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Learning Without Scars

Learning Without Scars

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    Learning Without Scars
    S1 E70•December 2, 2021•20 min

    Caroline Slee-Poulos and Ron talk about the recent IACET accreditation of Learning Without Scars

    Send us Fan Mail (https://www.buzzsprout.com/1721145/fan_mail/new) On November 1st 2021, Learning Without Scars became an approved provider (AP) of continuing education and training. This put LWS in a special place. We are the only AP in the Construction Equipment Industry. You will hear in this Podcast how Caroline went through the process of accreditation.    Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org (https://www.LearningWithoutScars.org) for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers. We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.

    Transcript

    0:22

    Aloha, and welcome to another session of Lessons Learned. This is a conversation between my daughter Caroline and I talking about the things that we've learned insofar as what we're presenting to people so that they can reach their potential, what we're doing to assist in their learning path, and everything that goes with that. So it's a rather comprehensive discussion. Today, I'd like to have a discussion with Caroline relative to our accreditation last week with IASET, the International Association of Continuing Education and Training, which without Caroline's efforts, I doubt that we would have been able to accomplish. So first of all, thank you, Caroline, for getting that done. Secondly, welcome aboard. And finally, what did you do? How did you do it? How did this come to pass?

    1:23

    Well, in the initial phases, when you first mentioned, wouldn't it be nice to be an accredited provider of education, essentially making us a school, I started researching. Who's available? Who does that? Who does the accreditation process go through for businesses like ours? I was familiar with what's called WASC accreditation. It's the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. And that is an accreditation program that public schools here in California standardly have to receive in order to be legally compliant providers of education to children. But we target adults. We are helping people to go through their employee development plans, setting their goals, making their future plans for how they'd like to promote. And considering we do this not just in the U.S. and Canada, but also overseas internationally, in Belgium and Sweden and France, I wanted to see what was available internationally. And that was how...

    2:34

    through word of mouth and a lot of reading, I found IACET, the International Association for Continuing Education and Training. I initially signed us up to do the application process before I really understood every single complete detail that would have to go into this. At times, I feel like I might have opened a vein a little bit and done the blood, sweat, and tears version of it. But the ISET structure asks you to walk the commissioners through every single element of who you are and what you provide to your students. So this begins with the standard business introduction. What's your mission statement, your vision statement, your statement of purpose information, your articles of incorporation, things of that nature. And it goes all the way through the individual learning outcomes for every single class.

    3:38

    And as I went through this process and received feedback from them, you and I had many conversations about ways to improve the classes we already had, ways to change them into more bite-sized pieces for students, ways to make them more accessible for students. So that the process of becoming accredited providers of education also is a process of deep improvement of our products, of who we are as educators and professionals. So by the time I finished, I have about a 200-page document that I keep in a very fancy binder that reflects... Every element of what we do, including feedback from our students through the surveys we have at the end of our courses and the evaluations that I included at ISA recommendation on our sample courses so that we would have some additional feedback on not just what you learned, but the self-evaluation that you had before you began the class, the evaluation after the class.

    4:54

    Following that, I had about a two-hour interview with one of the commissioners. I had two commissioners assisting me, giving me pointers, tips, recommendations for where to refine or rephrase what I had written for our application responses, and then the final interview. After the final interview, the interviewer, Wendy, gave her feedback to the commissioners in general and to the other reviewer, whose name also is Caroline. That kept it nice and confusing for us. And Caroline made her recommendations based on the hard copies, the paperwork from the classes. This really opens us up to a lot of different opportunities for our students. Prior to this, in our industry, When people were accredited, it was a self-accreditation process. It wasn't something typically through an outside organization that had a series of very, very detailed standards that had to be upheld and maintained.

    6:09

    So this has really put us as the first and only to receive accreditation. And I had to follow the ANSI standards, which are for people in the know. Incredibly detailed. AMSI

    6:25

    stands for?

    6:26

    ANSI, get me on the acronyms and I've completely forgotten again. Just give me one moment because I do have my big, huge pile of paperwork. So ANSI is the American National Standards Institute, and they work on standardizing not just education, but processes in. data management, software development, engineering standards. It's sort of the gold standard for how a process should be established and written.

    7:05

    And then before you keep on going, talk to me a little bit about why and what IASET is. They have a rather special role that they play in education, don't they? They

    7:20

    do. As accreditors internationally, they work in partnership with a really, really varied list of providers of education, including technical schools, universities, professional organizations, the different associations that are also used for different professions.

    7:54

    So in the case of IASET, they issue CEUs, Continuing Education Units.

    8:03

    Well, they approve their providers because if you meet the IASET standard, your courses are accredited. Technically, we are the ones awarding the Continuing Education Units. But with an official seal of approval, meaning that our continuing education units aren't just something we have decided upon. They're something that's been investigated, explored, and given an approval, meaning that we start the process now of seeing which of the technical schools would perhaps like some soft skills courses to add into what they already offer. So ISET really... They make sure that your process, your courses offer rigorous academic standards for every student.

    8:59

    So the way that I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, the U.S. government has given IASET the control over who can issue CEUs in America.

    9:22

    I know they have approval from the U.S. government, but they are not the only accredited organization for offering those. So there is, instead of IASET, which is international, there's an American association as well. WASC is a secondary association. There's a different one in the Southeast that is standardly used as well. So they are. one of a handful of providers who can certify continuing education units.

    9:57

    So stay with the American Association of Continuing Education, AACET, as opposed to IACET. My understanding is that the U.S. government only has one group responsible for controlling the CEUs and that that's IACET, not AACET. Is that your understanding too?

    10:24

    It may very well be, although you're going to have to have me digging back through my original research notes, which are now asking me to go back to 2017 and find my memory in notebooks.

    10:37

    Yeah, well, the other part of this is that CEUs are becoming more prominent in Europe. And it's started as a U.S. element. And it's becoming... much more widespread, which is why I'm so pleased that we've got it, that now all of our classes earn CEUs. What does that mean for a student?

    11:07

    So for a student, it can give you transferability of academic units. For example, if you are a service manager, as an example, or a service advisor, And you decide, I'm going to go back to school and get an extra certificate in some other element. And you've taken our classes. When you apply to that school, you can say, I have all of these academic units from this particular organization. It's an ISAT accredited unit for classes. Am I able to transfer these? Now, just as with regular universities who sometimes get a little stingy with each other when they're trying to. take on units from another provider. It may not be that they accept 100% of all the transfers, but it gives you the opportunity to transfer some or all of your units that you've taken with us, meaning you're further ahead in a certificate program.

    12:08

    So there's still a politics from one school to another.

    12:12

    Always, always, even with state universities, as an example. California State University to University of California, they argue with each other about how many units they'll accept on transfers. Same state, same standards, but different providers. However, it does give students a leg up and those CEUs do not go away. You have always got those on a transcript. When you apply to schools, when you apply for other jobs, those go with you everywhere.

    12:47

    So the student receives a certificate from us, and on that certificate, it is noted how many CEUs are earned. Is that correct?

    12:56

    Correct. And I'm in the process of going through, because of the fact that we provided sample courses to ISET, I being... Sort of superstitious, didn't want to jinx anything and add all of the verbiage for IST accreditation to the other classes until they said, yes, you have it. So now I am in the process of writing a lot for 84 classes.

    13:25

    So we have 108 different classes,36 for parts,36 for service,36 for selling and marketing in the product support world. Does this mean that every single one of those classes earns CEUs?

    13:41

    Yes.

    13:42

    We also have 18 assessments. Are the assessments part of the accreditation process?

    13:50

    No. The tests that are standalone tests do not offer a continuing education unit. They're a tool to help you plan where you need to go. So if, for an example, you are an absolute expert in inventory control, you take an assessment and we see, yes, you are an absolute expert in inventory control. You need courses that take you to the next level. So you are getting the courses you need and not spinning your wheels with things you might already know.

    14:24

    And if I understand right, CEUs are issued. on the basis of how much time is involved in the learning class.

    14:35

    Correct.

    14:37

    A university credit typically is how many hours?

    14:45

    Oh, the sad thing is I remember clearly how much homework you have per week for each unit. 10 hours per unit.

    14:54

    So if I have, I'm just going backwards. If I take a semester. The, you know, when I was in school, what we had to achieve was 21 class credits and a class was a semester. So that what that meant that you did, if you did it in four years, is you took five classes per year for three years and six in the fourth year or any combination thereof that took you to 21, three years at seven classes each, you were okay. And that the classes were predicated on number of weeks. And so let's just go back and say, I've got 12 weeks. I have classes twice a week. They're an hour each. That would be how the CEU calculations would go through as well. So many hours, reading material, pre-tests, the films, the audio tracks.

    15:56

    videos that you create, the quizzes in the middle, the final assessment, the survey, all of that together, which might end up taking four or five hours in a class, that earns a certain number of CEUs that can be applied to college, vocational, junior college, universities that will accept a CEU from an accredited supplier from ISF, what we're called as an approved provider.

    16:25

    Correct. And the standard for formal traditional four-year universities now, I had to look it up because I'm a dinosaur, you see, and I haven't gone to in-person sit down, get a bachelor's degree university in 20 years now. A single credit hour is considered one hour of in-person in the classroom and two hours of on your own. homework, study, reading, projects, whatever it may be, depending on the pursuit. For us, we are an entirely online provider, although ISED does leave room for us to get accredited for in-person courses too, should we opt to return to that classroom format for certain topics.

    17:13

    Did you broach the subject about Zoom or Teams meetings being equivalent to in-class?

    17:19

    Yes. And? Yes, Zoom does count as a face-to-face lesson where it is a live class and everybody is scheduled to be there at the same time. And thank goodness for it. Otherwise, the entire world would be doomed after the last year we had. Right.

    17:40

    Well, this has been a lot of work. And now we have no excuse because we have all of the tools. We have all the accreditation. We've just... We got to put the dressing on things, getting the certificates done properly and the verbiage for the CEUs and the quizzes embedded, et cetera, et cetera. But pretty much everything's in place, isn't it?

    18:02

    It is. It is. And it was a lot of work, but well worth it.

    18:08

    Yeah, I think one of the commissioners said to you that the end will truly justify the means. Is that how she said it?

    18:15

    She did say it. Yes. Because there. There are so many ways in which things had to be refined, and it's a very deliberate process. And in one of the meetings we had, she said, I just want to let you know, though, as as small as some of the details may sound, the ends really do justify the means. It's completely worth it. Which I knew during the process.

    18:41

    She was encouraging, wasn't she?

    18:42

    Yes, she was. Both of them were very encouraging.

    18:45

    Well, I'm tickled pink about. having this accreditation and thank you greatly for it. Is there anything you'd like to say in wrapping up this particular podcast?

    18:56

    Nothing that comes to mind off the top of my head, unless you'd like to laugh about the fact that I screamed out loud when I got my alert on the phone saying approved.

    19:06

    Yeah, it's well worth screaming. So Caroline, thank you very much for this particular podcast and mahalo to everybody that's listening. And I look forward to being with you on another Lessons Learned in the near future.

    19:22

    Thank you for listening to our podcast. We appreciate your support. Should you have any thoughts or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us at www. learningwithoutscars. com. The time is now. Mahalo.

    Caroline Slee-Poulos and Ron talk about the recent IACET accreditation of Learning Without Scars

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