PLA's

[MrPollo]

I had a question about TESC PLA's. Is it necessary to write a paper to get credit for the individual course or is credit based on your portfolio or does it depend on the course?

[bobaloo000]

I had a question about TESC PLA's. Is it necessary to write a paper to get credit for the individual course or is credit based on your portfolio or does it depend on the course?

I have taken three of these and received credit for all of them. You have to write a paper which they call a narrative. There is no way around them. Also make sure you submit your outline to your mentor, some of the mentors are very strict about following the course objectives. Others not so much and it is better to find out early.

The first one I took was ENG-216... Bus. Letter & Rep. Writing. This was also the easiest. My mentor was a socialist (really, it said so on her profile) and was originally from India. I'm telling you this because I don't recall her name but if anyone wants to do a PLA in this subject try and get her! My narrative for this was about 15 pages.

Next was CIS-317... File Management & Processing. Much tougher. The mentor had a specific format he wanted the narrative in and kept asking me to expand on information in the narrative. In the end the narrative was 32 pages!

I also just completed BUS-311... Business in Society. This one was in between the other two. My narrative was about 26 pages and my mentor was a stickler for following the course objectives. My previous two mentors were more liberal in allowing me to demonstrate my experience in a more general way.

End result I would recommend PLA if you feel strongly you have the experience. I have almost 25 years of experience working for financial institutions. I started out as a computer programmer, I have managed technical teams and ten years ago I moved over to the dark side (I became a user milelol: ) and helped to launch my firms Project Management Office where I managed both PM's and BA's. I also started up one of our first overseas QA teams so I have had a pretty diverse career and was confident I could satisfy the requirements for each. For me they were significantly less time than taking a course.