Excited about the CompTIA Essentials

[Kwabena Fred]

Hey,
Just finished catching up with the CompTIA Essentials Sneak peak and I am excited about it and can’t wait for it full implementation.

1. AI
2. Business
3. Cloud
4. Soft Skills
5. Data Analysis
6. Cybersecurity
7. SQL
8. Coding
9. Team Leadership
10. Microsoft Office

Which is you favorite or crazy about!!!

 

[precious]

Cybersecurity and Coding have my heart!.......And ‘Soft Skills’ might be the real boss level challenge.

 

[Stephen Schneiter]

I think for this group there will be a lot of interest in AI and Coding Essentials. I thought today's session was very informative. With the information and demos provided, is there still interest in a CIN TTT series for AI Essentials?

 

[Eddy Harden]

I think for this group there will be a lot of interest in AI and Coding Essentials. I thought today's session was very informative. With the information and demos provided, is there still interest in a CIN TTT series for AI Essentials?

Yes

 

[Kwabena Fred]

I think for this group there will be a lot of interest in AI and Coding Essentials. I thought today's session was very informative. With the information and demos provided, is there still interest in a CIN TTT series for AI Essentials?

Double Yes @Stephen Schneiter

 

[precious]

I think for this group there will be a lot of interest in AI and Coding Essentials. I thought today's session was very informative. With the information and demos provided, is there still interest in a CIN TTT series for AI Essentials?

It goes without saying. Do so please

 

[Emmanuel Phakula Mandala]

I think for this group there will be a lot of interest in AI and Coding Essentials. I thought today's session was very informative. With the information and demos provided, is there still interest in a CIN TTT series for AI Essentials?

Please Do so @Stephen Schneiter

 

[Sage]

I think for this group there will be a lot of interest in AI and Coding Essentials. I thought today's session was very informative. With the information and demos provided, is there still interest in a CIN TTT series for AI Essentials?

It's important to

 

[Tangobro]

I think for this group there will be a lot of interest in AI and Coding Essentials. I thought today's session was very informative. With the information and demos provided, is there still interest in a CIN TTT series for AI Essentials?

 

[Tangobro]

Yes, it was informative & well presented. Feel like it got the toes wet - now ready for a deep dive!

 

[Wezzie Lukhere]

yes needed

 

[Jeremy Derby]

Definitely a lot of interest.

 

[Alan Chin]

I missed the CompTIA Essentials Sneak peek. Was it recorded?

 

[Stephen Schneiter]

I missed the CompTIA Essentials Sneak peek. Was it recorded?

Yes, it was recorded. You can view on-demand here. https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/4884163/4EA1A83EDA58E4F22E6FBBE41960DA7F

 

[Gregory Childers]

I must be a dissenting voice on this series. I don't see any value in the Essentials series at all. They lead to a "CompCert" from a 30-minute test through Certmaster. The CompCert will have no standing in the industry. The content would be better served through a series of webinars. Other vendors have already covered all of the content in the Essentials series, and they've had a significant lead time to do it. I honestly don't see an audience for the Essentials series.

 

[Rick Butler]

So, I finally am getting caught up on things. It's been a wild ride this month as try to keep Anthology from slowly taking over my life.

What I see, first of all, is that the Essentials series is not for established IT specialists. This was brought up a few years ago at CompTIA Summit (I want to say...Chicago) that established a need for skills training BEFORE that of the like of Tech+, even. The word of the day is "Tech Adjacent", And the fact that it's coming up out of CompTIA Spark, which seemed to be angled towards Secondary (middle/high) school students, tells me that the scope is decidedly not for the IT specialist - someone where even Tech+ may be too much a challenge, but needs to know some basic technical knowledge. Where the lot of us in CIN are somewhere in the Blue to Black part of this model, there are undoubtedly instructors that are to the left of that.

How many of you IT types know how to do a VLOOKUP or a Pivot Table?

Exactly the point.



I remember an old IT instructor who used to work for me back in the day who would recount stories of "teaching computer skills to old dirt farmers in the Midwest". I'd see this as on-par to that.

CompCerts - Seems like something that came up out of the old LabSim products where you'd get a "Pro" cert from completing one. I don't disagree with these - good low hanging fruit for those who need early confidence building.

Objectively, the way I see the "essentials" thing, depending on how the effort is marketed and promoted, it might have some traction. Sure, there are a thousand different products in the pre-tech training space so CompTIA is jumping into that pool. It's really not that much different than CompTIA Certmaster being one choice/alternative for IT Professional training.

/r

 

[Gregory Childers]

How many of you IT types know how to do a VLOOKUP or a Pivot Table?

I can do LOOKUP, HLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, MATCH functions, and many more. I can do Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts. I can establish ODBC links and can connect to Azure services. I can write VBA macros and have most of the object model memorized. I've been using Excel since 1995 and have taught it since 2000. My weakness is formatting. if you want it to look pretty, get someone else. If you want it to crunch numbers, that's my srength.

I could see incorporating some of the Essentials technical content into the Tech+ course. Add the little "a+" course content to Tech+. Tech+ is already written at the high school level. Merging the Essentials content and the little "a+" content into it makes more sense than diluting the CompTIA brand. There is no audience for these courses as they currently stand.

As for the AI content, develop a rigorous AI certification and add it to the Data+, DataSys+, DataX track. The smaller AI courses are unnecessary.

 

[Tangobro]

There is no audience for these courses as they currently stand.

I've had many students in the workforce development space, especially the 16 24 y.o. target demographic, but including others in Gen Z who definitely would benefit from the Essentials courses. I've passed on the info about the courses to the Continuing Ed admin folks at the community colleges I'm affiliated with. They will make the decisions about audience.

To Rick Butler's point - some of the students that I've taught VLOOKUP & Pivot Table's to realized they didn't really want to become hands on IT pros and move into the Career Professional area of the chart, but they didn't have the digital fluency to move into the Tech Enabled workspace.

There may be other products that do the same thing, but when dealing with cumbersome purchasing requirements, having a one stop shop is a good thing.

 

[Gregory Childers]

I still don't see anything in the Essentials series that isn't offered elsewhere by other vendors.

 

[Rick Butler]

There may be other products that do the same thing, but when dealing with cumbersome purchasing requirements, having a one stop shop is a good thing.

I still don't see anything in the Essentials series that isn't offered elsewhere by other vendors.

So, my thought on this is that CompTIA's leadership and ownership has decided that profit is more essential than the high-ground it once had by being a non-profit. But again, when you're non-profit, you are always on the edge of financial collapse because you don't/or can't make too much money. You have to rely on partnerships with for-profits to pull in necessary revenue. Many of the thoughts I heard is that CompTIA just can't function as a non-profit these days, with the costs of maintaining certifications against the revenue stream needed to keep all that going.

A case in point, the CTT+ credential, which died on the vine because not enough people had an interest in it to justify the project costs of keeping it alive.

CompTIA is for-profit now, so they're not going to make business choices based on whether the marketplace may or may not have products in the space. They're not going to operate in a more philanthropic way - they're going to compete and they're in it to win and get profit. They're going to enter a space and compete, and sometimes, with people and organizations, some whom used to be partners. That's the harsh cold reality.

Maybe CompTIA can do Tech Adjacent training better than other companies. We'll find out if those offerings are better. Competition does result in a better product. Maybe CompTIA will succeed. Maybe they will fail miserably. We'll see.

The game has changed, though, that much is true.