AFIT's Software Professional Development Program

Frequently Asked Questions

This section of the page is relatively new, and we will be adding more information as we get more questions repeated.

QUESTION: Can we get college credit for SPDP courses?

ANSWER: At one time, you could get credit for some SPDP courses. Being accredited involves a rather lengthy approval process. The material covered in SPDP courses parallels what you would find at other schools, and AFIT is indeed an accredited institution. However, at this time, you cannot transfer SPDP courses for college credit. If you are working on a degree, our courses may still help--our relatively short courses would make a great primer before you took a similar class for credit at your local institution.

QUESTION: Can I take more than one course at a time?

ANSWER: As a general rule, no. We may make exceptions to this, based on your particular circumstances and your past performance in other SPDP courses. For a time, we allowed students to enroll in multiple courses simultaneously; however, too often this resulted in poor student performance. Please plan to take at least one course, and familiarize yourself with our expectations and workload, before considering enrolling in more than one course.

QUESTION: Why in there an enrollment deadline? Isn't this just a web-based course?

ANSWER: SPDP courses are not merely web-based courses. As an SPDP student, you will need to have a textbook shipped to you, and you will be expected to keep pace with other students enrolled in the course. Even though most of the work can be done on your own schedule, you may be asked to attend a teleconference or webcast. Additionally, there is some administrative overhead involved with assigning students to an offering, such as enrolling students in Blackboard, our online learning-management system. Please try to plan your SPDP curriculum ahead of time, and enroll in the courses before our enrollment window closes.

QUESTION: Should I take the courses in numerical order?

ANSWER: For the most part, the courses are designed to be stand-alone. The fact that the course numbers are so sequential might be misleading. With a few exceptions (see Courses and Program Structure information above), you do not have to worry about taking the courses sequentially.

QUESTION: I'm in the military... will I incur an Active Duty Service Commitment for taking an SPDP course?

ANSWER: No, there is no active duty Service Commitment imposed after taking SPDP.

QUESTION: I'm a civilian... can I get CICP Points for SPDP courses?

ANSWER: Interested civilians can indeed obtain CICP points for SPDP classes (you can earn 1 point for each distance learning class, and 2 points for our one in-residence course). To obtain this credit, you should use the following codes in Block 22B of your Forms 1556: CSE 479: QXA, CSE 480: QXB, CSE 481: QXC, CSE 482: QXD, CSE 483: QXE, CSE 484: QXI, CSE 485: QXK, CSE 486: QXL, CSE 487: QXM, CSE 488: QXN, CSE 489: QXO, CSE 496: QXP Note: these PDS codes contain the alpha O , not the numeric 0 ( zero ).

QUESTION: I'm a civilian... I have the old CICP Points (PDS Codes) on my certificate. What needs to be done?

ANSWER: Click here for a print-friendly list of the civilian PDS codes. Print and attach the list to your existing certificate.

QUESTION: Why is CSE 489 grouped with CSE 496 in the certificate program? Isn't CSE 489 just another analysis and design course?

ANSWER: Not really. There are some unique aspects of CSE 489 that are worth pointing out. For one, each weekly homework assignment for this course builds upon the previous week (rather than being a series of independent exercises, as you are more likely to find in our other courses). Additionally, as students work through this project, they will present their work to their fellow students during a weekly netconference. In other words, rather than just submitting homework for a grade, they will present their work during "distance peer review." As such, there are several unique aspects to CSE 489 that warrant it being grouped with CSE 496 for our final program certificate.

QUESTION: Shouldn't CSE 486 be grouped with the other courses to receive a Software Lifecycle Development Certficate? After all, isn't testing part of the software lifecycle?

ANSWER: We considered doing so. A good case can be made, but many topics in our VV&T course transcend the traditional end-of-development acceptance testing depicted in the waterfall. For that reason, and for the sake of trying to do a little bit of load balancing, the certificates remained structured as they are now.

QUESTION: How much time during the workday will these courses require?

ANSWER: We encourage supervisors to free up time for people to work on SPDP courses at work. Taking SPDP courses improves the professional development of the students, and for most it also benefits the organization. That said, we cannot require supervisors to allow students to work on SPDP at work. The portion of the SPDP courses that must be accomplished during normal duty hours ranges from “none” to “very little”, depending on the course. We’ve found that, given the demands of today’s Air Force, it’s impractical to be able to get an entire class to be able to “attend” live internet-streaming lectures. Because of this, an instructor will record a lecture and make it available to the class twice a week, throughout the four weeks of the course offering. Once the lecture is available you can view the lecture at any time, from work or home. You can either have the video streamed to your computer from our server (requires high-speed internet access), or you can download it to view later – some of our students have downloaded a lecture, placed it on a CD-R or USB memory stick, and viewed the lecture on a laptop while flying to a TDY location. Some of our courses have optional teleconferences held during duty hours; if your work doesn’t permit you to dial-in, then there is no penalty. The homework and reading assignments obviously can be accomplished at any time; the online discussion boards and exams can be accomplished any time you have internet access. There are two exceptions. CSE 489 requires live interaction between the students, so half of the lessons will be live (about one hour per week). CSE 496 is a resident course held at our campus near Wright-Patterson AFB.

QUESTION: I’m a contractor… can I take SPDP courses? What will it cost?

ANSWER: If you’re a contractor currently associated with a DoD activity, we will allow you to enroll on a space-available basis. There will be no tuition for the distance-learning courses, but you (or your employer) must purchase your own textbook. We are required to charge contractors tuition to attend CSE 496 because it is a resident course. AFIT/LS currently charges $172 per day; as a 15-day course, the tuition for CSE 496 is $2580.

QUESTION: I’m a member of a foreign military… can I take SPDP courses?

ANSWER: We’re working on this. If you’re interested, then please let us know so that we can notify you when we have a procedure in place to enroll international students.