Avixa, formerly Infocomm, has a standard certification known as the Certified Technology Specialist (CTS for short). There are also more advanced certifications for design (CTS-D) and Install (CTS-I). Quality of the test notwithstanding, I personally believe AV technicians who achieve and maintain certification are showing off that they are willing to put in a little extra effort, and in that respect, it is a nice badge of honor.
Now, the part I have a gripe with: Avixa’s website mostly sucks. They used to maintain a PDF list of renewal unit providers (renewal units are continuing education credits you need to maintain the certification). They have since moved to a slow, searchable but not sortable, table of providers on their website. The table does not contain any links to providers for easy access to learners to get to the desired resource. Additionally, they dishonestly list free manufacturer training on their site behind a membership paywall – if you are a new CTS holder, you might think you need to pay for these courses when really they are freely accessible offsite.
To help combat some of my complaints, I crowdsourced some on demand trainings that are freely available and added them to a list I’m maintaining on GitHub. Eventually I would like to make the resource more easily sortable. But as it stands, there are more than 200 RUs worth of credits here for prospective learners. I call it the CTS-RU-List – the big free list of renewal units.
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