Appraiser Continuing Education

It's almost time for me to renew my appraiser's license again, so it's time for me to take 30 more course hours.  Since I have been doing this since 1991 when licensing began I have taken about 15 hours X 24 years = 360 hours of continuing education that I estimated have cost me over $ 6,000.  That doesn't include my initial appraisal education, my traditional education, conferences or presentations as an instructor.

I'm now taking online courses through a major educational vendor.  One of the courses is a 7 hour course that I have so far spent 5 hours on and I'm less than half finished.  So whoever has put this course together is not concerned about how long it takes for me, who is at least an average appraisal student, to complete.  So I must conclude that the vendor is focused not on giving me 7 hours of continuing education but on their own high opinion of the course content.

It's my opinion that the this touted course and others that I have taken is more like reading a text book on the subject, which may be useful, but the course content is clearly too ambitious for a 7 hour CE course.  With this much material they could have put together a 20-hour live course. 

My point is that online CE courses, now with more and more videos and "interactive" content, are becoming intolerable.  Taking a 7 hour live course is difficult, it's a long time to sit through that many hours in a classroom, but the 7 hour online courses that are being developed are becoming much worse. 

Just because you can add interactive content to a CE course doesn't mean that you should or that the modified course will end up being better than the un-enhanced version.

It used to be the case that you could sit down and work your way through an online CE course and gain some valuable knowledge from it.  The text book approach to online education currently being used "throws the book" at you and often asks you some ridiculously twisted questions. After 5 to 10 full bullet point highlighted pages of detailed content does the author really expect you to be able to remember every point made to pass a quiz?  Give me a break.

So it appears that online course vendors are hell bent on driving their customers away.  The problem I see is that CE courses are supposed to provide a supplemental education on topics I am already familiar with but vendors, I guess to differentiate themselves, are offering course work that's not supplemental. 

Presenting information on specialized appraisal topics like; appraising golf courses, appraising hotel / motels and appraising convenience stores may take only 7 hours to present in an online course but in my opinion it takes more time than that to properly present the subjects.

For more appraisal information contact Glenn J. Rigdon MA, MRICS, ASA is a Las Vegas / Henderson Nevada based appraiser who can be contacted via email or via his business website known as Appraiser Las Vegas  (http://www.appraiserlasvegas.com), or you can also click on “Contact Us” on the home page of this website or visit my public profile at LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/glenn-rigdon-ma-mrics-asa/1a/30b/879/

Article source: http://www.appraisalarticles.com/General-Appraisal-Articles/Appraiser-Education/4552-Appraiser-Continuing-Education.html