Beyond Certification

ANSI Accredits Two More Certificate Programs / Issuers

Two more organizations have been accredited under ANSI’s Certificate Accreditation Program (ANSI-CAP):

• National Apartment Association Education Institute for its Certificate for Apartment Maintenance Technician (CAMT)
• The National Graduate School of Quality Management for its Homeland Security Certificate, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate, and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certificate

I love Robert Gee's (president and founder of The National Graduate School) quote:

“Our work with ANSI on the accreditation of our Homeland Security and Lean Six Sigma certificates was a challenging, educational, and highly productive process. The ANSI system of analysis and review is unparalleled in the industry. We teach quality systems in our curriculum, and were able to demonstrate the same level of quality in our processes for ANSI. Being recognized by your peers as a leader, especially in our field of endeavor, is the highest honor.”

Read more here.

If you are considering developing a certificate program, improving an existing one, and/or applying for ANSI accreditation, here are two upcoming events for you:

Creating a Certificate Program with Meaning at ASAE's Annual Meeting & Expo on Monday at 8:30 in room 405. 

ANSI's Certificate Issuers Acceditation Workshop, September 23, 2010 to September 24, 2010 - 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM in DC.  The two-day workshop is designed to introduce interested stakeholders to the American National Standard ASTM E2659-09 and the requirements for achieving ANSI accreditation.  Limited to 12 attendees to ensure everyone's program-specific questions can be addressed.  Remember if  you pay for the workshop and then apply for accreditation, the course fee will be applied to your application fee!  Hope to see you there.

Can Certificates be Required?

I received a question yesterday about the ASTM E2659 Standard Practice for Certificate Programs and thought others might benefit from hearing the answer.

The question was related to the clause:

5.2.4.2 (1) The certificate issuer shall not state or in any way imply that certificate holders are certified, licensed, accredited, or registered to engage in a specific occupation or profession.

The question asked if it was a violation of 5.2.4.2 if if the certificate is required to practice a certain aspect of a profession?  The answer is no.  This clause prevents a certificate issuer from making misleading and confusing claims about the type of credential granted.  The certificate issuer should state that a certificate is issued for the attainment of a training program's intended learning.  They should not state the certificate holder is certified or licensed (or anything other than that a certificate was issued) since those credentials are not the outcome of a certificate program.  However, if attainment of a certificate is required by some entity for individuals to act in a certain role, that is a different issue and is fine.  An certificate issuer can state what what the role of the certificate is since these are truthful and not misleading statements.

As real life examples, two of organizations that recently had their certificate programs accredited by ANSI operate under this scenario. FDA’s “New Hire Investigator Training Certificate” is required to become an FDA Investigator and the US Army’s “CP 12 Safety Professional Certificate” is required to become a Safety Officer in the US Army.

First Certificate Issuers Accredited!

The American National Standards Institute recently announced the first certificate-issuing organizations that have been accredited through its Certificate Accreditation Program (ANSI-CAP); they include:  

U.S. Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center for its CP 12 Safety Professional Certificate

U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its New Hire Investigator Training Program

National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA) for its Boating Under the Influence Detection and Enforcement Certificate

SCIPP International for its End-User Security Awareness (EUSA) Certificate, Secure Web Application Development Awareness (SWADA) Certificate

Sullivan University for its Network Support and Administration Certificate

Says Lane Hallenbeck, ANSI vice president of accreditation services. "ANSI-CAP is the first program of its kind to offer a formal, third-party process for review and recognition of quality certificate programs. This effort marks a significant step forward in improving the quality of the American workforce, and we are very proud to add value to the process through third-party accreditation, helping to assure integrity and consistency within the credentialing field."  See the press release for more information, and look for more anticipated accreditation announcements of pilot participants in March.

Also see this press release for the results of the validation meeting hosted by ANSI of the pilot test participants, ANSI assessors, ANSI accreditation committee and ASTM certificate program experts.  In a future post, I'll highlight some things we learned from the pilot.

Also, beginning on March 1, 2010, ANSI will be accepting certificate program applications from all interested certificate-issuing organizations. Questions about ANSI-CAP can be directed to Turan Ayvaz, program manager, Certificate Accreditation Program (tayvaz@ansi.org; 202.331.3635).

Word of Mouth Works

There's a Word of Mouth (WOM) meme floating through the association blogosphere (thanks to social media rock star Maddie Grant), and here are some great posts to check out about the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing in associations.

Jamie Notter on how several association consultants (myself included) sold 1500 copies of a book solely through word of mouth.

Lindy Dreyer shares how WOM filled up a whole bar with Young Association Professionals for the dance party of the year at ASAE & The Center's annual conference in San Diego.

Peggy Hoffman addresses WOM and volunteerism.

Dana Theus delves into social media WOM campaigns.

You'll find links to others in these posts too.  Great stuff. 

Jamie tagged me on the meme so a WOM success story from me coming up soon.

Turning Off Members

Cindy over at AE on the Verge has a good post up on How to Turn Off Happy Members.  Take a look and see if you are possibly turning off your members or certificants with these same strategies!

Who is the Audience?

I've noticed recently that many certification articles/books written for certification NONexperts assume a fairly sophisticated understanding of certification/testing concepts which (duh) if the individuals already had, they wouldn't be reading the piece.

Here's my current favorite written to explain the test development and scoring process for individuals certified in a healthcare profession (org name witheld to protect the "innocent"):

"The scaled scores are not a "number correct" or "percent correct" scores.  Raw Scores are arithmetically transformed into scaled scores.  This conversion involves a simple linear transformation of raw scores (x) to scale scores (s) that takes the form of Total Raw Score times zslope plus zintercept."

Yep, simple. 

The worst part is that this is literally the last sentence of the written piece.  Not exactly the note I'd like to go out on.  Check your written materials for readability (for the audience targeted - not to you!)

Certification Gets Social!

Here's a group who's documenting their creation of an industry certification program through a blog.  This one's pretty basic, but the possibilities are endless.  What a great way to be transparent (and informative) with members of a profession about the development process...and I could see how there would be easy opportunities for engaging and seeking input along the way. 

I've actually now found 6 blogs sponsored by certifying agencies (plus many more by candidates/certificants).  I've also found several social networking groups of certified individuals and/or applicants...and several videos on YouTube.  Certifying agencies are finally starting to get social!   I'll point you to many of these in upcoming posts.  Blogs, videos, and online communities are outstanding marketing opportunities for you; don't discount them!