QA and FutureLearn partner to offer affordable, fully-online technology certification microcredentials
Learners can study for these industry-recognised certifications in their own time, wherever they are
QA, the UK’s leading tech talent and training organisation, is partnering with leading social learning platform, FutureLearn.com, for the first time to offer a range of online courses, the first of which are two online non-credit microcredentials: the ‘PRINCE2® 6th Edition: Foundation Certification with Official Manual and Exam’ and the ‘ITIL® 4 Foundation Certificate with Official Manual and Exam’.
The microcredentials, created by QA and accredited by PeopleCert on behalf of AXELOS, are now open for enrolment on the FutureLearn platform and learning will commence on Monday 7th September 2020. Both courses have been designed to ensure that they provide effective and engaging online introductions to PRINCE2® and ITIL®, through a wide range of virtual exercises, case-study applications, and practice exam questions.
Paul Geddes, CEO at QA said “Technology skills are in high demand, with the UK still facing a very real skills gap in this space. That is why this initiative is something that really excites me. We get to work with FutureLearn to take technology certifications and skills out to a new set of learners in an accessible and convenient delivery style. I know these will prove to be very popular courses.”
Justin Cooke, Chief Content and Partnerships Officer at FutureLearn said: “We’re delighted to partner with QA, recognised leaders in the tech talent space, to deliver these new, accessible, expert-led online courses that give learners an opportunity to earn recognised certificates demonstrating their new credentials. Our hope is that these courses will provide learners with the tools they need to upskill, reskill, and boost their careers in such high-growth areas as project management and IT services.”
PRINCE2® is one of the world’s most widely used project management methods and ITIL® is a set of practices for IT service management. Both are based on industry best-practice, and the methods taught can be applied to any business irrespective of its size, industry sector, geographic location or culture.
The ‘PRINCE2® 6th Edition: Foundation Certification with Official Manual and Exam’ and ‘ITIL® 4 Foundation Certificate with Official Manual and Exam’ courses cost £595 and £532 (inc VAT) respectively and include access to official course manuals as well as the final online exams to gain the certificates. Once teaching for the course commences, learners will be able to study flexibly and at their own pace online: from the point they enrol, they can access the study materials and exam for 12 months and learn at any convenient time.
About FutureLearn
Here at FutureLearn, our purpose is to transform access to education. We do that by partnering with over a quarter of the world’s top universities to support over 13 million learners across the globe to develop skills and achieve their personal and professional goals. We’re a leading social learning platform founded in December 2012 by The Open University and are now jointly owned by The Open University in the UK and The SEEK Group. We use design, technology and partnerships to create enjoyable, credible and flexible short online courses and microcredentials, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. In addition to top universities, we also partner with leading organisations such as Accenture, the British Council, CIPD, Raspberry Pi and Health Education England (HEE), as well as being involved in government-backed initiatives to address skills gaps such as The Institute of Coding and the National Centre for Computing Education.
About QA
QA is the UK’s leading tech talent and training organisation. We are true specialists in technology – providing a comprehensive suite of talent and training services helping individuals and companies to be winners in the digital revolution.
More than 270,000 people learnt with QA last year. We deliver services to over 6,000 corporate clients, representing over 85% of the FTSE 250. Our London campus is the largest professional training facility for technology skills in Europe and we have 22 other state-of-the-art training sites. We have leading practices in Agile, Cyber Security, Cloud and DevOps – as well as many other tech specialisms – and attract some of the very best technology trainers from across the globe. In addition, our deep-rooted vendor partnerships mean that we deliver 70% of the UK’s cloud training and are a Microsoft Gold delivery partner.
We specialise in the people side of tech transformation – our learning programmes help businesses to upskill or reskill their existing employees and our talent services are used to identify, recruit and skill-up diverse tech talent for our clients.
This unique combination of training and talent services means we command an exclusive position as the go-to educator for the world’s tech giants.
About the courses
The ‘PRINCE2® 6th Edition: Foundation Certification with Official Manual and Exam’ will provide learners with in-depth knowledge of PRINCE2® along with the confidence to pass the official PRINCE2® 6th Edition Foundation exam, which is included in the course. Learners will be able to apply the knowledge gained from the course and tailor it to specific projects, covering the four integrated components of PRINCE2® – the principles, themes, processes and project environment together with the management roles required in a PRINCE2® project.
‘ITIL® 4 Foundation Certificate with Official Manual and Exam’ will provide comprehensive first-level training for anyone involved in provision, support, or delivery of IT-enabled services in a modern digital organisation. It teaches the fundamentals of the very latest version of the most widely adopted guidance on IT service management (ITSM) in the world, and is particularly relevant for those looking to progress their career in roles such as technical support staff, technical analysts and IT project managers.
