Offering Continuing Education (CE) credits formalizes professional training and development, transforming internal knowledge into a recognized currency for career advancement and regulatory compliance. Organizations seeking to validate their educational content must follow a systematic approach to accreditation and program design. This formalization ensures that your offerings meet the rigorous standards necessary to be accepted by state and national bodies. This guide details the steps required to gain the authority to issue these valuable credits.
Understanding Continuing Education Credits
Continuing Education credits serve as a standardized measure of a professional’s commitment to maintaining competence and current knowledge within their field. These credits are required by many professions to ensure practitioners remain up-to-date with evolving standards, technology, and regulations necessary for license renewal. The specific unit of measure varies depending on the profession and the regulatory body overseeing it.
Professional Licensing Boards
Requirements for professional development are established by state or national licensing boards and professional associations. These bodies dictate the minimum number of credits a licensee must earn within a specific renewal cycle, often every one to three years. Since the boards hold the ultimate authority, a training program must align with their content and administrative standards to be accepted for credit.
Types of Credit Units
Three common unit types are used across different industries to quantify professional learning:
- The Continuing Education Unit (CEU) is a widely recognized measure, often used for cross-disciplinary training, which may be granted through a national accrediting organization.
- Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits are reserved for physicians and are governed by specific medical accreditation bodies.
- Professional Development Hours (PDHs) are predominantly used by engineers and architects to track their required professional learning.
Calculating Contact Hours
The value of a CE credit is rooted in the instructional time a learner spends interacting with the content. The standard conversion for the Continuing Education Unit is that one CEU is equivalent to ten contact hours of approved instruction. A contact hour is defined as one full clock hour, or 60 minutes, of direct participation in a structured learning activity. This calculation strictly excludes non-instructional periods, such as breaks, meals, and administrative time.
Determine Your Accreditation Strategy
Gaining the authority to issue credits requires a clear strategy, as no single accreditation body serves all professions. Organizations must choose a pathway that balances the rigor of the application process with the necessary breadth and depth of recognition for their target audience. The choice often involves seeking narrow approval from a specific board or broad, multi-industry recognition from a national standard-setter.
Direct Board Approval
This highly focused pathway involves seeking approval from specific state or national professional boards, such as a Board of Nursing or a state’s Real Estate Commission. This method ensures credits will be accepted by every licensee in that specific jurisdiction. The application process is often profession-specific and must be repeated for each board you wish to serve. Direct approval is advantageous if your educational focus is highly specialized and targets a single licensed profession.
National Accreditation
An alternative is to pursue accreditation from a national oversight body like the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training (IACET). IACET accreditation confirms adherence to the ANSI/IACET Standard, a rigorous quality framework for instructional design and administration. This designation grants the authority to issue IACET CEUs, which are widely accepted across multiple states and professions, providing a broad, portable credential that increases market reach.
Joint Providership
A third, less resource-intensive option is to enter a joint providership or co-sponsorship agreement with an existing accredited provider. Your organization develops the content while the accredited partner lends its authority to issue the credits. This arrangement allows you to offer accredited education immediately without undergoing the lengthy accreditation process, though it requires sharing revenue and ceding final compliance oversight to the partner.
Design the Credit-Worthy Curriculum
Accrediting bodies require a structured curriculum design that demonstrates educational quality and the ability to verify learning transfer. A foundational requirement is the development of measurable and observable learning outcomes, typically written using action verbs that align with Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vague terms such as “understand” are avoided in favor of concrete objectives like “analyze” or “demonstrate.”
Content must directly support these formalized learning outcomes. The calculation of contact hours must be precise, and non-instructional time, including introductions or breaks, must be strictly excluded from the final credit calculation. The integrity of the course hinges on the alignment between the stated objectives, the delivered content, and the actual time spent in the learning environment.
Accreditation standards mandate that providers implement assessment methods to verify that learning has occurred. Verification can take the form of a pre-test and post-test comparison, a final examination, or a practical skills demonstration. Successful completion criteria, such as a minimum passing score, must be clearly defined and communicated to all learners before the course begins.
Instructor qualifications are heavily scrutinized and must be documented to confirm subject-matter expertise and instructional competency. Many professional boards require instructors to have a combination of active professional experience in the field and demonstrated teaching experience. This ensures that the professional knowledge imparted is current and effectively delivered to the adult learning audience.
Establish Administrative and Record-Keeping Protocols
Maintaining operational integrity requires robust systems for managing participant data and compliance documentation. Accredited providers must implement a clear protocol for verifying attendance. For live virtual courses, this may involve monitoring real-time video engagement or requiring participants to enter verification codes announced intermittently.
For in-person events, attendance is typically tracked through staff-monitored sign-in sheets, badge scanning, or QR code systems. Once a learner successfully meets the completion criteria, the organization must issue an official certificate of completion. This document must contain specific information, including the provider’s name, the learner’s unique ID, the course title, the date of completion, and the exact number of CEUs or contact hours awarded.
Secure and long-term record retention is a non-negotiable requirement, as licensing boards conduct audits to confirm compliance. National standards, such as those set by IACET, require that all learner records be retained for a minimum of seven years. These records must include administrative data, copies of course outlines, instructor resumes, and participant completion information, along with a documented process for handling appeals or complaints.
Market and Price Your Continuing Education Program
The business strategy for a CE program must center on clearly communicating the unique value of the accredited offering to the target professional audience. Pricing strategies should move beyond a simple cost-plus model and employ a value-based approach that justifies the fee based on the professional outcome and compliance security it delivers. Tiered pricing models are common, offering different levels of access or content, such as a premium tier that includes one-on-one coaching or bundled courses.
Subscription models that offer unlimited access to a library of accredited courses for a flat annual fee are also effective for certain professions, promoting recurring revenue and encouraging continued engagement. The marketing message must emphasize the quantifiable benefit to the professional, such as the number of credits earned and the specific license renewal requirement they satisfy. Accreditation is a powerful differentiator that should be highlighted as an assurance of quality.
Marketing efforts should utilize digital channels that reach professionals directly. Email marketing is a highly cost-effective tool for nurturing leads and announcing new course offerings. Social media platforms, especially LinkedIn, are valuable for targeted advertising and content marketing that establishes your organization as a thought leader in the field. All promotional materials must explicitly state the specific credit type and the name of the recognized accrediting body to build trust and confirm the program’s utility.