Adobe authorised training partners are companies or individuals who offer commercial Adobe courses that are meeting high-quality standards required by Adobe company. In return, Adobe promotes its training partners via their company website and issues original certificates as a proof that student attended Adobe authorised course. These certificates are identical for all the students no matter where Adobe authorised training partner is located. That means that it is all the same if you attended a course in USA, Japan, Germany or Serbia.
Companies that meet Adobe quality standards are called Adobe authorised training centers (AATC) and individuals are Independent Adobe Certified Instructors (independent ACI).
Here are some of the quality standards companies and individuals has to meet in order to become AATP.
- All courses must be held by Adobe Certified Instructors (more on ACE and ACI web page)
- Legal copies of Adobe software
- The facility must be equipped with all the necessary equipment needed for offering high-quality courses.
You can check for yourself who are AATP in your area on Adobe Partner Finder page. Here is a list for AATPs in Serbia.
If some company or individual are not listed on this page, that means they are not an AATP. Unfortunately, there is a significant number of training companies that presents themselves as AATP but they are not. Training quality is questionable and, besides that, students are not receiving Adobe certificate after completing the training, but rather some worthless piece of paper. That is why such a list exists, so you can see for yourself what companies are a good choice for Adobe courses.
Also, you will see what courses some AATP are certified for. AATPs must certify for each and every course they plan to offer to customers. The more courses AATP is certified for, the better for students.
What does exactly mean to be Adobe certified?
There are a lot of people that are expert users of Adobe applications. But how can a mere beginner recognise if someone is an expert for real or not? That is why such certification programmes exist. Not only with Adobe, but with Microsoft, Autodesk, Cisco, and other leaders in the IT field.
In order to become certified instructors, it is quite common for candidates to attend some specialized webinars or on-site training that are organised by these companies. Some of those are expensive and may be organized in some foreign countries. Also, there are always some exams candidate has to pass in order to become certified. Those exams are organised in authorised testing centers and usually are hard to pass. All in all, it takes a lot of time, money and personal effort to become certified in any IT field. It is the same with Adobe certificates. More information on this you can find on page about ACEs and ACIs.
In addition to this, certified instructors participate some special programmes like beta testing and often has the opportunity to communicate with people that are directly involved in the development of Adobe applications. Most often those are senior managers for some of the applications so ACIs are able to learn directly from the source, let us say. People from Adobe often organise webinars on various topics and some of the information presented there never reach a wider audience.
In other words, ACIs truly has a deeper understanding of Adobe applications than instructors that are not certified. Not only ACIs invested their own time, money and personal effort, but Adobe company is also investing in keeping them up to date with all the important information they need to know. People that are not certified simply do not have access to abundant resources Adobe is giving to ACIs, and that is of paramount importance.
After all said, it is clear that is far better if you learn from ACI than some non-certified instructor.
How does Adobe authorised training look like?
All Adobe authorised courses must follow „Classroom in a Book“ books that are official literature for Adobe courses. Every student should receive one copy of the book during the training.
After completing the course, an instructor will ask you to fill in a short questionary about quality of training and whether or not you are satisfied with the training, whether you have any suggestions, etc. Your answers to these questions are available to Adobe people so they can have reviewed them and get feedback info on training quality for each and every Adobe Authorised Training Partner in the world. If you find instructor did not ask of you to fill in any questionary please insist on it because there is no other way for you to get your Adobe certificate. Adobe certificates are available only after you complete that questionary.