Following the great success of our Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) certification program, we are very excited to announce that the program is expanding with the Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) certification to allow faculty, staff, and students to earn certifications for the Adobe Creative Cloud family of software.
As the most-used suites of creative software worldwide, Adobe Creative Cloud is becoming more and more critical in the workplace. With the Adobe Certified Associate program, users can officially prove they have the skills in Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and more. As with our Microsoft exams, ACA exams are provided to SMU faculty, staff, and students free of charge, along with study materials from LinkedIn Learning for self-paced learning.
ACA Information & Guidelines
The following certifications are available from Ceriport, our certification partner, for Adobe applications:
- Visual Effects & Motion Graphics Using Adobe After Effects
- Multiplatform Animation Using Adobe Animate CC
- Web Authoring Using Adobe Dreamweaver
- Graphic Design & Illustration Using Adobe Illustrator
- Print & Digital Media Publication Using Adobe InDesign
- Visual Design Using Photoshop
- Digital Video Using Adobe Premiere Pro
Additional info on each certification is available at Certiport’s website. We also provide links to additional study resources on our website at smu.edu/certified under the Study Resources tab.
The Adobe Certified Associate exams are a mix of multiple-choice questions and live-in-the-app projects one needs to complete in the time allotted. Just like the Microsoft Office Specialist certification exams, the ACA certification test has a 50-minute time limit. However, the retake policy is more stringent. ACE certifications require at least 24 hours before retaking the exam the first time. If one fails to pass an exam on the second attempt, the test taker is required to wait another 24 hours before retaking the exam. If one fails to pass an exam on the third, or fourth, or fifth time, they are required to wait 14 calendar days before retaking the exam. So, while a practice test score of 800 is not required for taking the ACE certifications, we do encourage you to be ready to avoid delays from multiple attempts with the exam.
We hope you enjoy and take full advantage of these new certification opportunities! If you have any questions regarding the Adobe or Microsoft certifications, please contact the IT Training Team at ittraining@smu.edu or 214-768-1824.
