Getting Your Courses Approved for
CEUs In The Security Industry

by Connie Moorhead

Offering continuing education courses is a great way to get exposure for your company, but remember this is not a way to offer product training. CEU courses must be 90-95% industry content, with very d NICET—and the list goes on. Determine which agencies will draw a bigger audience and get your courses registered with one or many of these providers.When we are getting courses approved, we determine the highest common denominator and build to that standard. That way, the training can be approved by ALL of the agencies. Keep in mind the output you are using for your little information on your specific company, product or solution. The first thing you must decide is which CEUs you are trying to target. There are many to choose from—NTS, ASIS, CSI, AIA, antraining. While a national agency, such as NBFAA’s NTS, may allow online training to be used for CEUs, some state agencies may not. You should work at the state (AHJ) and national level if not using instructor-led courses. Also, some of the agencies mentioned above require fees to get your courses approved for CEU credit. Some of the fees are reduced if you are a member of that association. Most all of them require a form to be completed where you will provide your course name, intended audience, learning objectives, date and time of delivery (or ongoing if web-based), and the cost of the training, to name a few. Here are some other specific considerations when working with continuing education:

• To have your programs approved through AIA, you would need to become a Passport Provider which requires a membership cost of $3,000 per year and a huge amount of paperwork for each course you want approved. Courses may not contain any proprietary information except on the first and last slide of the presentation (for instructor-led training) and on the first and last page (for any online course).
• CSI has a fee of $25 to get courses approved regardless of membership status in the organization. However, if you would like your students to have the official CSI certificate in addition to the one you are required to offer for any CEU approved course, you must complete an additional form and provide an additional $7.50 fee to CSI for each student who takes the course. This CSI certificate is not required, but as a CSI CEU provider you must be able to offer the CSI certificate should students request it.
• NICET is not an educating body. They only serve as a certification agency. So they do not offer or officially approve any courses for CEU’s. In fact, NICET does not even call it a “ceu” but rather a “CPD” or continuing professional development unit. One way to get NICET CPDs is to know 1) what NICET considers appropriate learning materials to support their many certifications or 2) to take any NTS approved course, which are automatically accepted by NICET.
• AIA also does not call their CEU a “ceu” but rather an “LU” or Learning Unit.
• The grading scale for each agency can be different as well. NTS offers continuing education points in 60 minute or 1 hour segment that equal to 0.1 credits. But other groups, such as NICET and AIA offer 1 hour course segments of 1.0 credits.
• For most of the continuing education that you develop, the 90/10 rule applies. This means that most providers require the content have 90% industry information and only 10% product or solution specific information. There are exceptions to this such as with AIA as noted above and with NTS. NTS will approve most content, regardless of its proprietary product or solution specific focus.
  

About StaySafe, LLC.
StaySafe, LLC. is a full service education and training provider, developing
interactive web-based eLearning solutions. It spends the majority of its time working with manufacturers and trade associations involved in the architectural, construction and security industries. For more information, visit www.cmoor.com.