutes a certification, and how certifications differ from other types of testing and assessment products. Many assessments are available for IT or desktop application knowledge and skills, including pre- and post-assessments that are available in many computer-based training and e-learning products, as well as pre-employment tests.
In addition, many schools have developed similar testing vehicles to assess students' computing knowledge and performance. While many of these testing and assessment products are useful in providing high-quality evaluation and screening, none of them meet the strict standards required for recognition as a certification, nor do they provide the additional benefits of a certification to the individual.
What are those strict standards? To begin with, certification implies a level of difficulty in the test-development process not always associated with simple, commercially available assessments. The validation process for a certification normally includes:
- Significant research to define a skill set, knowledge area or job definition that can be tested as part of a certification. In this respect, certification is equivalent to professional licensure in which subject-matter experts, psychometricians and other test-development experts work together to research what knowledge, skills and abilities define a particular skill set or job to be covered by a certification exam.
- Rigorous exam-development procedures in which test items are exposed to large numbers of test-takers to determine how well the items are performing and how well a test accurately reflects the measured skill set.
- A commitment to continually update skill standards, and certification exams based on those standards, to ensure that exams continue to cover relevant aspects of a job or knowledge area.
In addition, certification exams tend to be supported by a recognized manufacturer or some broad-based independent authority. Companies such as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have certification exams for their own products, whereas CompTIA is an example of an independent authority whose A+, I+, Network+ and other certifications are globally recognized standards supported by the entire IT industry.
