Mercury Certified Instructor Course

Next on my professional qualification “to do” list is the Mercury Certified Instructor qualification.

From the Mercury Australia website:

The CI is an instructional certification intended for individuals who wish to teach official Mercury Interactive courses. This is a workshop-based class that focuses on understanding and using principles of learner-centred education to promote learning. The test at the end of the class will address your ability to:

• Create a safe learning environment that fosters teacher-student and student-student interactions
• Motivate participants
• Use effective learner-centred instructional techniques
• Demonstrate professionalism through effective presentation skills

The course content looks good, and it means that I should be able to get more training work, which I have found enjoyable so far. It probably won’t hurt to give my presentation skills a polish either.

The pre-class study summary (which has some good presentation tips too) suggests that students should familiarise themselves with the following resources:

• Developing Adult Learners: Strategies for Teachers and Trainers (book)
• Multiple Intelligences
• Constructivism
• Cooperative and collaborative learning

I haven’t been able to find any useful feedback from people who have completed the course. Gut-feel says that you would have to have no skills whatsoever to fail this course (how hard can it be?) but I like to have a “prepare for the worst, hope for the best” attitude, so I will be doing some reading and rehearsing before the course start date.

Update (January 14th, 2005)

I liked reading the sample chapter from Quick Training Tips! – How to Teach Computing Skills to Practically Anyone. This book would probably make a good study resource (as well as a valuable resource for professional trainers).