One of my goals at the begining of the year was to complete a TAP certification. Before last year I’d actually never heard of TAP, despite working for QA! I’d seen a couple of jobs advertised that mentioned a TAP certificate being desirable, so thought I might as well check it out.
I decided to take the TAP Certificate in Digital Learning Strategy. Strategy can mean so many things to different people and businesses and I thought that this course may help demystify the topic. The course was delivered online by an instructor (using Webex) over 5 weeks’. The online tutorial lasted 1 hour and you had written assignments and research to complete each week. The following learning objectives:
- Reflect on the L&D and digital strategies in place currently and identifying any recommendations
- Write SMART objectives aligned with business drivers
- Analyse the skills required to implement strategy and consider the factors for developing in-house, externally or selecting ready-made content
- Determine the most appropriate technical infrastructure to support the strategy
- Identify the key stakeholders and develop a plan to build stakeholder engagement
- Manage content development projects to consistently meet targets for quality, time and cost
- Create a marketing and evaluation plan
Pros and Cons
The pros…I enjoyed the course, the sessions were very interactive with social learning playing a bit part in the pedagogy; each learner was expected to contribute to discussions during the sessions and on the forums. The content was relevant and the tutors were experienced and knowledgeable. The activities had been designed to get you thinking about your own strategies and you ended up creating a plan personal to you and your work. If you were given the task to design a learning strategy at work, you have this at the end of the course! Or at least a framework to build on (depending on how much effort you put into completing your assignments).
As for the cons…I thought it was a bit expensive. I had a small discount but felt that it was still a lot of money for what was really a short online course. The last session also wasn’t really a full session, so it felt like it was really 4 weeks’ long rather than 5.
Personal Development and Reflection
Personally, the most valuable part of this course was learning that I actually knew more than I thought I did. I know that might sound a bit cheesy, but it actually made me feel more confident and confirmed that the way I have been approaching projects and planning is best practice. Having tutors available to check assignments and answer questions was really valuable. Overall I would like to take another TAP certificate in the future.
Resources
If you want to find out more about this course, you can visit the certificate page by clicking here. Alternatively you can visit the TAP website by visiting https://www.tap-learning.com/.