Offering a course certification is a great way to give your audience members more value through your educational opportunities. Through your courses, you’re teaching skills they can use. Certification allows you to take it one step further. It demonstrates the achievement of students for completing the course and offers a wide range of benefits for you.
The following are 10 tips for making sure your course certification is a success, along with 10 mistakes to avoid.
10 Tips for Certification Program Success
1. Start with an Existing Program
Beginning from scratch is challenging, so choose an existing course and add or update content. Pick one that’s been successful, so you know it’s a good fit for your audience.
2. Put Yourself in Your Participants’ Shoes
When brainstorming ideas for certifications, put yourself in your audience’s shoes. What type of qualification will help them? Focus on what they will be able to DO once the course is complete. Define learning outcomes.3. Evaluate Skills
At the end of the course, provide an examination where you can evaluate whether they’ve mastered the material.
4. Brush up on Your Target Market
Before you start working on your course, conduct research on your target market. See what’s trending. Have there been any changes? Update your ideal customer profile so you can create the most appropriate course for them.
5. Set an Entry Requirement
You may want to set an entry requirement. Give potential participants a quiz to assess their level and make sure they’re at the right starting point to be successful in the program.
6. Use an Online Learning Platform
Your course doesn’t need to be all online, but there should be an online component. The best practice is to combine learning IRL with online tools.
7. Give Your Course a Clear Name
Choose a name for your course that makes the topic obvious. The name should also make it clear that this is a certificate program.
8. Make Your Course Long Enough, But Not Too Long
Your course should be long enough to delve deeply into the topic and teach something students can apply during and after your course. However, don’t make it too long. A few weeks is a good length. If you require more content, break it up into multiple courses.
9. Set Financial Goals and Price Accordingly
Decide how much you want to earn through your course certification. Estimate the number of participants and set prices accordingly.
10. Keep in Touch
Create a plan for keeping in touch with students after the course to check on each person’s success. Make further help and support available to former students.
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10 Certification Program Mistakes to Avoid
You’ll learn from your own experience as you develop a certification program, but here are some common mistakes to avoid.
1. Not Knowing Your Audience Well Enough
You need to know your audience well to tackle the problems and issues they face and to offer viable solutions.2. Not Knowing the Market
Do you know what types of course certification your competitors are offering? What other options does your audience have? Do some research and use this information to refine your approach.
3. Too Much Information
Don’t try to pack everything into your course. Choose one goal for the learner and focus the course on that. You can create additional courses for further topics.
4. Unfocused Content
Don’t give your participants everything at once. Break up the course into bite-sized modules that flow logically from the beginning to the end.5. Lack of Support
While designing your certification course, give your participants opportunities to contact you for support. Some of them will struggle, and you need to be there for them.
6. Offering Your Course for Free
You should charge a reasonable price for your course certification, or it might appear as though it lacks value. When people pay for a course, they have made an investment in themselves, so they tend to be more committed. They’ll work harder to master the material.
7. Using Existing Content As-Is
Choosing a program, you already offer is a handy shortcut, but repurpose or update content, so it’s fresh.
8. Focusing on the Material, Not the Students
Focus on your students and their progress, not solely on the material for the course. The material is there to help the students accomplish their tasks.
9. Too Easy or Too Difficult
Strike a good balance so it’s not too easy or too difficult. Your certification program should be challenging but not insurmountable.
10. Lack of Monitoring Progress
Check your success rate and make changes where needed. Most of your students should pass the final exam.
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