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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes.

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.

Correct.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.