Innovative Model in New CCNA Instructor Training

CCNA is one of the most popular programs in the Cisco Networking Academy Program (CNAP) community. There has been a major update to the course since June 2007, which introduced two essentially different approaches (Discovery and Exploration) to prepare students for the CCNA industry certificate. Therefore, the corresponding instructor training would need to be modified coping with the changes. Obviously, dividing the trainees into two groups accordingly can be an easy and straightforward solution. However, it may not be practical everywhere, because this solution doubles the efforts from the training provider but meanwhile reduces the total training income in half. Consequently, in spite of urgent need of the training from Local Academies (LA), many training providers, such as Regional Academies (RA) and Cisco Academy Training Centres (CATC), would have to cancel the training sessions simply due to budget-ineffectiveness. This paper proposed an innovative instructor training model that would potentially resolved the dilemma by combining the two training groups together. The detailed training course plan is provided with prerequisites and assessment requirements. The proposed model has been implemented at Box Hill Institute (Australia) in January 2008. The outcomes and feedbacks from the trial session demonstrate that the proposed model is a cost-effective solution to the existing training problem. Some suggestions on modifications of the model are also discussed.