Describe certification implementation approaches
After an educator chooses the type and level of certification they want to use in their academic program, next, they must determine how the certification fits in the program structure. In the first module in this learning path, three certification implementation approaches are described:
- 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.
For educators who are new to certification, implementing certification as part of a program might seem like a daunting task. Despite having experience creating new, cutting-edge academic programs, the educator might not have experience running certification courses. The leap to implementing certifications inside academic programs and courses might be considered too high-risk. In that scenario, it's a good idea to pursue a more measured approach and gradually build up to full implementation of certification within courses.
If an educator doesn't have experience running certification courses, gaining this experience is a priority. To effectively gain experience, you might run a certification course that includes an exam as an educator-led, standalone course. The educator who leads the course can join the Microsoft Learn for Educators Program, so they have access to valuable guidance documents and support from Microsoft. The AZ-900 course, shown in the following figure, is an example of an educator-led, standalone course that's offered outside an academic course. The course is offered between year 1 and year 2 of a computer science academic program.
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 will provide you with valuable information to ensure you successfully deliver your courses incorporating Microsoft curriculum.
The next step for an educator is to embed certification inside a new or an existing academic course. This approach blends academic and certification learning materials and requires you to map academic learning outcomes to certification outcomes. It also provides the educator with a general understanding of how to frame certification learning materials. Mapping academic learning outcomes to certification outcomes is a key output of the certification implementation process, and it's a valuable step toward developing new programs that have deeply integrated certification components.