Tuesday, November 8, 2011

10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m

Governance Excellence for Certifying Organizations
TBD

This in-person workshop will provide a focused look at governance principles for members of a certification governing body or committee. In addition to providing an overview of what great governance is and how to build great governing teams, this workshop will help you, as governing board or committee members, determine the critical success factors of your board or committee and help you define your desired leadership characteristics.  Speakers will be providing real-life case studies based on their experiences working with and on certification boards.  This is a great training session for first-time and seasoned governing board/committee members and staff.

1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

How do Certification Leaders Create and Maintain Quality Certifications?
Cheryl L. Wild, PhD, Wild & Associates

Quality is often misunderstood. Most certification professionals will say that they assure quality in their certification program by using quality control. Or they might say that they depend on their testing vendor to assure quality of their certification examination. Few consider that quality is providing services a client wants and needs as well as providing services correctly and in a timely manner. Leaders are the lynch pin to a successful high quality certification program. This workshop will provide a three pronged framework for leaders to use in considering their quality efforts. These three areas are planning and design, monitoring and improvement, and implementing standards. The workshop will introduce how leaders use this framework, including some best practice examples from certification organizations.

Continuing Competence - What is it? How can we ensure it?
Colette Taddy Hart, Nance College of Business, Cleveland State University
Rory McCorkle, MBA, Project Management Institute
Patricia M. Muenzen, MA, Professional Examination Service

Best practices and accreditation standards speak to the importance of a credentialing organization having processes and procedures to attest to the ongoing ability of certificants after the credential is awarded. Under a variety of titles (e.g., maintenance of certification, renewal, recertification) and using a variety of methods, credentialing organizations have designed a variety of programs to address practitioner competence over time. A thoughtfully designed program for continuing competence will articulate the tie-in between the purpose of the specific recertification/renewal policies and procedures adopted and the intent of the program (e.g., to ensure maintenance of a baseline level of competence, to “push” practitioners to new levels of competence, to target and remediate deficiencies).

The session will explore philosophies regarding recertification, methodologies and their relative strengths and weaknesses, and the types of deliberations in which an organization must engage to create policies, procedures and structures to support the program. The session is suitable for organizations launching new credentials as well as organizations wishing to audit and re-evaluate their existing certification renewal programs. The presenters will include a representative of an organization that is currently establishing continuing competence requirements for a new certification program and a representative of an organization that recently restructured the renewal policies and procedures of a mature credential.