Forum Request: For Post-Secondary Institutions

[Rick Butler]

Hello -
So I put this up on the webinar this morning - I would really love to see a specific forum out here that is aimed at Post Secondary institutions. Maybe there isn't enough traffic to warrant such a thing, but I'd love to have regular discussions with my fellow professors/instructors, content and curriculum developers, and the like when adapting CompTIA material for academic and college credit. It might help with getting our students better prepared for certification.

Y'see, this morning, on the webinar, we heard that many post-secondaries out there have programs for academic outcomes in IT and Cyber, but they don't have the hands-on skills. Much of this is resource or internal curriculum based. But there has to be a way to have our cake and eat it too, right? Making sure we can properly deliver content in a college setting while making sure students are being prepared for certification, managing expectations, so-on and so forth.

Is this something that can be a thing?

Rick

 

[jarrelrivera]

I am an IT Trainer at a tertiary institution here in Australia. Much of our learning content are vendor-based i.e. Microsoft, Cisco, etc. Having said, the trainings are either vendor-provided or institution-led as part of the professional development plan for the teacher/trainer.

Just recently, the CompTIA ANZ community has given free resources for CompTIA IT Fundaments to students under the age of 25. I reckon that this is a good start to bring CompTIA content out to students.

 

[Rick Butler]

Personally, I find the best resource for colleges, to date, is the Instructor Voucher program. One voucher per month per instructor is a great deal and it allows instructors to keep current without having to add a new line item to the budget.

We are also finding a lot of positive feedback using the CompTIA Authorized material versus the stuff from the book publishers such as Pearson, Cengage, or McGraw Hill. While these publishers wrote the material reasonably well (no publisher was a perfect fit and sometimes they can get a bit pushy when trying to sell us texts to use for students), the CompTIA stuff adds credibility to the college's effort to teach CompTIA related certs in the classroom as well as provides better instructor guiding materials. I've used the traditional publishers for years on end to prepare for certs, myself, and in the classroom. I certainly wish these were available when I was writing curriculum.

A conversation I'd like to have, though, relates to what the *actual* experience and education levels are appropriate for teaching CompTIA in the post-secondary classroom. I've seen CompTIA's metrics as well as what I've observed in the classroom. Best info I've been able to glean is reading course catalogs from other institutions to "see what they are doing". It's quite varied.

/r