Social Credentialing
Last Updated: July 19, 2022
At this time, trainees will be asked the following questions:
- Required: How likely are you to recommend this training program to a friend or colleague? (Scale of 1 to 10) This score then gets converted to a Net Promoter Score, resulting as a 1 to 5 star rating on Yoga Alliance's public directory.
- Optional: Please share feedback about the RYS training program that might be posted on the school's public directory listing. (Text box)
Reviews from trainees are not anonymous and cannot be made anonymous. An RYS may choose to publish or unpublish all reviewer comments.
Our Feedback System
Social Credentialing combines the established credentialing Standards of the Yoga Alliance with the best features of social ratings sites. The system is designed to measure quality in a way that traditional credentialing cannot, and it provides our Registered Yoga Schools (RYSs) with ongoing, systematic feedback that can help them improve their teacher trainings. By incorporating feedback into a school’s listing on our Directory, the Social Credentialing system also yields insight into a school’s culture and training experience to help potential yoga teacher trainees make informed decisions about which teacher training is right for them.
How It Helps the Yoga Community
Social Credentialing adds both credibility and transparency to our credentialing system, without adding costs to our members or compromising our commitment to honor the diverse traditions that make up the yoga community.
Social Credentialing:
- Captures feedback from trainees to help schools grow and improve their teacher trainings.
- Provides transparency about what schools teach in their trainings.
- Asks the community to self-regulate and ensure compliance with Yoga Alliance Standards.
- Enables potential trainees to make an informed decision when selecting a teacher training.
How It Works
Our Registered Yoga Teachers (RYTs) and RYSs play a critical role in ensuring that yoga teacher trainings are effective in educating safe and competent yoga teachers. To become a RYT, a trainee must complete a review of his or her teacher training, which entails rating and commenting on how well the training satisfied the following Standards-related criteria:
- How closely does the syllabus you were taught correspond to the one the RYS filed with us?
- Are the Lead Trainers who taught you the same individuals the school registered with the training, and did they teach the required minimum number of hours?
- Do you feel prepared to begin teaching the principles and techniques of yoga safely and competently?
- How likely would you be to recommend the school to a friend or colleague?
When asked specific questions designed to promote objectivity, trainees can tell us about their schools’ curriculum and trainers, and provide feedback on the quality of the training they receive. Traditional credentialing models aren’t designed to capture qualitative information of this nature.
Through these questions, Yoga Alliance learns how well our Standards are being followed and gauges whether schools are delivering the educational experience that they promise trainees.
If a RYS chooses to publish trainee responses, they are displayed on the school’s public profile and are attributed to the trainee — there are no anonymous reviews. This promotes civility and honesty and improves the quality of the feedback. Schools can also add their own questions on the review to make the feedback even more specific to their training, enabling them to learn, grow and improve their offerings (responses to these questions are not displayed to the public).
A Timely Idea
Consumers are increasingly researching the Internet for professional services and vendors providing the advice and experience of others. Patrons are already reviewing yoga studios and individual teachers on platforms such as Yelp, Yahoo and Google, but these for-profit, publicly traded corporations put their bottom line before the best interests of yoga or those earning a living by teaching it.
By contrast, Yoga Alliance’s sole motivation is to serve the interests of the yoga community while maintaining the integrity of both the practice and the profession of yoga. Social Credentialing provides a meaningful alternative to the unverified, arbitrary and sometimes inflammatory ratings and comments that consumer sites deliver — it protects our members while providing the public with a reliable and fair source of information and advice.
By combining feedback with established educational and training Standards, Social Credentialing expands our credentialing process from a closed, centralized system to a transparent, dynamic dialogue between members of the yoga community.