Turning workshops into academic credit
Professional workshop credit does not automatically become academic credit. Recognition depends on an institution's assessment of the learning and may involve a specific agreement or a policy for recognising prior learning.
Institutional assessment
One AMWA member reported in 2013 that 16 workshops, each involving three hours of homework and three hours of attendance, had not earned him college credit toward life-science coursework because they did not fall within a single subject area.
AMWA's president explained in 2013 that higher education institutions had considerable autonomy in recognising prior learning, because granting credit expressed confidence in the learning experience's value. Institutions could assess their own courses through access to faculty and students, and he described acceptance of relevant coursework from other regionally accredited institutions as required. Assessing the many available professional workshops and certificates was impractical, so an institution might lack confidence in their equivalence to academic coursework without regarding them as valueless.
Agreements with individual institutions
AMWA had worked with Towson University faculty to establish a process through which workshops could meet selected course requirements. By 2013, no student or member had used the arrangement, which the association's president attributed to the nationwide dispersal of medical-writing jobs and students' tendency to be place-bound. He reported that no mechanism assured nationwide acceptance of AMWA workshops; agreements would need to involve individual institutions or state university systems.
Prior-learning policies
The 2013 advice was to explore individual institutions' prior-learning policies case by case. Such policies could potentially allow students with substantial workshop, certificate or real-world learning to apply it toward academic credit.