As a means to meet specific, targeted workforce development needs, assessment-based certificate programs serve many potential functions for certification organizations, licensure boards, and associations. For example, they offer another way for many professions to satisfy an education requirement, which can broaden a program’s existing eligibility pathways. For those seeking to advance in their practice, certificate programs offer the means to specialize. As domain areas change and evolve, they offer programs focused on continuing competence a chance to align those certified under a prior exam blueprint with current standards.
One of the key differences between assessment-based certificate programs and your current credentialing processes is the relationship between learning and assessment. According to the Institute for Credentialing Excellence, an assessment-based certificate program must do the following:
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Provide instruction and training to aid participants in acquiring specific knowledge, skills, and/or competencies associated with intended learning outcomes.
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Evaluate participants’ achievement of the intended learning outcomes.
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Award a certificate only to those participants who meet the performance, proficiency, or passing standard for the assessment or assessments.
Source: The I.C.E. ACAP Self-Assessment Checklist
If you’re wondering if you can do all this within one system, you can! LearningBuilder certification management software has everything you’ll need to successfully implement assessment-based certificate programs (while supporting the full lifecycle of your existing credentials).
How LearningBuilder Provides Instruction and Training
LearningBuilder’s Learning Plan feature organizes the learner experience and makes it easy to navigate learning content. The most common method is to define the Learning Plan according to your learning outcomes by content area and then organize and collect learning activities by domain. If you already use LearningBuilder, you know firsthand how straightforward it is to translate your program requirements into activity groups within the system.
In addition to a detailed and navigable Learning Plan, LearningBuilder can integrate with your existing LMS or natively deliver eLearning content without needing a separate LMS. Our eLearning platform integrates with content stored on platforms like Vimeo or YouTube, you can also include supplemental materials for download. As your learners complete coursework, you can solicit their feedback with built-in evaluation tools. With LearningBuilder, it all happens within a user-friendly dashboard that helps learners “own” their process. Candidates can easily track their progress and access their transcripts to view or download.
How LearningBuilder Evaluates the Achievement of Intended Learning Outcomes
After your learners have completed their coursework, the next step is assessment. The LearningBuilder Assessment Engine can help you deliver both formative and summative assessments, and lets you choose from a variety of question types (multiple choice, short answer, etc.) to best evaluate your learners. LearningBuilder supports multi-section Assessments with multiple navigation modes ranging from “free range” navigation to tightly controlled, one-question-at-a-time, forward-only progression. Not only that, you can:
- Offer answer-level feedback as an educational supplement.
- Award variable points to different answers or partial answers.
- Allow users to save their progress and return later to pick up where they left off.
- Enforce a per-question time limit.
In addition, if you need to evaluate candidates with a practical assessment, Learningbuilder’s video capabilities have you covered.
If your program requires a more formal, proctored assessment, we integrate with the leading exam delivery providers.
How LearningBuilder Awards Certificates
Once someone completes their learning and passes all the required assessments, the time has come for the “certificate” component of your “assessment-based certificate” program. LearningBuilder offers several options for conferral, depending on organizational preference and constituent need:
- Recipients can access and download PDF files of their certificates.
- We also support an automated certificate printing queue for paper credentials.
- For digital badges that recipients can share on social media, LearningBuilder integrates with the Credly Acclaim digital badging platform.
All of these options use pre-designed templates you can customize with your branding for enhanced recognition — for you, and your certificate holders.
Take Your Program Further with Heuristic Solutions
Are you considering assessment-based certificate programs? Are you looking to expand or evolve your credentialing processes in other ways? May we introduce you to LearningBuilder’s powerful certification and licensure tools? Schedule a call to start the discovery process.
