muppet

Hi

Has anyone out there submitted a Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) to the Australian Computer Society (ACS)?
Can you tell me whats involved?
What info do you need and how long does it take?
Is it wise to appoint an agency to do the work or just do it yourself?

thanks

anya4oz

Yeah, about a year ago.

Apart from providing proof of your degree/training etc in any other subjects (degree certs, academic transcripts etc), you have to get the list of ACS 'Core Body of Knowledge' (CBK) topics and write about what experience you have in each one, providing examples of what you did and, most important, what you *learnt* from doing it (eg coding, networks you designed, tech specs etc).

Employer references and/or statements about your work are very useful indeed for this, even from a peer worker. BTW, ask any peer workers who are members of the UK BCS to give you a reference, if you can.

It's also worth including any self-training or personal research you are doing (eg setting up a home PC network, mugging up about IT security) as IT is pretty competitive in Oz these days and the more rounded experience you can show, the better.

For CBK topics where you have no experience at all, it's OK to write 'My work so far has not included this area' or whatever. However, if you sit down & think about it, you may find (as we did) that for most sections there's *something* you can dredge up - from some project deep in your past, where maybe you were only peripherally involved. Still worth a mention.

They key thing is to prove that you learned as much from your 'on-the-job' experience as you would if you'd done the IT/Comp Sci degree.

Submitted to ACS about mid April 2003, got results about mid June ISTR.

Feel free to PM me with any specific questions.

Good luck!

Anya.

wmoore

On top of Anya's comments, don't be fooled by the RPL form. In fact you can pretty much ignore the form and just start on a blank page because you'll never fit all that info in to the boxes!
I posted mine off a couple of weeks ago - 16,000 words including the project reports. I was spending a couple of hours a day on it for about 3 weeks and getting nowhere so took a week off work to get it cracked off - well worth it too. I reckon I must have put 100 hours into it all told.

As for an agency: there are those out there who say if you give them the info they will flesh it out but realistically only you can do it because only you know what you have done and learned - there's that word again

If you're like me and you don't use some of the big words that the ACS like, I would suggest a bit of reading. I found a great site for translating this garbage into English and then it makes you realise that you do it every day but just don't use those words to describe it. Have a look at www.wikipedia.org

I managed to write something for every topic, although a couple of them were only about 500 words. Others were between 1000 - 1500.

Definitely add some references in that say what projects you have been involved with, etc. Unfortunately it might be references that let me down but we'll find out in a month or so.

Hope this helps muppet. Good luck with it and try not to get too stressed:scared:

badri

I did the same for ACS RPL.

Took some time off, cracked the whole thing.

I submitted all relevant information like training certificates etc to prove that I have learnt enough.

Be specific when you say I did this or that. Don't use the words I was a team member of this or that.

They would like to know what you specifically learnt ..
Hope this helps

muppet

Thanks for all your input everybody... definately useful info... whats the best way to start.. just download the RPL form from the ACS site?

wmoore

I went through all the items on the CBOK and wrote a couple of words to remind me of something I had done that would relate to that item. When I'd finished I fleshed it all out, explaining what I had done and how it taught me to understand the item in question.
There is a lot of overlap too and I think you have to be careful to write the right parts in the right places (right?!?). By that I mean that you might, for example, have managed a software engineering project so you should write up the project management parts in one section and the software engineering parts in another. This sounds like common sense but it's really easy to start waffling once you get going. You might not think so now, looking at the forms but you will, trust me .

Billabong

Muppet,

I did pretty much the same as the others that have posted.

Don't underestimate it and make sure you have all the relevant bits of paperwork, references etc that you need and get certified copies of them to send.

Good luck