Earning a PD Certificate for Educators

Transcript: Earning a PD Certificate for Educators

Hello and welcome to the IRIS Center. The purpose of this video is to acquaint you with IRIS PD Certificates for Educators. Using this feature, educators can work through a wide variety of our modules and—after completing a pretest and posttest—receive a certificate that verifies IRIS Module completion. You can access this portion of our site by clicking on the PD Options tab—which is at the top of every page—and by selecting PD Certificates for Educators from the drop-down menu. This takes you to the PD Certificates for Educators landing page, which we are on now. This is one of the few places on the IRIS site where you will be required to set up an account with a username and password.

If you’d like to review the modules before setting up your account, select the Available Modules link from the left navigation bar, which will take you to a list of all the modules with certificates. Note that you can narrow your search by using the filter to the left. For each available module, you can see the title and the approximate number of hours it will take to complete the module, which will be included on your certificate. You can also learn more about each module by clicking on the title. We provide a brief summary as well as the learning objectives. Click the purple Add to Cart button to select the module and check out. This process is very similar to online shopping. If you have not yet set up your account, you will notice that the checkout page will prompt you to do so.

Once you’ve set up your account and selected the module, you’ll be taken to the My Account landing page. Here you have the ability to access the modules in your account, double-check your account information, and review your order history. You can also click on the Help & Support icon to view the answers to some frequently asked questions.

I am going to click on the green Professional Development icon to get started. Notice that your account landing page, as well as the other navigation options, is easily accessible using the colored tabs here at the top. When you are logged into your account, the My Professional Development page will allow you to see a list of the modules you have added to your account. Once you have added a module to your account, you have 90 days to complete it. This list of modules contains information such as your pretest score, the number of pages you have reviewed, your posttest score, and the number of days you have left before the module expires. There is also a My Progress button that displays an overview of your progress for each module. We’ll come back to this button in a bit.

When you’re ready to start a module, click the purple Take Pretest button. Pretests are designed to assess your existing knowledge of the content covered in the IRIS Module. You have one opportunity to take the pretest. You are not expected to attain a perfect score, or even a high score. When you have completed the module, you will take a posttest to measure how much you have learned and to demonstrate mastery of the related competencies. When you’re ready to take the pretest, click Get Started.

When you have finished the pretest, you can work through the module at your own pace and monitor your progress using the My Progress page. Here you can see your completion percentage along with a detailed section breakdown that marks off sections and pages as they are completed. Note that if you work through the module in multiple settings, you will need to log in each time or your progress will not be recorded. After finishing the module, you will take the posttest. You have the option of taking the posttest three times.

You can choose to have your pretest and posttest scores included on your certificate. If you have taken the posttest more than once, your highest posttest score will be recorded. You must complete a posttest to generate your certificate. Once the certificate has been created, no further posttests can be accessed. In addition to printing the certificate, we recommend that you also save it as a PDF. When we remove or replace outdated modules on our site, the associated products will also disappear. Saving the PDF ensures that you always have access to the certificate, even when the module is no longer available.

Well, that’s a brief explanation of how to earn an IRIS PD Certificate for Educators. Thank you for watching this video and, as always, we encourage you to explore the site on your own.