Ozzie eBay Educational Specialist program scrapped
4/01/2009 at 19:09
eBay Educational Specialists in Australia will no longer be able to advertise their services or run courses using official eBay materials or logos from March this year. The agreement with US based PowerU ended on 31st December and they will no longer be supporting Educational Specialists in Australia.
Currently there are around 40 Australian registered Educational Specialists and eBay will be working with them to introduce a new program for those who wish to carry on teaching how to buy and sell on eBay.
The big question has to be how useful are the courses – they’re often out of date purely due to the speed of change on eBay itself. The courses are inflexible if taught as per the material, whilst their good for an eight hour lecture format they’re pretty useless for a one-on-one training session or for students who already have some experience of eBay.
Quite honestly although I’ve been a qualified educational specialist before the program was introduced in the UK I’ve yet to teach a course using the PowerU provided material. It’s time eBay introduced a more flexible training accreditation, focusing on an educators ability to teach and current eBay knowledge rather than enforce a regime with outdated material. Hopefully eBay Australia will lead the way with a new educational specialist program.
In the mean time if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare that’s all the time it’ll take for a bit of speed reading, sitting a test paying your £89.00 and becoming an educational specialist. The courses may not be up to date with the current eBay site, but permission to use the logo does no harm at all when bidding for consultancy work.
DBL says
8:00 pm on 04/01/2009
The Power U material is totally useless more so for the UK. And, as you say, the test is not hard either.
But as for using the logo and the consultancy work, I’m not a happy bunny if this happens over here!
Grrrr!
northumbrian says
8:16 pm on 04/01/2009
it all a load of codswollop anyhow
northumbrian says
8:17 pm on 04/01/2009
and I would be very worried and suspicious of anything trained by ebay in case it bit ,or kicked me
Chris Dawson says
8:27 pm on 04/01/2009
The most annoying part of the program is that the logo has the wrong eBay colours – you can’t print it next to the PowerSeller logo without totally retouching the colours to make them match!
Sue says
11:48 am on 05/01/2009
you can’t print it next to the PowerSeller logo without totally retouching the colours to make them match
Tell me about it – horrible, horrible mismatch on business cards.
It’s time eBay introduced a more flexible training accreditation, focusing on an educators ability to teach and current eBay knowledge rather than enforce a regime with outdated material.
Be interesting to see how this one pans out, with e.g. no Live this year and no Unis. My money would be on something much more official and difficult to get being introduced, and frankly about time too.
Ebaygnoway says
11:27 am on 09/01/2009
When one creates a whole picture from the little bits, the scene begins to look quite ugly.
http://www.blognow.com.au/fuckebay/108539/Schools_Out_-_For_Ever_-_Ebay_Univeristy_-_Crashes_and_Burns.html