Model for Characterizing and Creating Certificate Programs in Technology-SpecificAreas

摘要

Rapid changes in technology have resulted in an increasing need to transfer stateof the art technical concepts to practicing technologists. These technical professionals and their employers seek in-depth educational opportunities to acquire advanced knowledge of emerging technologies; but often they cannot afford the time and money to pursue advanced degree programs. To satisfy industry's need to assimilate state-of-the-art concepts in shortened time spans, educational institutions have developed certificate programs. A certificate program is a set of one or more courses related to a particular technical area. Certificate programs are less extensive than degree programs. In this paper, we present a model for analyzing and creating certificate programs. We apply the model to the analysis of certificate programs offered by four schools in areas related to software engineering. Then we use our 'meta-model' to generate a generic model for the creation of graduate certificate programs in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Lastly, we discuss issues related to the creation of certificate programs.