The Continuing Educational Unit (CEU) is an international system of measuring, recognising, and recording individuals’ participation in non-credit continuing educational programmes. It is designed to give recognition to individuals continuing their education, wishing to keep up-to-date in their chosen fields, or entering a career field at a very basic level. The international standard as advocated by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) to measure continuing education activities is 1 CEU represents 10 contact or instructional hours of learner engagement in a learning activity leading to specified learning outcome(s). Persons may also be awarded part CEUs for continuing education learning activities less than 10 hours; for example, an individual who participates in five hours of continuing education learning activities would be awarded 0.5 CEUs (see table 1 below). Similarly, for one hour the individual would be awarded 0.1 CEUs. However, CEUs are usually not awarded for learning activities of less than one hour. The engagement time may be calculated irrespective of learning mode or type of activity.
CEUs are calculated in a somewhat similar manner to the traditional credits where 3 credits course requires 39 contact hours. In the case of CEUs, 3 CEUs require 30 contact hours. One important benefit of using CEUs and a differentiation from traditional credits is that it allows for the assignment of partial or fractional Units. For example, a programme that requires 25 contact hours would be assigned 2.5 CEUs. Hence, institutions can tailor programmes to specific labour market needs and do not have to fit programmes into the University’s predefined credit structure.
| Contact Hours | CEU's |
| 5 | 0.5 |
| 10 | 1.0 |
| 20 | 2.0 |
| 25 | 2.5 |
| 30 | 3.0 |
Table I: CEUs and Contact Hours
The Open Campus will award CEUs for approved non-credit workshops, short programmes, seminars, and other educational activities offered by the Campus for which traditional credits are not offered. Some non-credit courses which are eligible for CEUs are personal enrichment programmes, very basic entry level programmes, and most non-credit courses offered for Professional Development to individuals wishing to satisfy their professional membership obligations. Regular CPE programmes should have from a minimum of one course of 30 contact hours and earn 3 CEUs up to a maximum of four courses with an aggregate of 120 contact hours and participants earn 12 CEUs (see table 2).
Students taking courses in regular CPE Programmes will be awarded CEUs for each successfully completed course and the Certificate of Achievement upon successful completion of the programme.
| Number of
courses per programme |
Maximum Contact Hours | No. of CEUs Awarded |
| 1 course | 30 | 3.0 |
| 2 courses | 60 | 6.0 |
| 3 courses | 90 | 9.0 |
| 4 courses | 120 | 12.0 |
Table II: CEU Structure for new CPE programmes
