Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2014-09-15 10:51:14 - Graham Ellis
Certification - for or against?
Our training is designed to teach people to undertake their employed role, and is usually paid for by their employer. And as such, our course agendas are tailored to teach them what they need to know for their work rather than to pass any certification exams.
That does not mean that in principle I'm against good certification schemes within a vocational education environment - they can and do provide a measure for prospective new employers (and indeed that very ability means that current employers prefer to send delegates to a course that doesn't encourage the resource they're investing in to move on!). It's just that we don't run the schemes, and we train people to do the job rather than to pass the exam!
The Perl Certification WebSite says ... "The Perl community is never going to agree on Perl certification as a whole. Some members don't see value in certifications, or might even think of them as something harmful to the community. But many people do see the need for certification and would like to be certified. These people should have the opportunity to get certified. Not by some cheap online test, but by a series of modular exams at face to face testing centers. Certificates that actually mean something and prove the candidates are actually capable of coding and debugging."
Now - we will (happily) provide each delegate with a certificate of course completion, confirm attendance if asked by them in the future, and by prior request and with the knowledge of each delegate involved provide our general feedback after the course. More importantly, we also provide an ongoing support service for delegates should they have questions that come up after the course, but that's a story for another article!
By staying away from a certificate-lead course, we can encourage delegates to bring their own applications and data along with them on the course, and concentrate on making real and effective use of that for the vocational training, without the fear of diluting exam preparation time!