The National Skills Academy for IT is currently building new website functionality. To help our subscribers, we are adding pathways that guide you through the learning resources that contribute to achieving specific certifications.
Each certification track we produce will form a part of a certification pathway that we can guide you through. Following these pathways will see that you progress your skills, making you more attractive to employers and better prepared for your role in IT.
As we cover each vendor certification, we will start to list certification tracks and certification pathways - you will be able to browse through to our vendor pages.
Vendors
Learning content
We provide a mix of different types of learning content to help you achieve certification:
Online courses
Our courseware provides core material for subscribers setting out to prepare for an exam. You are presented with a rich experience based on a learning design model that emphasises clear instruction, relevant practice, interactive reinforcement, and assessment. Certification-mapped learning paths are planned by subject matter experts and learning designers to incorporate content covering all exam objectives. Where appropriate, courseware includes software simulations enabling you to experience something close to the relevant technologies without necessarily having access to the real software. Neither these simulations, nor courseware assessments, seek to replicate vendor exam questions in either content or presentation.
Test-Preps: test your knowledge with exam support
TestPreps allow you to test your knowledge and be sure you’ve understood a topic. Questions are designed to test your skills and are at a similar level of difficulty to the associated vendor exam. TestPreps do not seek to replicate vendor exam questions. Testing is a powerful mechanism: it can reinforce the learning you undertake and highlight areas for improvement.
Online Mentors: get support anytime
Mentoring services provides availability to online mentors 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for 35 of our most popular certification exams, and from 9am to 5pm for other certification exams. Mentors are available to provide support, guidance and encouragement to learners while preparing for certifications. Our mentoring services include:
- Allows learners to ask questions, confirm understanding of new topic or request additional information on a difficult subject
- Enables learners to seek detailed guidance from mentors on in-depth queries
- Provides opportunity for practice of new skills learned with feedback on each learner's response by certified mentors
- Encourages learners to stay motivated to achieve their goals
- Enables learners to take advantage of the immense collective body of knowledge (1000+ industry certifications) of the mentoring team
- Provides structure and pacing for certification and IT learning programs via daily email reminders, and questions
- Dramatically increases chances of success for learners when taking certification exams
e-Books
Our library of e-Books offers subscribers a range of electronic books content covering exam topics in detail
Express Guides
Where available, Express Guides are usually vendor technology guides offered in electronic format. They are most useful for experienced subscribers seeking the most recent vendor content as early as possible, for example before the equivalent e-learning courses are released.
Tips for e-learning
Make time for e-Learning
Set aside specific times to work on your courses and stick to your schedule
Internet based courses do not have the regular meeting times and terms that instructor led courses have, so you can set your own time schedule
Pace yourself
Deciding your own hours is great, but make sure you do not fall behind in your schedule. Catching up is difficult.
Create milestones or check points to help you stay on track
Be a strategic learner
Look at the learning outcomes and scan the assignments prior to starting the course
Keep the outcomes and tasks in mind as you work through sections of the course
Don’t feel that you need to read everything
Adults have different learning styles and some don’t need to read everything to succeed
Maintain a positive attitude
Don’t become discouraged if you run into difficulties. Developing new skills and knowledge is sometimes difficult, but the gain is worth the pain.
Moreover, it may take some adjustment to get comfortable working remotely
Collaborate
Helping others and sharing your view will enhance your learning and make it more fun
Share your experiences
Ask yourself whether the material in the course is consistent with your experience, and analyse why or why not. Share these ideas with others to challenge your own thinking and learn from the ideas of your colleagues