McKissock

I got another advertisement in the mail. This one is intriguing – the website captures your attention a lot more than most of these sites, but on further inspection I’m not impressed.

Website:  http://www.mckissock.com/engineering

State approval:  Click throughs state that Maryland has pre-approved this training provider, and a check on the MD website confirms.

Fee Structure: Courses priced individually (e.g., $100 for a 6 hours class) and prepackaged by state ($197/24 hours).

Ease of use: Very easy to read, clean website design. No topic menus for sorting classes.

Course variety: Not many water related courses, not a lot of variety.

Course materials: Course materials are undated. Appear to be developed by the training provider.

Course instructors: 3 instructors are listed for the entire site, but are not indicated for individual courses.

Course ratings: Course ratings are available. The checkout page indicates you need to rate the course before you receive your course certificate. A lot of the cour

Course packages: Yes, prepackaged by state. The Maryland course package does not appear to meet Maryland requirements. Maryland requires  a minimum of 1 PDH unit in content areas related to the standards of practice or care, laws and regulations applicable to the practice of engineering in Maryland, or professional engineering ethics and a course of this type is not listed.

Personal experience: I have not taken a course through this provider.

Preview course material: Yes, but the sample is not available on the course detail page, which is annoying. You have to click on the sample link on the page with the course listing, but even then you have to register to see course material. Some course samples are available here: http://www.mckissock.com/license-school-courses/engineering/docs/30HRBook.pdf

Training Provider Comparison

You are probably wondering about my overall comparison of these training providers.  I assigned each of these categories a score of 1 to 3, where 1 is the worst and 3 is the best. For example, 1 means most expensive and 3 is the lowest cost. The best course materials got a 3, and old course materials or course materials I could not preview got a 1.  Two providers clearly came out on top, and I will be focusing on PDH Engineer.com and PDH Online to renew my licenses. If you want to understand better  why I assigned a particular score, click on the training provider’s name in the right sidebar to get a more complete description of that training provider.

Training Provider	Cost	Ease of Use	Availability of Water Courses	Course Materials	Course Instructors	Course Ratings	Course Packages	Preview Course Materials	Total
http://www.pdhengineer.com/	1	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	22
http://www.pdhonline.org/	1	1	3	3	3	1	3	3	18
https://ez-pdh.com	3	3	1	1	2	1	3	3	17
http://www.cedengineering.com/	2	1	3	2	2	1	3	3	17
http://onlineengineeringpdh.com/	3	2	2	1	1	3	3	1	16
http://www.pdhlibrary.com/	2	1	2	3	2	1	1	3	15
http://www.discountpdh.com/	2	1	2	1	2	1	1	3	13
https://www.titance.com	1	1	2	1	2	1	2	1	11

PDH Engineer.com

Website:  http://www.pdhengineer.com/

State approval:  Map with links to each state’s requirements. A copy of an approval letter from the state of Maryland is provided.

Fee Structure: Generally $30  per credit hour, packages are available. For example 18 credit hours for $399

Ease of use: Clean looking web-design, even though there is a lot of text. Many menus and sub-menus make it very easy to navigate

Course variety: A lot of courses.

Course materials: Spot check of materials indicates that courses were written for pdhengineer.com. All the materials I saw were copyright 2010 or more recent. Most were 2012 or 2013.

Course instructors: Need to click through to identify instructor, but for the courses I spot checked it seemed like there was a large variety of instructors

Course ratings: Available, but few courses are rated.

Course packages: Available, pre-selected and customizable.

Personal experience: I took a course through this company the last time I renewed. It was titled Groundwater Vulnerability: Providing Scientifically Defensible Information. It looks like it is no longer offered, possibly because they update their courses on a regular basis.

Preview course material: Yes, a partial preview is available.

PDH Library

Website:  http://www.pdhlibrary.com/

State approval:  Click throughs provide a pre-approval letter from the state of Maryland

Fee Structure: At least one course identical to a course available on cedengineering.com ($72) is available here for $29 (just a coincidence that I saw it both places – I did not do a thorough check for all duplicate courses).  I see courses as low as $5 per credit hour. Most are $10 per hour

Ease of use: Limited use of categories make sorting and searching more time consuming than it needs to be.

Course variety: Limited water related courses available, not easy to search for them.

Course materials: A lot of course materials are copyrighted 2014, appear to be prepared specifically for the course.

Course instructors: Most water courses appear to be prepared by the same instructor, but you have to click through each course to identify the instructor.  I only did a spot check for this.

Course ratings: not provided

Course packages: no

Personal experience: I have not taken a course with this company.

Preview course material: Yes

It may be worth it to check individual courses on this site to see if they are cheaper than the equivalent course offered on another site.

CED Engineering.com

Website:  http://www.cedengineering.com/

State approval:  Click throughs provide a pre-approval letter from the state of Maryland

Fee Structure: $288 for a 24 PDH package

Ease of use: Clean design, but menus are not on the standard sidebar.  Requires more click throughs than other sites.

Course variety: A lot of courses.

Course materials: Course materials are a mix of custom courses and guidance manuals.  Some guidance manuals were as old as 2004, some custom course materials were more recent like 2009, some course materials undated.

Course instructors: Some subject areas are dominated by a single instructor, other subjects have several instructors.

Course ratings: not provided

Course packages: yes, by state and by subject area

Personal experience: I have not taken a course with this company.

Preview course material: Yes

Online Engineering PDH

Website:  http://onlineengineeringpdh.com/

State approval:  Click throughs show that Maryland has pre-approved this training provider

Fee Structure: 1 year unlimited PDH credits: $139, 15 PDH package: $89

Ease of use: A lot of text and pictures make a cluttered layout, but many menu categories make it easy to navigate.

Course variety: Only 12 water related courses, most of these are related to wastewater treatment.

Typical age of course material: No preview available.

Course instructors: Course instructors or authors are not provided

Course ratings: Each course has an option for ratings, although few environmental courses have been rated

Course packages: Unlimited PDH package available, customizable packages are available

Personal experience: I have not taken a course with this company.

Preview course material: I was not able to identify an option for previewing course material.

EZ-pdh.com

Website:  https://ez-pdh.com/

State approval:  Map with links to each state’s requirements, including a link to approved training providers on the Maryland state board website, which does include an entry for ez-pdh.com

Fee Structure: Unlimited access at $129 (sale price from regular $150). Packages designed by state.  MD environmental engineering package is $80.

Ease of use: Modern site design, clean layout, easy to read.

Course variety: Conduit/pipe design is the only water related course in the MD environmental package. Only two courses listed in the environmental engineering category

Typical age of course material: Course materials are government guidance manuals. Spot check reveals dates of 1999 and 2000.

Course instructors: 3 instructors are listed for the entire site

Course packages: Packages pre-designed to meet state and subject requirements, design your own, or unlimited access options are available

Personal experience: I have not taken a course with this company.

Preview course material: You can read the course material before purchasing.

Discount PDH.com

Website: http://www.discountpdh.com/index.htm

State approval:  Pre-approved course provider for the following States that require pre-approval:

The PDH hours for the engineers registered in FL and NC are reported to their Board according to their Board’s Rules.

Florida (#0003758 Area of Practice)
North Carolina
New York
Louisiana
New Jersey
Indiana
Maryland
Pennsylvania

Endorsements: BBB approved, ASME and ASCE logos on website.

Fee Structure: Courses starting at $9 per hour of course credit. Minimum of $216 for 24 hours, but likely higher depending on specific courses selected.

Ease of use: A lot of text on each page, not enough subcategories to sort through long lists of courses. Need to click through course title to find course author.

Course variety: 15 courses with “water” in the title, not all are necessarily related to water supply, wastewater, or storm water.

Course materials: Spot checks of course material on this site indicated material dates of 1999, 2003. Not necessarily cutting edge for wanting the learn the latest and greatest in engineering. Course materials I did click through are manuals from government agencies, like counties or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Course ratings: none

Course instructors: Need to click through each course title to identify author.

Course packages: I could not find any obvious course packages on the site

Personal experience: I have not taken a course with this company.

Preview course material: You can read all the course material and take the quiz before purchasing the course.

Titan Continuing Education

I received a flier in the mail from Titan Continuing Education advertising that I can meet my Maryland PE continuing education requirements.

Website: https://www.titance.com/

State approval: Not clearly indicated on the website, but a summary of state requirements is available.

Fee Structure: 24 hour water course for $299. 24 hour design your own package is $350.

Ease of use: Lack of categories makes it difficult to sort and navigate courses.

Course variety: Limited water course content. Only 12 courses are available covering water supply, wastewater, and storm water.

Course materials: Not able to preview.

Course ratings: None

Course instructors: 3 main instructors teach the 12 water courses

Course packages: Pre-selected packages based on subject area are available, and customizable packages are also available

Personal experience: I have not taken a course with this company.

Preview course material: I do not see an option for previewing course content prior to purchase

 

PDH Online

I used PDH Online the last time I needed PDHs to renew my licenses.

Website: http://www.pdhonline.com

State approval: Approved PDH Course Provider for PE in the ALL the states that require approval or have pre-approval program:

Florida (#0003413)
Indiana
Louisiana
Maryland
New Jersey
New York*
North Carolina

Fee Structure: Fees vary by course. As an example, a customizable 24 hour course package for $576 (I need 24 hours in Maryland, 16 hours in Virginia). Coupons are available. With a 50% off coupon, which I received since I used them before, this package is $288.

Ease of use: Old-fashioned web design, a lot of text. Lack of sub-menus makes it frustrating to sort and find relevant courses (part of the problem is there are so may courses, which is a good thing)

Course variety: Many subjects, many courses. A large variety in water/wastewater/stormwater topics, and general leadership and business ownership topics (these are the types of courses I’m looking for).

Course instructors: A large variety of instructors. Most instructors only provide a few courses, but a few instructors have provided many courses (e.g., John Huang).

Course material: A spot check of materials indicates that courses were prepared for pdhonline.com. All the materials I saw were copyright 2012.

Course ratings: None

Course packages: Customizable course packages are available. You can make your own package based on the number of units you need.

Personal experience: Easy to complete course- can see course content before purchasing, certificate printed, no issues. I took GIS Applications in Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, which is still available on the website.

Preview course material: You can read all the course material before purchasing the course.

Overall, I can see a lot of reasons to go back to PDH Online. But I want to make sure I’m spending my money and time wisely. I want to learn something from this, rather than just checking off a requirement.