How to Locate CHES® Continuing Education Courses
Hi. I'm Kaitlyn Matthews, continuing education coordinator at NCHEC. I'd like to give you a brief tutorial today on how to navigate the NCHEC website to find category 1 credits. First, you'll want to go to our website which is www.nchec.org. The next step would be to go to the continuing education tab and then click on credit activities. This will take you to our search engine and our listing of category 1 events. You can see the top of the page gives you some search options which will narrow the selection of courses.
Search by Event Type
Your first option is to select by event type so in the dropdown, you can choose conference workshops or seminars. Those are live events that you attend in person. They would also include webinars. Then we have journal, self-study, and web-based events. Those would all be courses that you do at your own pace.
Search by Provider
The next option would be to search by provider. If you know a specific provider that you're looking for courses or events through, you can scroll down this list and click on the one that you're looking for and then choose apply filters and that will narrow your search to include only courses or events offered through that provider. Just because a provider is on the list does not mean that all their courses are approved for CHES® category 1 credits. If you navigate away from the course that you were interested in and find others, you want to make sure that the course indicates that they are awarding CHES® category 1 credits because many of our providers offer other types of credits as well.
Search by Price
Your next option is to use the program cost range and cost of CECH range. The program cost range is the fee that the provider charges for the event or the course, and the cost of CECH range is the amount the provider charges to process your credits. I know a lot of people are looking for low-cost or free CHES® courses, so I'm going to show you how to search for free courses. In the program cost range you're going to enter 0 in the from and 0 in the to, and then in the costs of CECH range you're going to enter 0 in the from and 0 in the two and hit apply filters, and this will bring up courses that are offered free of charge.
Search by Number of Credits Offered
Your next option would be to search by the number of continuing education credits approved. Say you're looking for courses that offer at least 10 credits. You could enter 10 in the "approved" from range and 20 in the "to" range, hit apply filters, and that'll bring up courses that have at least 10 credits.
Searching for Advanced Level Credits
Another option is to search by advanced-level credits. MCHES® are typically looking for these, so you can do the same thing and put in whatever number of advanced credits you're looking for.
Search by Topics
The next option is to search by topics. We have a long list of topics that our courses relate to, so you can choose a topic you're interested in, hit apply filters, and that will narrow your search for events and courses that relate to that topic.
Search by Continuing Competency Requirement
The final way to search is by continuing competency. For those of you who are now required to get the continuing competency requirement, you can select yes and then hit apply filters, and that will bring up courses or events that only offer continuing competency credits.
Search by Continuing Competency Requirement
Now I want to show you how to navigate the actual course section of the website. So the first column is the title of event, so you can click on the title of the event and this will take you to the details page. It'll show you:
- Who the provider is
- Their provider ID
- How many credits are being awarded
- What the cost is
- The contact person
Registering for Events
The next column is the location of the event, including the state and city of the event and start dates for live events, and then the link. This link will take you directly to the provider's registration page. Each provider has different registration requirements, so you want to make sure that you follow the registration information on their website. Typically you would have to create an account, pay a fee if that's required, and include your MCHES® ID or CHES® ID number somewhere in the registration information so they can report your credits to NCHEC. The next column is the program cost. If there's a fee to take the course or event, the cost of CECH, if there's a processing fee for the credits.
CECH Approved vs Advanced CECH Approved Credits
The CECH approved is the maximum number of credits you can receive for attending. The advanced CECH approved is the portion of the total that are awarding advanced level, so for instance this event has the same amount of total and advanced so you would get the maximum of 14.5 advanced level for that event. Then we have continuing competency credits. That would be the portion of the total that is awarding continuing competency, and then the topic the event or course relates to.
How to Contact NCHEC
If you have any further questions, you can contact Kaitlyn Matthews, NCHEC's Continuing Education Coordinator.