A Web-based Internet Trainer - Consulting: Internet&World Wide Web Training&Consulting

Internet Trainer Certification Recommended Core Competencies and A Proposed Curricula for Preparing Certified Internet Trainers. (Revised 4/9/00)

by Diane K. Kovacs - diane at kovacs dot com

Certification of Internet Trainers would provide a clear guideline for a basic knowledge level that clients/students can expect from a Web Teacher. Furthermore, this program would promote and enable Internet Trainer knowledge and skills self-assessment and acquisition.

The Internet Trainer Certification Program was developed by a group of highly-qualified Internet Trainers participating in an invitation only discussion group called NET-CERT. NET-CERT participants are a sub-group of NETTRAIN (listserv@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu) which is an essential professional communications tool of Internet trainers. (Contact Diane K. Kovacs - diane@kovacs.com - for NET-CERT subscription requirements). This program will be administered by the NETTRAIN Trainer's group as well as a publisher with which negotiations are in process.

Certification for Internet Trainers has been discussed both on and off the Internet. In much the same way as Novell's Certified Network Engineer program guarantees to a client that an individual has basic qualifications for working with Novell's network software, the Certified Internet Trainer program would guarantee to a client that an individual has basic qualifications for providing Internet training. This article is a description of a currently proposed Internet Trainer Certification program. The program includes recommended core competencies as well as a proposed Web Based Training (WBT) curricula for preparing Internet trainers for certification.

An "Internet Trainer" is defined as a trainer or teacher who works with other humans to teach them how to use and how to access the Internet for professional, business, research, recreational, educational or other purposes. Another description for an "Internet Teacher":

"Job Description The internet teacher will design, develop, present, and evaluate the course material. They teach internet classes to students and large corporations.
Skills

A teacher needs to know how to design, develop present, and evaluate the course material, especially if you are going to present it to a large group! An internet teacher needs to know the intricate details about the internet. A teacher should have good people skills and good presentation skills."

(This definition was found on the Web on a site which no longer exists)

In contrast, "Internet Technology Trainers" work with computers to establish physical and software network connections and requires a much more technical set of competencies, usually in one or more specific networking environments. Major networking software companies have certification programs which cover internet technology training. These core competencies are recommended for all Internet trainers, but would be required for Certified Internet Trainers. At some points the "Internet Trainer" competencies overlap with "Internet Technology Trainers", especially at the advanced levels. Also, even Certified Internet Trainers will vary in the exact level of their knowledge, and in which computer systems and software that they have expertise in. These competencies are divided into three areas:

Prerequisite Competencies

Instructional Design Competencies

Internet Services Competencies

Misc. Technical Competencies

Within this program certain terms are used that describe the kind of level of competencies that an Certified Internet Trainer candidate should have.

"Ability to" means that the candidate can perform the activity.
"Detailed functional knowledge" means that the candidate is able to actually perform the activity involved and explain verbally or in writing what they are doing.
"Knowledge of" means they can write or talk effectively on the topic.
"Awareness of" means they know that the concept exists and can find out more about it.

An applicant for Internet Trainer certification should already have either significant life experience or a level of education in any subject area that shows significant proof that they are highly literate verbally and in writing (e.g. have been working in management and regularly report to colleagues and employees verbally and in writing, have written technical reports and presented on technical topics to others, etc.) We recommend that a Web Teacher have at least two years of college level education and demonstrated experience interacting with humans on the Internet as well as using Internet services.

What do the potential Learners already know? What do they need to know? Why? Who are they? How much time do they need or have available to learn? This includes assessing the learning needs/instructional goals of a group of learners as well as the level of access to the Internet and specific Internet services that the learners will have before, during and after the training.

Competency 2: Ability to Perform Instructional Analysis -

Define Step by step what is involved in teaching specific skills and concepts. This includes the ability to make a distinction between "functional skills" (how to attach word-process documents in e-mail or html documents and put them on a Web server to save long distance fax and courier bills, etc.) and "research skills" (find and us data and information on or through the Internet) as well as

Competency 3: Ability to Assess Entry Behavior and Learner Characteristics -

This step involves determining Learner Characteristics for actual students, not just the general expected group characteristics used in the Needs Analysis/Instructional Goals step. This may include effectively addressing the Internet training needs of specialized subject groups (e.g., medical professionals or engineers) as well as judging how to present information to effectively train learners at a given level.

Competency 4: Ability to Evaluate Performance Objectives - What will the students be expected to actually do, to demonstrate that they have met the goals of the instruction? Are the performance objectives measurable? How will they be measured?

Competency 5: Ability to Develop Instructional Strategy including: Preinstructional Activities Information Presentation Student Participation Test Follow-through Activities

Competency 6: Ability to Develop Instructional Materials

Competency 7: Ability to Design and Perform Formative Evaluation -

Formative evaluation is the assessment of the success or failure of the training overall. Formative evaluations involve the following questions: Did the students achieve the goals and objectives as described? Should the training be repeated with new students Was the instructor effective? Were the instructional materials effective?

Internet Services Competencies

Competency 2: Ability to explain the relationships between the Internet and its various component and associated networks, regional networks, commercial internet access providers and online services

Competency 3: Ability to explain the domain name concept, domain name services, Internet addressing and URL's.

Competency 4: Ability to explain the client/server concept of Internet services including the World Wide Web - Web servers & Web browsers ..

Competency 6: Detailed functional knowledge of how to setup dial-up Internet software on one or more computer platforms (e.g., Macintosh OS, Windows X, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux etc.), and basic connection requirements and capabilities. or alternately knowledge of how to work with an established 56k or higher dedicated Internet connection on one or more computer platform.

Competency 7: Awareness of commercial public access Internet providers and how to work with them or awareness of institutional or company Internet access functionalities, limitations, policies and features.

Competency 8: Detailed functional knowledge of the hardware and types of connection required for graphical or multi-media World Wide Web functions. Specifically plug-ins, sound, video cards, etc.

Part 3. Email and Newsgroups

Competency 10: Detailed functional knowledge of at least one POP mail software package (Eudora, Pegasus Mail, CC:MAIL, etc.) and at least one smtp mail software package (ELM , Pine, VMS Mail, LMail, etc.)

Competency 11: Knowledge of Internet culture, netiquette and intellectual property issues related to the Internet and especially electronic mail and discussion groups.

Competency 12: Detailed functional knowledge of the contents of email headers and how to do elementary trouble shooting of bounced email.

Competency 13: Detailed functional knowledge of how to use email to subscribe to email discussions on both LSOFT Listserv and Unix Listproc as well as Majordomo, Mailbase etc.

Competency 14: Detailed functional knowledge of how to participate in discussion lists or newsgroups correctly; including how to reply to, submit postings to, set to nomail, mail and digest as well as how to locate and search discussion list and newsgroup archives.

Competency 15: Detailed functional knowledge of at least one kind of Usenet newsreader and awareness of different newsreader availability on different computer systems.

Competency 17: Detailed functional knowledge of how to make anonymous ftp connection through a Web browser (FTP URL), or desktop FTP program. Specifically with the intention of publishing Web pages on a Web server and retrieving software from software archives on the Web.

Part 5. The World Wide Web

Competency 19: Detailed functional knowledge of how to retrieve, install, configure and customize at least one Web browser (e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.) on one or more computer platforms. This includes customization of e-mail, security, plug-ins, and bookmarks or favorites files.

Competency 20: Detailed functional knowledge of how to access the Web with both text only (Lynx) as well as graphical World Wide Web browsers (Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.).

Competency 21: Detailed functional knowledge of how to use and describe the URL Internet address format in the context of a World Wide Web browser

Competency 22: Detailed functional knowledge of how to locate and use Web Search tools such as Altavista, Yahoo, Infoseek, etc.

Competency 23: Ability to use Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or an HTML Editor to build a simple Web page.

Competency 2: Ability to connect display devices to microcomputers, including laptop computers, and verify functionality.

Competency 3: Ability to install and set-up Web software including browsers and plug-ins and other display software.

These competencies involve skills beyond Internet. It is necessary that you acquire solid knowledge of the most common computer operating systems including Windows, Macintosh OS, and possibly a little Unix knowledge. It will be helpful to you to know a little bit about the most common computer networking software as well (e.g., Novell, Windows NT, etc). Most problems that occur in a computer lab involve the interaction of the computer operating system, the network software, and the telecommunications connections within the lab and to the Internet. It is not necessary for Internet trainers to know how to solve the problems that occur - most of the time computer support personnel will be available. In cases where you are also the computer support person then you will be expected to solve the problems. It is however, desirable that Internet trainers should know some basic trouble-shooting. .e.g., check that the cables are all plugged in. Verify that the computers are all logged in to the network and so on. It will be helpful if you know enough about the computer operating system and network software to use the correct vocabulary in explaining problems to computer support personnel.

The best strategy to learn the information you'll need to perform competently is to use the operating systems and network software as a user and pay attention to what happens when all goes well. It will also be valuable to read the documentation for users provided with such software. Reading the documentation for display equipment and software and then practicing the connections and installation is also desirable.

The Curriculum for Certified Internet Training Most candidates for Certified Internet Training status will be already practicing Internet Trainers who want to add the certification to their vita. Some will be trainer's who need to learn the Internet subject area. Still others may be complete beginners who want to or are required to do Internet training. These three groups will need to be served in different ways. This curriculum consists of two tracks:

Performance/Test Track - for current Internet Trainers.

Subject Instruction Track - for trainers or beginners who need to learn the Internet subject information related to the core competencies.

Performance/Test Track

The Subject Instruction Track will be a series of Web, E-mail and Moo delivered instructional modules covering all of the core competencies. Any candidate may take this series of modules and then take the Performance/Test track examination to reach the Certified Internet Trainer Status.

The Performance/Test track will be delivered directly from the Web and responded to via the Web and e-mail. The candidate may complete the Performance/Test track at their own pace. Certification would be earned after all Performance/Test activities are completed and evaluated by the certifying committee (to be chosen by the sponsoring bodies) trainers as complete and acceptable.

The Subject Instruction Track would be delivered as either as 14 week course, with online Moo meetings once per week or as a 14 day once online Moo meeting per day course at intervals to be determined by the sponsoring bodies and instructors.

The Subject Instruction Track might be designed to include a one day hands-on introduction to the Certification program. This would be especially useful to the complete beginners in such a program.

Bibliography