JACKSONVILLE, July 28, 2015 – The International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards (IBCCES) has partnered with over 240 universities and several of the most renowned Autism experts in the world to develop a comprehensive training and certification program for educators, licensed professionals and healthcare workers.  This state of the art online training program will be delivered through a new Learning Management System (LMS) for professionals who work around individuals with autism. The program equips schools, clinics and paraprofessionals with the latest information in autism through accessible, up-to-date online training with over 650+ hours of position-specific, AOTA, APTA-approved continuing education courses.

With 1 in 68 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), many school districts are investing in autism-specific training and certification for their staff members. IBCCES’ new LMS is vital in this process, allowing a full district to train its staff simultaneously at a low cost and with minimal interruption to valuable classroom instruction time. In addition, the new LMS offers robust district administrator dashboards for easy management of multiple trainings and certifications by the district staff.

Training modules are available for specific positions such as speech and language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, audiologists, school psychologists, SPED teachers, classroom teachers, paraprofessionals and school administrators. All LMS trainings provide IBCCES-approved continuing education hours, which apply toward the Certified Autism Specialist (CAS) designation.

“Even though our overall customer satisfaction rating exceeded 94 percent, we chose to invest in a state of the art LMS that will make our customer experience even better,” Myron Pincomb, IBCCES board chairman, said. “Our customers wear a lot of hats during a typical day and have limited time for training. Our goal is to make sure their learning experience is second to none and the certification process is seamless from start to finish.”

In early 2015, IBCCES launched Phase I of a district-wide Autism Training and Certification Program for education. Over 350 school districts representing all 50 states and 12 different countries participated in the Phase I Pilot Program and gave feedback on exactly what they wanted in a learning management system.

“As a district director, I know parents are expecting my staff to be trained and able to make decisions regarding their child with Autism,” Donna Perkins, CAS Director of Special Education at Burkburnett Independent School District, said. “At BISD we made the decision to invest in a core team of Certified Autism Specialists to be certified in our district. This decision also made it possible for our staff to receive the certification, as well as pertinent information and current research regarding Autism.”

LMS benefits include career development and personal growth, a streamlined training process, reduced training costs and adherence to compliance and regulatory guidelines. The platform additionally delivers content in a variety of formats to engage learners on multiple levels with many different learning styles, and is available for mobile devices.