We have been conducting CQMgr, CSQE, and CQIA refresher courses for the last 2 years. We are planning to expand more courses for our section. I understand many of our Elsmar members are also ASQ Members. I need some input regarding Certification refresher courses based on your experience.

1. How much your section charges for conducting ASQ certification refresher courses?
2. What is the typical duration of the course?
Example: 1 day/week, 8 weeks or 4 Weekends? Which has been successful?
3. What is that attendees value most in refresher courses?
4. What is your (course) exam success rate?
5. Any lessons learned, best practice want to share?

Thanks,
Govind.

Govind,

Here are some answers to your questions. I am acting co-education chair for Section 801.

1. How much your section charges for conducting ASQ certification refresher courses? $350 per student

2. What is the typical duration of the course?
Example: 1 day/week, 8 weeks or 4 Weekends? Which has been successful?

4 hour classes, 1 day/week for 10 weeks. Success is a relative term. Some attendees find it hard to make the weekly commitment. The instructors feel that studying the material over a 10 week period beginning about the 12th week before the exam allows the student to refresh themselves in a time period that is sufficient without being burdensome. They usually recommend a total time of 70-80 hours of preparation time for the test to ensure reasonable success at passing.

3. What is that attendees value most in refresher courses?

Forcing a commitment to reviewing the body of knowledge and also learning the format of the test. There is a technique to taking multiple choice test that the attendee may not have seen before or it has been since school. Types of questions and time management need to be learned. Practicing exam questions is valuable. A well taught course will include hundreds of practice questions for them.

4. What is your (course) exam success rate?
Varies by commitment of students more than course. One instructor that I know well tracks his students and has a 80% success rate. From what I have learned, the ASQ success rate is about 50% for all certifications.

5. Any lessons learned, best practice want to share?

Market the courses on a regular basis to the members. Do not run them to generate funds for the section but as a service to the members. Most of the income should go to the instructors with a little set aside for marketing costs. Be honest with the attendees about the purpose of the course and the need for their commitment. The course is a refresher not a way to learn the subject from nothing.

Bill Pflanz

Bill,
Accept my thanks for a very detailed reply. Thanks for taking the time to reply item by item.
Here is how we do:
1. How much your section charges for conducting ASQ certification refresher courses?
We charge about CDN$650 (USD 475). Quality Council of Indiana material -Primer and a Solution text included.
You mentioned:” Do not run them to generate funds for the section but as a service to the members."
This is one point I respectfully disagree. With the new living community model, the rebates that will be received from section membership will drastically reduce and major revenue for the section has to come from either refresher courses or Newsletter Advt.
This concern is an offline topic by many section members during the AQC.I agree with your intent in principle. Not sure if practical.

2. What is the typical duration of the course?
Example: 1 day/week, 8 weeks or 4 Weekends? Which has been successful?
We conduct 3 hour session, 8 weeks start 10 weeks in advance. Leave last 2 weeks for self-study. 8th sessions is a Simulated exam.
We have not considered weekends. Some sections in the USA do.
Exams like SSBB and CRE will require more than 80 hours. I studied over 250 hours for these certifications.

3. What is that attendees value most in refresher courses?
Your reply, ditto+ We conduct Student satisfaction feedback after every batch. We consider multiple criteria with different weightage. Top one is " knowledge of the Session lecturer" i.e Ability to answer questions during the session is considered high value.Ability to workout problems in the session is also considered high.


4. What is your (course) exam success rate?
Our refresher course Success rate is different for various certifications. CQIA is 100%. CSQE is 60~70%. CQMgr, I understand is 70~80%.As you mentioned, this is difficult to fully attribute to course performance. If the student did not follow through with self-study during and post the session, probability of success is reduced. I find the last 2 weeks self study before exam as very critical especially when problems are involved.

5. Any lessons learned, best practice want to share?
Lessons Learned:
Some 10~15% of Quality Council of Indiana questions are very arguable (may be wrong). Students taking exam for the first time can get very upset and lose confidence looking at these questions. So we should let them know the actual ASQ questions are peer reviewed multiple times and are different from those we see in QCI primers and CDs.
Best Practice:
Using CQIA refresher course, student feedback, I tried a QFD approach and have identified CTQs for the course. Yet to implement in the redesign of the course for the next batch.

Once again, Thanks Bill for sharing your experience. Any other members?

Govind.

Sorry for the delay (also sorry I missed you at the AQC in Toronto - although I understand you met Graeme).

In the past I have taught part of the CQE refresher here in the Saginaw Valley section 1004 (Michigan), and have been asked to help out again.

1. $345 for members ($395 for non-members).
2. 14 weeks, 3 hour sessions for one evening each week.
3. Much the same as Bill's reply.
4. I don't have the stats, but anecdotally (based on conversations with quality practitioners around here) I'd say 60-70%.
5. Also, like Bill's comments, past QCI questions are, um, questionable. Some of the questions/answers are misleading and some outdated. Also, the emphasis today is different than years ago (e.g. less on acceptance sampling, more on lean techniques).

Anyway, I hope this helps you.

The cost of courses that I quoted did not include purchased training materials which would increase the cost to about the same as Govind described. One instructor developed his own training material and practice questions and provides it with the course.

QCI may have some "very arguable (may be wrong)" questions but there are probably questions on the exam that fit the same description. The instructor that I had who developed his own questions freely admitted that two or more answers could be correct but there was only one that was the best. He would walk us through understanding the question and challenged his students to do the same on the exam since not all questions on the exam have an obvious answer.

Rob brought up a very important issue about having the course and questions stay current. If an ASQ member proctors an exam they must agree to not teach a course for 5 (I think) years. The instructor would need to stay current on the body of knowledge as it changes to keep the course current and hope they can guess the questions. There is no rule against someone taking the test every 3 years and someone from QCI may do that.

By the way, I only took the QCI manual, Juran's handbook and a statistics book in the CSSBB exam. Since I have 2 other certifications, my previous instructor said I probably did not need a refresher course since I knew what to expect. I would recommend a refresher course for all first time certifications and take a well indexed manual like QCI's with very little other books. Statistically I have done well since I passed all 3 on the first try.

To recover the lost funds from the new Living Community Model, I recommended that we charge non-section members an additional $60 for the course and throw in a free upgrade to a full ASQ membership. I am not sure all the section exec board understood the significance of my recommendation.

Bill Pflanz

While I was Treasurer of Bluewater section of ASQC (1987) I also took the classes for CQT. The classes were helpful and included the book and I passed. The classes were for about 9 weeks at 3 hours per class. Some were boring and some helped me pass the ASQC test.

At the time there was a discussion whether we could use a calculator and we had to tear the answer pages out of the text we were issued. In the end we could not use the "missing" pages and we had to turn in our calculators to determine if they were capable of doing equations. If so they were taken.

Just a memory.................................

Al...

To recover the lost funds from the new Living Community Model, I recommended that we charge non-section members an additional $60 for the course and throw in a free upgrade to a full ASQ membership. I am not sure all the section exec board understood the significance of my recommendation.

The incoming section chair must have agreed with my flippant recommendation. I received an email sent to the exec board proposing a $50 additional charge for non-section members to take certification refresher courses. The cost will now be $375 for section members and $425 for non-section members.

We are also charging about 15% more for dinner meetings and spring conferences for non-members. The intent is to give some incentive to be a full member with section membership.

Bill Pflanz

Thanks to Rob Nix and Al for sharing their experience.
Bill,
We had the price structure difference even before living community model. We set CDN $100 higher to Non members. Obviously every student will apply for an ASQ membership and get the member price for the course.

This will probably help recruit member for the first year. However, there is no guarantee that the member will stay in "Regular" there after. They may lower to "associate" (means less rebate to section) or may not renew (No rebate) next year after passing the certification.

All section can do is to offer products and services to retain members. But the decision to stay is based on member's perception. Many members have not even browsed the ASQ member’s web page once to know what is inside!

ASQ has to better job in communicating to the members about benefits of remaining in the "regular" membership (US$89). Let us wait and see how this new model influences the section revenue. It will take couple of years to fully understand the impact.

If we can set an affordable cost for the courses, refresher course is one avenue we can count on.
Govind.

Picking up from where I left this thread, this morning, I was going through several section pages in both USA and Canada to find out what sections are charging for CQE Refresher course. (This is our first time to run CQE. We have been running CQMgr, CQIA, and CSQE.)

Since I spent some time already, I thought sharing with Cove can help new sections to do some cost estimations. Also trigger some discussion among Cove-ASQ Volunteer community.

Based on my sample,
In the USA, cost ranges from US$520 to 580 for an average 12 week session including materials (worth approx US$100).
In Canada, cost ranges from CD$250 to $1200 for an average 12 week session including materials (worth approx US$100~200).

Interestingly, without material cost the thumb rule comes to US$12.00/hour for ASQ Refresher course session.
(CQA,CQE,CSQE,CRE,CQMgr seem to follow this rate)

Hence if you are conducting a 3 hour session for 12 weeks CQE Course, you may want to charge
US$432* + Material cost. (Approx total US$ 532 to $ 550)
Unfortunately, you have to accommodate the room rental, audio visual and other Instructor material solved questions photocopying costs etc.

*If your section is already making big revenue through Newsletter ads, industry donations, Membership rebates, etc, occasionally you may be able to pick up any loss due to low registrations to courses (< 5 registrants) to keep the course running.

*For smaller sections with low revenue opportunity, they may have to rethink the strategy to at the least breakeven the courses administration cost.

Please let me know if there any ASQ Guidelines/policy on Refresher courses.

Regards,
Govind.

As far as I know, my local chapter does not conduct refresher courses. Our local community college has a quality certification program that takes about 3 years to complete (on average) and takes place in the evening as continuing education. Those classes are taught, however, by our local chapter ASQ members. I could take a class in statistics or "Quality 101" or something similar, but cannot take a refresher course for a particular exam.

For anyone interested, the quality program is outlined here:

http://www.iusb.edu/~cted/certs/Quality%20Mgmt%20Certif.htm

Yes, there are no education courses in many sections. This is probably because of lack of volunteer pool to support such service. In this situation, if a student can afford, they can take online refresher courses from:
Certification Preparation (http://www.asq.org/cert/signup/prep/index.html)

Some sections collaborate with local community college or University to offer credit courses that map to ASQ certifications BOK. This is also a good idea because from local section point of view, this solves marketing, logistical issues.

Thanks for that link.
Here is one from University of Manitoba, Canada that offers
Certificate in Quality Management (http://www.umanitoba.ca/coned/mpcp/calendar/programs/qm.shtml)

Regards,
Govind.

Hi Govind - I'm a member of the Pittsburgh, PA chapter of ASQ and they have an active education program. I've taken the refreshers for CQA & CQE. PAssed the CQA without problem, and keep missing the CQE test because of sudden work schedule/task changes. Such as a decision to upgrade to ISO/TS 16949 for our July assesment, made in February.

Their current schedule can be viewed at: http://www.asqpgh.org/ed.htm

My understanding is that they have a good success rate for members who have taken the review course passing the tests.

Kevin,
Thanks for the feedback.
Your section is doing a good job in Education. Keep it up. I guess your cost of the courses includes Material.
What type of material you provide for the students?

While I was surfing the Web pages to see how various sections run refresher courses, I ran into:

SAN DIEGO ASQ SECT. 703 (http://www.asqsandiego.org/news/aug03edmail.htm)

Scroll down the page to look at their ASQ Certification Vs Learning Module matrix. Interesting approach.

They seem to take a module approach to Certification preparation. It is generally a good idea.Only problem I foresee is the Cognitive level of the module in a given BOK.

Example: Auditing may be at the Knowledge level for CQE. But Synthesis level for CQA.

Iam not sure how they handle this difference. They may chose to teach for the highest cognitive level to cover any certification.

Anyway, I thought it is interesting and worth sharing with our Cove users.

Regards,
Govind.

I recall taking a CQE Refresher course at one of the local colleges a couple of years back. The length was 36 hours spread out over 12 weeks. The cost was in the $300-$400 range.
I found it pretty much useless as the instructor couldn't speak English very well! It turned out he did know his stuff; once I figured out what the heck he was saying. :mad:
Aside from that I've had instructors make their own books and force you to buy them for the course. This way they can mark up the price of their books and make additional money!

This is definitely an area of weakness for my small section (614). I did have one person come to me this year requesting training for CQE. But with only one person requesting, and no one willing to teach, we weren't able to do anything. Then I discovered our neighboring section (Seattle) was going to offer classes, and I passed that material on to the person requesting. Unfortunately, even Seattle could not get enough students together.

One thing that ASQ on the whole might want to look at is some form of e-learning sessions. I know from experience with students in college stats classes that distance learning of statistics can be tough, but perhaps in this case is better than just trying to read a book on your own.

(Section Chair, 614)

Steve,
It is a challenging situation. Both Volunteer Chair and Marketing Chair has to support Education Chair to make this happen.

I will share some of our section experience shortly.

Regards,
Govind.

Steve,
It is a challenging situation. Both Volunteer Chair and Marketing Chair has to support Education Chair to make this happen.

I will share some of our section experience shortly.

Regards,
Govind.

What Volunteer Chair? What Marketing Chair? What Education Chair?

Our section currently has 4 active volunteers -

The chair, who also takes dinner meeting reservations and updates the web page.

The vice chair, who is also the secretary, who is also the newsletter editor and the scholarship chair.

The treasurer.

One volunteer (who we rely on for everything else). :whip:

Well. Chair, Secretary, Treasurer,membership chair, Nomination chair and audit chair are mandatory positions. If have covered this before June 30th, you are good to go with wearing multiple hats.

Attracting volunteers is not an easy task. This is even more challenging in small sections of 300 and less members.

Positions like: Program Chair, Education Chair, Certification Chair, treasurer are pretty much a year round job. It is important to line up volunteers with more time availability to handle these jobs "effectively".

It is always interesting to know how different sections operate. I will initiate more appropriate threads this weekend.

Regards,
Govind.