Again I had a chance to talk with John Voorhees the man behind the new direction of ASPE-IT. John has been working diligently to bring some new and exiting courses to ASPE-IT.

John, what are some of the new things we can look forward to in the coming months from ASPE-IT?

To start off we will be offering the new security CISSP certification through CISSP certification prep courses. Now Governments and major industries are establishing standards around security making it the next big IT job market. Compliance in securing data will result in the government pushing billions of dollars towards the security field, which will help spread it to the industrial and private fields as well. The security field is not a short-term concern, it’s the start of a new issue that every major company and government in the world will have to deal with from now on. CISSP is the highest credible certification, and proof that an individual is competent in managing a companies security needs. There is no other certification like it at the moment and it is being updated all the time. New security certifications will emerge due to its popularity, but I suspect they will be more vendor specific. I look forward to developing more skills based courses as they come into fruition.

Obviously we can not fail to mention the courses that have already been really exciting so far this year. SharePoint Project Management and Administration 2010 training courses have been in great demand, and I’m really excited for the courses we have scheduled.

Some other courses we will be offering in the coming months include Windows 7 MCITP and MCTS certifications,  along with an expanded Windows 7 curriculum, which will include a variety of new courses.

Real Skills, Real Results, Real IT?

What does this mean?

I snagged our fearless leader John Voorhees who has over 12 years of IT training experience, to talk about what the new face of ASPE-IT and the IT Training world in general.

John, what’s going on in IT training right now?

Economic downturn and jobless recovery have continued to foster an approach to IT training that is increasingly focused on minimally interactive, “canned” self-paced offerings, feature-functionality oriented classroom training, and simple simulations for testing and assessment.

We are working with subject matter experts to develop learning around the Real IT approach to address this deficiency. The core focus of Real IT is to get away from the typical “feature-function” oriented training to focus on actual task and challenge-based scenarios that the typical IT professional would encounter on the job.

The key to making IT learning “Real” is a highly instructor-student interactive model, with lab-intensive practice of core I-C-M (Installation, Configuration and Maintenance) and troubleshooting skills. When you pair instructors with real-world experience in the topic at hand, and content that is real task and challenge scenario focused, a learn by doing experience is what emerges. Real IT gives the student experience in the classroom that they would normally only get on the job. This is mission critical.

I don’t think students take training courses to memorize a manual or understand every whistle and bell that is part of a product. They train to learn and master skills to be able to effectively manage their company’s IT infrastructure.  The key to this mastery is familiarity with the scenarios they will encounter and prior/ongoing practice in handling them.