Continuing Education: More Than Watercolor, Pottery, And Celine Dion
Continuing Education (CE) is a massive umbrella term which includes just about anything education-related beyond high school and undergraduate studies. It’s impossible to assign a dollar amount to the CE industry when even reading a technical manual or a book on how to get along with a co-worker who constantly sings Celine 
Dion tunes could qualify as CE. But CE is a lot more than that, and it’s a lot more than extended education or lifelong learning.
Professions such as teaching require regular professional development to maintain certification, but even when CE is not required, it may as well be. Anyone seeking to further their career or ensure they have the skills and knowledge to make themselves indispensable will take advantage of continuing education opportunities. If their employer doesn’t offer CE, employees can find it elsewhere.
Universities, corporations, and private training companies offer a host of CE opportunities for every industry and profession imaginable. Learning Stream has quite a few such customers using our class registration software to deliver CE opportunities. The University of South Carolina Office of Organizational and Professional Development holds classes on topics like cross cultural communication; Florida Gulf Coast University delivers business technology classes to its staff; and other organizations provide executive training for professionals in their community.
Programs that offer training to meet official CE requirements handle the results in various ways. Some must provide official reporting to governing bodies while others leave it to their students and trainees to self-report. In the second instance, programs will issue certificates to attendees—usually via email—or make reports available on request. Further, program administrators can give students access to print their own CE transcripts via a secure online access point. In some cases where official CE reporting is not offered or required, employees/students can print and share their class histories with supervisors during performance reviews.
In all cases, the key is collecting the proper data during the registration and attendance process, and then accessing the information that is generated on demand. When program administrators can anticipate information to collect at the beginning of the registration process, it generates myriad options for providing continuing education data later.
We would love to hear about your continuation education processes—what challenges you face in providing CE information and to whom. Just contact us.