Cisco possibilities

Robert,

If you are going to argue, at least argue the points as I make them - when did I say anything about a car? Anyway, here is the plain simple version of what I'm saying:

1) I think stealing is wrong, I think cheating is wrong. I do not condone, in any way, people cheating to get certifications. 2) Cheating has little to do with the value of certifications. The value of certifications is on par with what it was before braindumps were prevalent. 3) The certification vendors (Microsoft, Cisco, Comptia, etc...) do not appear to do much to increase the value of these certifications. Besides the cheating, the exams do not test one's ability to perform the job. While you say don't make them out to be the bad guys, I don't see them trying too hard to present a better solution. It is my opinion that even if cheating went away completely, Certifications are not what they should be and would not have much value beyond what they do today. Let's just say that if they came up with good testing methods, cheating wouldn't be a major issue at all. 4) EVERYBODY gives into temptation once in a while. I don't believe for a second that you've never done something that, knowing full well, was wrong. I consider myself a very moral person, but I am far from perfect and occasionally do things that I know I shouldn't. If you say that you don't ever give into temptation, then you are either a liar or in denial - take your pick. Still, I don't think cheating is right, but don't play the holier than thou act. I don't buy it.

:-)

Jim

Reply to
Scooby
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Thanks for supporting CertGuard.

-- CertGuard

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Reply to
Robert Williams [CertGuard]

Supporting? See, you still aren't following me :-P

Reply to
Scooby

messagenews: snipped-for-privacy@news.supernews.com...

I don't buy most of this either. You really should have attended the WebCast Microsoft gave on Exam Security and Integrity, which can be found here:

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Or maybe you should read the article I wrote on Microsoft suing Testking, which is found here:

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Microsoft you will find has done plenty of things that other Certification Vendors should follow suit in doing, or have already done, to increase the value of your Certifications. In the end, this was never intentionally a display of who's better than who, rather I agree with Rob and with Mark in the fact that they said the same thing, just worded it different ways. All in all, a certification is meant to backup the experience that you have and show that you are capable of doing what you say you are capable of doing. A certification is not meant to be something for you to just "have" because you were nice and special to your boss, nor is it something that is a substitution for experience. Please try not to be so confrontational, Jim. Rob is completely justified in a few of these aspects and you're trying to back him into a verbal corner with a simple metaphor. I find this silly. Quit.

Reply to
Taylor S. Ripley [CertGuard]

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Jim, as you stated, "EVERYBODY gives into temptation... Far from perfect..." I totally agree with you. So why do you expect the certification vendors and programs to be perfect? They are living entities, ran by imperfect beings, and cannot exist in a vacuum. If this went over your head a little; in layman's terms: The certfication vendors and programs are not perfect. Did the CVs / CPs create this certification frenzy of the years? No, how could they? We did. The community did. The employers did. And it is us, the community that has corrupted the certifications and programs by cheating and achieving them without recommended experience. But we blame the CVs / CPs for our corruption because why... they made it easy for us to do so??? We need to take responsibility for the mess we made. The CVs and CPs are doing the best they can. If you were activily involved in the certification programs you would already know that.

Look I am not here to take sides. I am simply stating my points to this thread that has gone on WAAAAYYY to long. The bottom line is this: The CVs and CPs are changing to fix our mess. Are we changing as a community? Are you? Despite all the positives changes taking place now, will there not be hundreds if not thousands who still try to find a way to get something for nothing? It is an endless war, but one worth fighting instead of complaining.

Reply to
mdalligood

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Well, like you, I agree with what Mark had written. I only sounded off on this thread because of Rob jumping on Mark for his comment. While you may consider Mark and Rob's comments to be the same, Rob apparently doesn't - he stated in no uncertain terms that he disagree's with Mark's comments.

But, I do agree with your comments on what a certification should be, completely.

Reply to
Scooby

Maybe I'm just not saying it right. Rob could not seem to get the point and you (and now Taylor) apparently skipped over it as well...

My stance is that this is totally NOT about cheating. The value of the certs has very little to do with cheating. Chase all the cheaters away and the certs still have the same problems. Cheating is just a symptom of what is wrong with the certification process. In itself, there is nothing wrong with going after the cheaters and the companies that enable them, but at the end of the day, it is just a band-aid.

I'm saying this as a hiring manager who lost faith in the certification programs long before you could easily download the answers from the internet. And, from my point of view, the whole testing/certification process has not changed much in the ~13-14 years since I first went through the Novell CNE program.

I would agree that this thread has gone on way to long. I would also agree that this is a war worth fighting. I'm not at all complaining about fighting the war. My point has just been that they need to fight the better battle, one that increases the chances of winning the war.

Reply to
Scooby

I've seen you point out in several posts on this thread that there are things that are wrong or need to be "beefed up". Having Me, Rob, Michael, and even Brad Reese on this thread speaks louder than anything I could imagine, so you have the attention of the right people if you want to speak your mind on suggestions of how to fix these things. I just haven't seen you make any clear suggestions on how to solve the problem.

Again, this last statement backs my former point. I can't personally help that you've been jaded by the certification program, but your knowledge of the certification program is invaluable to your company that you hire for and for the UseNet as well as possibly CertGuard's forum. At CertGuard, you would be the prime candidate for someone that we'd want the opinion of since you are a hiring manager that has years of experience in dealing with these problems. I am personally interested in why you lost faith even before the answers were available and your views on how, in your opinion and please try and be as specific as possible, the war can be fought better. Like I said, you have the attention of the right people, its up to you now as to how you're going to take advantage of that chance.

-- Taylor S. Ripley CertGuard Security Executive

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Reply to
Taylor S. Ripley [CertGuard]

Hi Taylor,

Sorry this has taken a while to get back. I've been out of town golfing :-) I'm going to respond here, but have no idea how long this will be. I appreciate your sincere interest in actually hearing what I believe the problems are. I could probably go on for hours about this. I'll try to be somewhat brief.

First, about me and how I've lost faith in the certification program. It started way back in the early/mid 90's when I went through the CNE program. I went through some classes to learn Novell networking. These were evening classes and more thorough than the type of courses you see these days. Still, I came through the program being able to pass the tests, but rather scared about actually being able to work on someone's network. I knew what the books had to say, and even played with some equipment, but didn't really understand the application of it all. Also, I've hired contractors with certifications, that just plain didn't have a clue about what they are doing.

I know that part of what you guys stand for is that people shouldn't get their certification before experience. But, honestly, you can't quite completely blame that on the individual. I would say that the training centers, and the industry as a whole, have much to do with this. People know that they need their certifications to increase their worth. The training centers offer the training with the idea that you can get the certification at the end of the training. The problem is that the training is often superficial - it is really geared towards passing the tests, and usually only lasts a week or less. It is next to impossible to find technical training out there that isn't targeted specifically to a certification. And, I've been to quite of few of the courses at certified training centers. I've gone to my classes with a completely different mindset. I went with the idea of learning what I needed, and didn't even think about taking an exam. However, many of the people in my classes were scheduling the exams for the end of the week.

So, having been through many cert tests and even seeing the quality of people getting certified, I've lost faith in the programs. Only because certain jobs call for it, do I even care about my own certs.

What to do about it? While I may not have come up with any particular solutions in this thread, I have made some suggestions in past threads. But, I won't even pretend that I have the answers, I don't. I do have some general thoughts. In general, I think they all sum up to the idea that the tests should be hard enough to eliminate most of the cheaters and people with little/no experience. In no particular order, here the come:

We can learn from the CCIE program. These exams are proctored and very rigorous. There are things that you can do to short cut the studying some, but at the end of the day, you better understand your stuff. The problem is that the tests are rather expensive. I'm not saying that all cert tests should be that thorough. However, it is a model that is reasonably successful, and solutions can be derived from it. I would be happy to pay more for each of my exams if I knew that it meant more. Think about other professional level exams and what it takes to pass. Would you be happy to pay big money to a lawyer that only had to go to school for a week to pass the Bar exam? There are many industries (outside of IT) that have more serious certification programs. We can learn from them.

How about not giving the nth level of detail about what is on the test? You can pretty much buy a book from the certification vendor that gives all the information on the test. In many cases, you don't actually have to understand what you are reading, you just have to memorize answers. Let's put it this way. One of the exams that I've passed is the BSCI (routing) from Cisco. Part of the exam was BGP. Personally, I've never worked with BGP. Also, I can't even remember most of what I learned on BGP. But, I knew what I needed from BGP to pass the exam. Where did I learn it? Straight from Cisco's own study guide. See any problem with that?

Along with the previous point, break the certifications down further. The CCNP is a good example of this. There are four tests, each has a long list of topics. Each topic should be more thorough. Instead of routing being a single exam, it could, in itself be a certification track. Same for switching. This leads to a lot more exams, but you can be more confident that the person understands the material.

Also, have a larger pool of questions. I did a little searching around on some of the brain dump sites. Many of the exams list anywhere from around

100 to 400 questions, sometimes more, rarely over 1000. I think the pool of questions should be MUCH bigger.

They should do a better job of being sure the test taker is who they say they are. There are probably many hi-tech things that could be done, such as things like biometrics and facial recognition software. However, the simple place to start would be to just have some accountability at the front desk. The people sitting at the desks in these testing centers are often pretty clueless. I don't think it would be hard to pass off a fake ID in many of the testing centers. I'm really speculating here, but it is just my observation. I actually took one exam at a center that didn't have cameras in the room - not that I'm even convinced that these cameras are reviewed for most people. While I have heard of some cases of people getting caught cheating from proctors and cameras, I believe that they are there more for looks than practicality. I could be completely wrong about this point.

More (and harder) simulations. These are the one point that I think actually tests your practical abilities on the exams. However, you can usually only expect a couple. On some exams, there are no simulations.

Open book - this is real life. Make the questions hard enough that you need to have experience and knowledge to get through the exam. In some cases, the person taking the exam will not know the answer and will need to look it up. If there are too many things that the test taker does not know, they will fail, for running out of time.

I understand that many of these changes would come with a price. As I've said, I wouldn't mind paying more, because I know that my certification really means something. Also, think of how many people would be more sure to know the material if they were throwing away $500 instead of $125 for a failure. Consider what a person's time is worth. If they think they are close, why not just go test. If they fail, it is only $125 and they've learned more specifically what they need to focus on. If they pass, they may have saved 20 extra hours (or more) of studying.

Well, I guess that is all for now, I probably went a little over brief. In summary, I think the fact that people are certifying before they should and that cheaters are a big problem really just are indicators of a bigger problem. That problem being that the certification tests are not what they should be. There's no magic solution to make all this better. However, I've been around certification testing for a long time and I haven't seen any indication that the certification vendors are working to improve the programs. Just where is all the money going that everyone spends on books, tests, certification training? I know some gets shared with the middle men, but the certification vendors have to be bringing in a fair chunk of change. They need to reinvest some of that money in securing their programs.

Anyway, I'm not really looking to debate each and every point - I'm probably off base on some of this stuff. This thread would really get out of hand, then. But, this is more just thoughts of what I believe is wrong, and that there are things that can be improved. Like I said, I don't know the solution. These are just thoughts that I've had. I do know that the certification vendors could be trying hard to make the tests mean more.

Just MHO,

Jim

Reply to
Scooby

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