Are you looking for a Project Management Education to satisfy PMI’s 35 contact hours project management education attendance requirement to sit for the PMP Exam? Do you plan to take the PMP exam and looking for the most convenient project management education online options? Or, are you willing to advance your career in project management and therefore you are exploring the project management education alternatives to enhance your knowledge? If your answer is yes, then this article is the ideal guide for you!
PMP stands for Project Management Professional and this is a certificate provided PMI Institute to the professionals who fulfill the PMP eligibility requirements. Once eligibility requirements are confirmed the candidate must pass the PMP certification exam successfully. One of the solid requirements of the PMP exam is attending in a 35 contact hours project management education.
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PMP is the most recognized project management certificate in the world since it provides its holders with credibility and boasts their profile ahead of their peers. A PMP certified would gain 20% more salary in comparison to a non-certified professional according to PMI latest salary survey. As a result of this significant variance, PMP gained special importance for those who seek to elevate their project management career.
You can review details about PMP Certification Process to learn more about how to become PMP certified.
After helping over 200,000 professionals in more than 180 countries with a 99.6% first attempt pass rate, we have prepared a seven-step PMP study plan. Read this PMP study plan and create your own best PMP study plan accordingly.
PMP Certification Prerequisites
Prerequisites are must-have conditions that professionals should achieve before they can apply for the PMP exam. PMP exam prerequisites involve three main conditions: experience, education and PM education. As a result of these prerequisites, exam seekers who don’t satisfy them are not allowed to sit for the exam.
PMP eligibility requirements include the following:
- If you have an undergraduate or above level of education, you must have 3+ years of project experience (4,500 hours)
- If you have a high school diploma or lower level of education, you must have 5+ years of project experience (7,500 hours)
- You must attend 35 contact hours of project management education.
You can test your eligibility through our PMP eligibility quiz.
Project Management Education Online
Recently, the demand for Project Management Education is growing fast, especially for online education options. This is due to their convenience in terms of time and location, as candidates who seek out PMP certification are usually busy working professionals. As a response to this growing need, many institutions and training organizations are now providing project management education online option to their students. However, as students start to search for the best alternative that suits their needs, they face the dilemma of having the variety but not knowing what to choose.
In this article we will cover these options and alternatives from two dimensions:
1- How can you earn 35 contact hours Project Management Education?
2- Why is Project Management Education Online option is better for full-time working professionals?
3- What are the key points to consider when you are attending a Project Management Education Online Option?
Now let’s move to the first dimension…
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Options For Earning 35 Contact Hours with Project Management Education
There are multiple methods to obtain your Project Management Education and its associated 35 contact hours for PMP Exam eligibility. These methods differ in terms of the way they are delivered, where they are delivered, and when you can attend them. With this complexity, their convenience varies from one method to the other considering factors like time, location, cost, and flexibility.
Mainly there are five main methods you can pick from to obtain the 35 contact hours. We’ve listed these main methods in the following part of this article and shed some light on each method’s pros and cons.
This review is presented in a simple manner so you can make your final decision with ease and confidence in light of the provided clarity.
1. Classroom Boot Camps for Project Management Education
The most common delivery method for obtaining project management education is the traditional PMP Classroom boot camps. This method offers a training course that satisfies the eligibility 35 contact hours in a concentrated fashion. Accordingly, in this method, a student has to attend in physical classrooms for a number of consecutive days ranges from 3 to 5 days. According to the number of days, the number of hours per day range from 4 to 9 hours. Thus this method is considered the most exhaustive method among all the provided methods.
At the same time, most of the providers of this method tend to price their courses in a very expensive way. Although this method may have the appeal of concentration in gaining more knowledge in a short time, it has clear side effects, including the following:
1- The need to free and dedicate the time that may reach a complete week on average in order to attend.
2- The student doesn’t have the flexibility of location
3- The student doesn’t have the flexibility of time
4- Expensive pricing
Finally, even though the main objective of having this concentrated training is to increase the student focus. It might lead to the reverse results due to the fact it doesn’t give the student the room to digest and practice the knowledge he just obtained.
2. Traditional Classroom Training
Another most common method of delivery is traditional classroom training where student attends training on a spread timeline. In this method, training schedule in less compressed and more spread across a number of weeks or maybe months. This way student has more time to digest learned knowledge and has the chance to practice the obtained knowledge. The method still satisfies the 35 contact hours. But instead of being concentrated in one week, it has a more relaxed timeline that ranges from 3 to 8 weeks. Even though this method has its merits it still shares some disadvantages of its predecessor including:
1- The need to free and dedicate a specific time in order to attend.
2- The student doesn’t have the flexibility of location
3- The student doesn’t have the flexibility of time
4- Expensive pricing
Also, the more relaxed timeline versions of this method may lead the students to lose track of their progress and become unable to relate knowledge blocks.
3. Dedicated Tutoring
In this method, the student attends solely with an instructor who spoon-feeds him the knowledge based on the student’s learning pace. The cost of this method depends on the student’s learning pace as they are charged per hour. The place of this method is usually decided by the tutor as well as the time. This method is usually the most expensive method. It provides some flexibility in terms of time, but not the degree of student pace. Also, while this method provides the student with fairly distributed knowledge transfer it fails to address his need for a customized schedule.
4. Virtual Classrooms
The virtual classrooms involve setting up a planned training boot camp to be delivered ‘live’ to students. Furthermore, virtual classrooms have a fixed schedule where an instructor delivers the training. At the same time, the student has to attend the training in the scheduled time. This option provides location convenience because the students can access the training from any place using internet connection. On the other hand, this method lacks the flexibility of time as the student cannot change sessions time according to his convenience.
5. Self-Paced Training
The self-paced training is a project management education online method that allows students to access training material anytime. Furthermore, self-paced training does not restrict students to a certain time or certain place, in other words, students can set their own schedule. As a result, students have the flexibility to learn at their own pace from any place and they can also readjust their schedule as they want. Besides the time flexibility, self-paced PMP online training has also location flexibility.
Why Project Management Education Online Is Better For Full-time Working Professionals?
Project Management Education Online methods offer exactly what full-time working professionals needs. Full-time working professionals have very limited spare time to use for their development. Yet, they are in desperate need for constant development so they won’t fall behind their peers. Thus, Project Management Education Online options provide flexibility in terms of location in case of virtual classrooms. In addition to time flexibility, they allow the students to return to the knowledge areas which they didn’t fully absorb. All of these and the cost-effectiveness of these methods makes them a perfect solution to the full-time working professionals learning problem.
Important Points to Consider When Selecting Project Management Education Online Program
Now we are moving to the last part of this article, where we will present you with some factors you need to consider while selecting your project management education online program option. Since there are dozens of providers which offers a variety of Project Management Education Online training courses delivered with different methods, it is difficult to decide which one to select without having the proper selection criteria. We’ve prepared a set of criteria to help you make the evaluation and selection easier.
These criteria and factors are summarized below for your reference, they include the following:
1. The quality of provider associated instructors
While all providers would say they’re the best project management education online provider what really counts is the set of instructors and experts they contract to develop and instruct their courses material. Providing a descriptive bio of instructors and experts boasts the confidence in this provider. This contains instructor/ expert background as a professional and trainer including his education and work experience. Not to mention if these details are verifiable it makes it more appealing. That being said, it’s more likely to reflect on the quality of project management education course material and content.
In general, not knowing who’s your instructor is a question mark, but in the case of online training, it is more of an issue. If your trainer never obtained PMP or never worked as a project manager how can he be a trustworthy instructor? Thus you should scratch all providers who hide their instructors’ names and bios to stay safe.
2. Success rate, feedback, and testimonials
Sounds like a default, right? While many professionals know that this is crucial to any selection, they usually fall in the trap of missing this factor or at least giving it lower importance. The success rate, the number of their students, their students’ feedback and testimonials give you a glimpse of how the project management education provider is performing in terms of quality.
Additionally, verifiable feedback and testimonials boast the trust level in these project management education online providers. This can be expressed in associating feedback and testimonials provided with their information after their consent.
3. Satisfying PMI project management education eligibility requirements
Another factor is to verify that the project management training online provider options meet PMI criteria for PMI’s PMP Certification eligibility criteria. This includes if the course satisfies the 35 contact hours or not and if it provides the complete content of project management knowledge or not.
4. Variety in the project management education course catalog
This one sounds a little odd, right? Well, professionals usually have different needs. For example, one professional may need a project management education online course that only covers knowledge, another may prefer a package that contains knowledge + exams. A provider who provides tailored or customized course catalog is a service-oriented provider. This means they assess different needs and develop their offerings accordingly.
5. The flexibility of learning offerings
Similar to the above point, this factor is related to the availability of different periods of subscriptions. Since various offerings both serve to professionals who can learn fast and have a good level of spare time to pay less and also to those who have limited time to complete the courses with no pressures.
6. Learning at your own pace option
Project management education providers who offer this option grants you an extreme level of convenience in terms of time. We have explained the benefits of this option in the previous section so we won’t state further details.
7. Provider offering prices
Now we are really stating the obvious here!
Project Management Education Online: Summary and Conclusion
We have discussed the benefits of enrolling for a project management education online option. Also, we have listed and discussed the benefits of different types of project management education options including online and traditional. In the end, we have listed a number of key factors and criteria to select the right project management education provider.
In conclusion, project management education online method always provides the flexibility of location while self-paced e-learning also provides time flexibility. Accordingly, to fulfill the PMP exam prerequisites in a flexible way, you should go for a self-paced PMP Online Education from a trusted provider.
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