Administrative Assistant Fundamentals

Administrative Assistant Fundamentals

Become an indispensable member of the corporate team as an Administrative Assistant. This course will help you master essential job responsibilities as you identify opportunities and implement solutions for increased productivity throughout your company.

6 Weeks Access / 24 Course Hrs
  • Details
  • Syllabus
  • Requirements
  • Instructor
  • Reviews
$129.00

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$129.00
Self-Guided

Details

Rapid growth in the health, legal services, data processing, management, public relations, and other industries have created many new job opportunities for administrative assistants. This course will help you discover and master the essentials of managerial and staff support, information and records management, communications technology, travel and meeting coordination, space planning, and office ergonomics. You will become an indispensable member of your team by identifying opportunities and implementing solutions to turn your office into a high productivity machine.

This course and its follow up (Administrative Assistant Applications) may help you prepare for the internationally-recognized Certified Administrative Professional® (CAP®) exam offered by the International Association of Administrative Professionals® (IAAP®).

Note: This course is not affiliated with, nor has it been endorsed by, the International Association of Administrative Professionals® (IAAP®).

Syllabus

In the first lesson, you will learn why organizations need administrative assistants and explore the types of work that they perform. You will be introduced to the different administrative specialties and look at an overview of their varied duties and requirements. You will learn about the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP), and the professional certification—Certified Administrative Professional (CAP)—that IAAP offers.

As an administrative assistant, you frequently participate in office planning. This lesson will help you to understand that an office is an interdependent system where everything works together. You will see that creating an office environment requires bringing many components together.

In today's fast-paced world, organizations move very quickly and make split-second decisions that have far reaching implications. In this lesson, you will learn how to effectively use information management to create a successful office operation and help increase your value to your organization.

Telecommunications, communications, and technology fit together like a hand in a glove. This lesson will show you how telecommunications technology enables you to access information, share knowledge, and communicate without boundaries.

In this lesson, you will learn how to productively use reprographics and manage records, two duties that are frequently handled by administrative assistants. You will also discover that records management is the management of paper documents, micromedia, and other documents.

As an administrative assistant, you spend a lot of your day inputting and storing data, retrieving and analyzing information, and producing presentations, newsletters, numerical reports, graphs, and charts. To better help you focus on computer hardware and software in this lesson to help you better understand the properties of your office computer system.

This lesson covers scheduling and coordinating meetings, conferences, and business travel. As an administrative assistant, you play an important role in helping co-workers arrive at the right place at the right time. You also provide them with information and materials that enhance their effectiveness while they travel and participate in meetings.

A critical responsibility of administrative assistants is coordinating numerous office activities. This lesson examines how to create practical policies and procedures. You will focus on the use of policies and procedures that meet organizational objectives and create order in your day-to-day activities.

As an administrative assistant, you spend much of your time reading and composing business documents. This lesson's objective is to enhance your business writing skills. After you finish this lesson, you will have an increased ability to write high-quality business documents.

This lesson bridges the subjects of written and verbal communication by discussing the principles of grammar and punctuation. It's likely that you need to help others with their written communication, so you will also review the mechanics of proofreading.

As an administrative assistant, you practice interpersonal communication in a variety of ways, ranging from one-on-one to communicating in a group. This lesson will explain how your desire to share thoughts and ideas creates the first part of communication and how you create the second part when you listen, interpret, and react to feedback.

This final lesson will teach you how to perform basic research—something administrative assistants are often asked to do. It also discusses the steps you take to create a meaningful and memorable presentation, including strategies for starting your preparation and the software that can help you create a polished piece.

Requirements

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to take this course.


Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

  • This course can be taken on either a PC, Mac, or Chromebook.

Software Requirements:

  • PC: Windows 8 or later.
  • Mac: macOS 10.6 or later.
  • Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.
  • Adobe Acrobat Reader.
  • Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Other:

  • Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.

Instructor

Becky Swaim

Becky Swaim has taught since 2000, focusing on Administrative Assistant Fundamentals, Administrative Assistant Applications, and Individual Excellence. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication from California State University, Long Beach. Her experience includes managing large staff in medical billing and collections and as a program manager to various medical practices.

Tony Swaim

Tony Swaim has helped many clients, colleagues, and students reach their professional and personal goals. He has been an online instructor since 1998 and has taught at colleges and universities across the United States since 1981. His focus areas are project management, Six Sigma, and supply chain management. Tony manages a successful consulting firm, and his industry experience includes 20 years of supply chain management. He earned a Doctorate in Business Administration from Kennesaw State University and holds professional certifications in six disciplines, including the Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI)® and Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB)® from the American Society for Quality (ASQ)®.

Reviews

This was a fantastic course! The instructors were always helpful and got back immediately with answers. They have a friendly humorous personality that made it so much easier to ask questions. I haven’t been in school since 2005 so this was a great ice breaker to get me back into the game and I am happy to say I will be taking more classes in the future because of the excellent experience I had with this one.

This was my first online course and I must say that I enjoyed it. After completing this course, I am defiinitely going to enroll in another online class. Thank you to the instructors. The material was easy to understand.

I am so happy with the extremely high quality of these lessons. Lesson seven has been extraordinarily interesting and informative. This course is a wonderful gift, and I am so glad that there are two people out there who have taken the time and care to prepare it all for us in an accessible manner.

Although I've been an Adm Asst for over 5 years, this course was very stimulating for me. I learned so much; I like the detailed information. I feel very good about taking this course.

I have just passed the final exam with a score of 100%. Thank you very much for an informative and valuable class. I can highly recommend this course.

I really enjoyed taking this course. After many years of working in this field, this was a great refresher course. I do think after taking this course, I will have the confidence to better myself in other employment.

I really enjoyed the course. It was mostly a refresher course for me, but I also learned some new things as well. I have a few things which I learned that I want to implement in my position as Business Management Assistant. Thank you!

I really liked this class and learned a lot. I would recommend this class to anyone that wants to learn more about what it takes to be an Administrative Assistant.

Thank you again to the Swaims for having provided such a well-researched and organized course, which was also student-friendly, in that the illustrations were in color and the overall tone of the course was positive and encouraging. Thank you for being such dedicated educators.

I learned a lot in this class, it made me realize that Administrative Assistants play a much larger role than in the past. I believe that this will also help me with interviewing in order to get a new job.

Self-Guided Course Code: T9267
Instructor-Moderated Course Code: cop