Online certification training: Quality and assessment

Abstract

Digital training has become essential after the massive integration of digital technologies in education and training. Certifying trainings is appreciated by recruiters, and remains therefore a means towards professional evolution and can open the way to a job for job seekers and a sesame for people in reconversion.A wide range of online training offers are proposed, some are free, others are concentrated in a few days and are not selective, this leads us to wonder sometimes about the value of these trainings: the quality of the training as well as the weight of the certification are linked just to the price of the training or the labeling of the training organization is also a guarantee of quality. Is obtaining the certificate limited to attendance during the training? Isn’t it conditioned by its own requirements in terms of evaluation of learning/acquired skills? How could the underestimation of certificate evaluation harm the credibility of online training in the long term?This study is therefore a state of the art analysis of a sample of certifying online training MOOCs, with a strong focus on certification assessment practices at the intersection of learning, teaching, and curriculum.