Choose your certification approach
One of the first decisions you'll make when you implement certification is whether you'll use a course-level or a program-level approach. If you're at the beginning of your institution’s certification journey, you might prefer to take smaller steps before moving toward deeper integration with your school’s programs, like offering academic credit for certification.
This unit describes the approaches you can use when you implement certification at the course level. It draws from the ACM Paper Cloud Computing Curriculum: Developing Exemplar Modules for General Course Inclusion.
To prepare you for delivering cutting-edge technical instruction in your classes, Microsoft Learn Educators provides access to online learning paths, technical training sessions, and our live and on-demand Virtual Educator Prep Sessions. These training opportunities provide you with valuable information to ensure you successfully deliver your courses incorporating Microsoft curriculum. Later units in this module focus on tasks and processes that are part of a program-level approach to implementing certification.
Certification implementation at the University of Lincoln
The University of Lincoln began offering certification to students as an extracurricular opportunity. Then, the university moved toward running certification courses that were closely aligned with academic courses within degree programs. For example, the AI-900 Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals course can be run alongside the academic AI course because they cover similar concepts. The university wanted to eventually implement certification inside suitable academic courses. A considered approach to gradually rolling out certification to students gives educators time to gain the necessary experience to plan and deliver certification courses with exams. Here's an example approach an educator might take to become familiar with offering certifications:
- Pilot stage: Certification is offered as a standalone or extracurricular course.
- Intermediate stage: Certification courses align with the outcomes of existing academic courses.
- Advanced stage: Certification is integrated inside an academic course, with credit for the certification exam.
If you pursue a similar approach, initially focusing on implementing certifications at the course level, the Course Implementation Guide can help walk you through the process in detail.
Note
You can access the Course Implementation Guide through the Microsoft Learn for Educators Program.
This unit provides an overview of the three main approaches to implementing certifications at the course level. At the end of this unit, you'll be able to make an informed decision about whether to pursue a course-level approach or a program-level approach to your certification plans.
Implement certification at the course level
The three approaches to implementing certification are defined next in order of ease of implementation:
- Implement as a standalone course: This approach is the most flexible, and it has the lowest barriers to integration. A certification course typically runs as a standalone, extracurricular learning opportunity for your students or as a short continuing professional development (CPD) course for staff.
- Integrate alongside a course: With a comparatively low barrier that offers some flexibility, this approach runs a certification course alongside a structured academic course. The approach offers opportunities for sharing learning materials between certification and academic courses.
- Integrate inside a course: This approach is the most involved, and it requires careful planning. This approach integrates a certification course and its learning materials in an academic course, with optional academic credit awarded for the certification exam. This approach requires mapping academic learning outcomes to certification outcomes.
If you're new to certification, we recommend a gradual approach to adopting certification in your curriculum. You can start with the standalone approach and move to embedded certification inside an academic course if it's a goal for your institution. As the institution progresses in the way it implements certification, students also develop familiarity with certification courses and understand how these courses complement their academic program of study.