Are You Certifying The Students In Your Online Course?

Have you ever considered creating a certification program for your courses? Now you might say ‘but I’m already offering certificates at the end of my course’ – and that’s really great if you are, but are you wrapping up the certificates into something more formal? If not, you’re missing a trick.

Create Your Own Academy

If you take a look at some of the companies that offer training on their products, you’ll often see they call their training programs ‘Academies’ and they’ll likely offer some kind of official product certification on their products. Techsmith, the makers of Camtasia and many other great content creation products are a very good example. Their Camtasia Certification courses offer guided training on becoming an expert in using their video editing software, and provide a shareable certification at the end, which they actively encourage learners to share on their linkedin and other social media sites to highlight the learner’s mastery of their product. If a person has completed their Camtasia certification and they’ve got a verified accreditation on their profile, if they’re in the business of editing video it might help them get hired for their next gig over the next person.

Also by creating a certification program and encouraging learners to talk about their achievement on completing it, Camtasia is getting more publicity and shares about their product, elevating it’s reputation even more. You could do the same for your courses too.

Vocational Qualifications Count

Qualifications don’t have to come from a university, you can provide vocational qualifications which are becoming an increasingly popular way for people to verify their skills. For some specialised subjects in certain industries, yes, you might need to be certified yourself, things like safety training, legal training, or similar professions that are compliance related, but in general for most vocational courses you don’t need a qualification yourself to be able to certify others. 

If you’re certifying a skill, how about offering an added value to those who complete the certification by creating your own directory of certified users on your learning site – perhaps you could even charge and additional fee for an entry into the certified directory, or even charge for the certification program itself, and offer an inclusive entry into the director as part of the certification fee.

So there’s massive value in creating an official certification program for your courses, it can help with your course marketing, elevate the prestige of your course business, and potentially bring in more revenue too.

What’s stopping you creating a certification program for your online courses? Go a question about certification – let us know!