Security+ and Network+ average time to train in hours

Good info, so how do we get students to participate?

Bert313 said:

Good afternoon CINers.

Our school is looking to train the Security+ and Network+ plus course to individuals looking to retool their skills.

Looking at related information, I was calculating 80 hours a piece for each course. The participants would be your average computer user. Any thoughts?

-Robert

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If you're doing a retool/refresh of those skills, I think 80 hrs per course is very reasonable. 80 hours would be too ambitious if you were training students anew, but a great pace if you're updating skills.

My college trains new students to 120hrs of contact time - which I believe is about 50% of the needed time to get the average student certification ready, if they put in all the time in and out of the classroom, they should be able to get there.

As I say with these kinds of questions, your mileage may vary.

/r

Hi Robert,
I have just delivered Sec+ 3 times in the last couple of months and found that with a class of 10-20 students whose knowledge was hovering around network+ that I could deliver the entire Sec+ 601 syllabus but only about 50-70% of the labs in a 45 hours teaching week. I could have delivered more but to be fair to the students they were clearly at thier limits to take in any more information than I was giving them.

As a whole I had to let them catch up with labs at home in the evening and hope they were with me the next day, they mostly reviewed what i had said in the day or followed using the eBooks so having that resource OR the Certmaster Learn and instructor leading that definitely helped.

I'm delivering ITF this week and have found that with ab initial students it is far far harder with respect to keeping to times as everything is brand new in concept. If you have technically minded younger students then ITF+ and A+ are what CompTIA intended as intros with Network+ aimed at the 12-24 months experience level so if they studied IT or computer science or equivalents at what you call high school in the US ie from age 14-18yrs old then starting with network + may work but with complete novices you may find you need the full 80 hrs if you start at network + level.

CompTIA recommends 40 hours to train every single course they offer, with the exception of A+ (80 hours) and CTT+(24 hours).

That's what I've been doing for the last 20 years so I'm inclined to agree with them.

40 hours contact time in class. 2-hours per night for 3 weeks study time (42 hours) after the class is over. If they're not ready for it, they may not have met the prerequisites and need to go back and cover those first. I've seen too many people jump straight to Security+ with no networking background or ITF+/A+ background. I tell them to get their foundation done before trying to build a house.

Gregory Childers said:

CompTIA recommends 40 hours to train every single course they offer, with the exception of A+ (80 hours) and CTT+(24 hours).

That's what I've been doing for the last 20 years so I'm inclined to agree with them.

40 hours contact time in class. 2-hours per night for 3 weeks study time (42 hours) after the class is over. If they're not ready for it, they may not have met the prerequisites and need to go back and cover those first. I've seen too many people jump straight to Security+ with no networking background or ITF+/A+ background. I tell them to get their foundation done before trying to build a house.

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And CompTIA is going to tell you that the progression is ITF+ -> A+ -> Net+ -> Sec+ along with the necessary time in experience. I certainly wouldn't try taking a neophyte and putting them into Sec+ with only 40 hours of time. I've tried that. Didn't end well.

Rick Butler said:

And CompTIA is going to tell you that the progression is ITF+ -> A+ -> Net+ -> Sec+ along with the necessary time in experience. I certainly wouldn't try taking a neophyte and putting them into Sec+ with only 40 hours of time. I've tried that. Didn't end well.

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I've seen far too many students attempt courses where they lacked the necessary foundational knowledge. It typically ends poorly. Whether it's pressure from employers, bad advice from sales reps, or students wanting to take shortcuts.

I tell people there are no shortcuts. You can't watch a few YouTube videos and take a few practice tests and expect to master this stuff. The comments I read from novices in chat rooms about the certs makes me want to bang my head on the table in frustration. Most of them think they can take the cheap and easy route by cranking out a few certs so they can make six figures with no experience.

If someone does have the prerequisite experience, they should be able to handle Sec+ in 40 hours. The problem is too many of them don't have it but try it anyway.

Gregory Childers said:

I've seen far too many students attempt courses where they lacked the necessary foundational knowledge. It typically ends poorly. Whether it's pressure from employers, bad advice from sales reps, or students wanting to take shortcuts.

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You know dat's right.

I remember one particular situation where DoD wanted this poor A/V camera jockey to be DoD 8570 IAT2 certified which meant he had to have Security+ in 30 days. He'd been doing VTC for years, but because of the regulation, he had to have Sec+. He did not have the prerequisite knowledge in A+ or Net+. He was rightfully panicked. He asked me what he should do. I said, "honestly, start updating your resume, because, short of cheating, you're not going to get Sec+ in 30 days."

Same job, a couple of gals who did level 1 telephone setups were also required to do Sec+ to keep their jobs. It was grossly unfair to them and was out of scope for someone who just walked around, programming desk phones for people that came and went. They were at the point of tears because of the pressure. And I didn't even get 40 hours - I got 16. I'm pretty sure they were let go as well.

So sometimes, there's ambition of students chasing that bag of money (had my share of those) and those who are doing it to survive. The government was directly to blame for these two instances. But there is that expectation that it's so easy to do; how hard can it really be, eh?

@Rick Butler since we're sharing war stories.....

I did one Security+ class at a base for a group of people in non-technical roles, including payroll and HR (don't ask). My client, a training company, wanted me to use their proprietary content, give the students morning and afternoon quizzes (which I had to upload the results into an online form), cover all the lecture and demonstrations, and also give recommendations on which students should be allowed to test at the end of the week and which ones should be required to continue studying and take the exam later. I found three students out of fifteen I thought had a chance of passing and I said so. I disagreed with their training methodology because it was too bureaucratic and the students didn't meet the prerequisites. Against my recommendations, all fifteen students took the exam and only four out of fifteen passed. The client refused to pay me for the work, stating that I was a bad instructor. Never mind the fact the students submitted excellent course evaluations.

Another time, I was teaching Security+ at a completely different base. The students were attentive, they asked probing questions to get a better understanding, and they did well on the lab work. At the end of the week when I was packing up to leave, their CO enters the room and passes out discs with a well-known dump site written in Sharpie. He told them all they had to do is memorize the information on the disc and they'd be just fine. I was furious. Why bother having me teach the class if you're going to encourage them to cheat anyway?

@Gregory Childers omg so frustrating! Breaks my product developer heart

Katherine Keyes said:

@Gregory Childers omg so frustrating! Breaks my product developer heart

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It breaks my heart as a trainer. I became a trainer so I could help people learn new skills that could help them be successful in tech work, not so they could check an arbitrary box.

Katherine Keyes said:

@Gregory Childers omg so frustrating! Breaks my product developer heart

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Gregory Childers said:

It breaks my heart as a trainer. I became a trainer so I could help people learn new skills that could help them be successful in tech work, not so they could check an arbitrary box.

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I think us purists all feel that way. These days, though, whenever I teach, I paint the picture of a cheater and what they look like in the workplace.

For example, at our school, we had a guy who was teaching our cabling class. One day, he was with a student who putting RJ-45 connectors on cable. Student asked how to actually do the procedure. Instructor told him to "go look it up on YouTube". A couple of other times, I would, in a backhanded kinda way, check his knowledge level and when I saw he was a cert fraud, I made it a point to do it in front of the Program Supervisor at the time. Suffices to say, that clown took the walk of shame .

Judge how you will, but I have no love for those people. They pollute the pool of solid candidates with real skills.

I tell students that certifications might get them an interview. Knowing it well enough to answer questions might get them hired.

But if they can't do it in real life, it will definitely get them fired.

Gregory Childers said:

I tell students that certifications might get them an interview. Knowing it well enough to answer questions might get them hired.

But if they can't do it in real life, it will definitely get them fired.

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A poet and he doesn't know it.

And that last part - sometimes it's better to show ignorance through a lack of training, rather than stepping up and not being able to deliver because of being a paper cert.