Hello all,

Jim Brown is writing a series of articles on open source certifications, with a focus on lessons learned by the BSD certification group. The first article in this series has been published in the June issue of BSD mag (http://bsdmag.org/magazine/1741-nanobsd-and-alix) which is available as a free download. The publisher has also created a separate PDF of just this article which is available for download from http://www.slideshare.net/dlavigne/brown-bsdmag-june11.

Cheers,

Dru

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Hello all,

We'll be holding the first question writing session for the BSDP exam on May 15 from 9:30 - 16:00 EDT. For those of you already in Ottawa for BSDCan, we will have a room in the Desmarais Building at 55 Laurier Avenue East (same building as BSDCan). For those of you who aren't in Ottawa, the session will also be available online through the bigbluebutton video conferencing system. In order to access the session online, you will need a flash enabled web browser; a headset and/or webcam are also recommended but not required as bigbluebutton includes a live chat channel in addition to the video/audio stream. I'll post the IP address for the bigbluebutton stream a day or so before the session.

If you are interested in participating, please ping me off-list so I can send you a copy of the NDA and question writer's guide. This will also give us an idea of how many people are participating so we can organize the work flow.

For those of you who have never attended a question writing session before, here is what you can expect:

- it is a full day of work, so expect to be busy. Those who have attended in the past have found it to be a fascinating experience that gives good insight into the process of how a certification exam is put together.

- it is important to be on time for the beginning of the session as the first 30 minutes or so will get participants oriented with the day's outcomes and will further discuss how to write a good question. Due to the differences in time zones, you aren't expected to stay the full scheduled time, but should be on time for the beginning and to dedicate at least a few hours to the session.

- you will want to have a copy of the BSDP exam objectives handy (http://www.bsdcertification.org/downloads/certreq_bsdp_en.pdf). You may find it easier to print out the pages containing the objectives (pages 16-76).

Cheers,

Dru

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We're pleased to announce that after 7 months of negotiations and the work required to make the exam available in a computer based format, that the BSDA exam is now available at several hundred testing centers throughout the world. The press release is available here:

http://www.bsdcertification.org/news/pr061.html

Feel free to post that release on blogs, social media, and interested mailing lists.

I'd like to give special thanks to the people that assisted in this major milestone:

James Vasile from the Software Freedom Law Center for his assistance in the contract negotiations.

Dr. Sandra Dolan, our psychometrician, for her assistance in assuring the quality and correctness of the computer based version of the exam.
 
Lisa Lukas, Dave Moore, Stephen Schimsky, and Christina Stebbins from SMT for their training, support, customizations, and general help throughout this transition period.

The rest of this email contains details for those interested in taking the BSDA at a testing center.

You can view the testing center locations here: http://www.isoqualitytesting.com/mlocations.aspx. It should be noted that the bulk of the training centers are in North America but there is some coverage in countries that we have not been able to host a paper based version of the exam yet. If your organization is interested in becoming a testing center, contact me off-list for the details on becoming a testing center.

Due to the costs of providing a computer based version of the exam, the price for this format has been set at $150 USD. We will continue to offer paper based versions of the exam at the price of $75 USD. If you are interested in seeing the paper based version of the exam offered at a local conference, user group, school, or employer, contact me off-list for the details on how to arrange an exam event.

If you already have a BSDCG ID, you can use that when registering for a computer based exam. An entry has been added to the registration website for computer based exams: https://register.bsdcertification.org//register/register-for-an-exam. You will not be able to book a time at a testing center until you pay for your exam. Payments are still made through our registration website: https://register.bsdcertification.org//register/payment. After your payment is received, a separate email will be sent to you within 24 hours containing your testing center username and password and the rest of the information that you will need to book an exam. It is very important that you follow the instructions in that email, especially if you need to reschedule your exam date as there are monetary penalties if you do not contact the testing center within the time requirements to reschedule your exam. Once you receive your testing center email, you will have up to one year to schedule and take your exam.

The FAQ has been updated: http://www.bsdcertification.org/FAQ.html. If any of your questions regarding the computer based version of the exam remain unanswered, please post them here so they can be added to the FAQ.

Cheers,

Dru Lavigne
Chair, BSD Certification Group

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Hello,

Well, I've had to get a mountain of work and other issues out of the way, but now ready to start on forming training package and schedule as per previous correspondence.

The first thing that occurs is establishing a framework within which training and assessment are situated.
This is essential to establish and maintain training quality to, in turn, maintain the quality standard of the product.
I could illustrate the needs for this, but the examples are complex and therefore long winded.
Hopefully the requirement will become obvious as I go along.

What I should suggest initially is that: any registered trainers would need to have attained the certifications themselves, and; that assessment/certification is conducted by BSDCert and not have the trainers certified to conduct final assessment; that all trainers and assessors be certified in the latest standard as set by BSDCert; that the whole training and assessment process be formed in such a way that it be completely transparent; that a complaints procedure for the client/student base, be in place to address any potential problems in order to provide a Q.A. factor in the process, and that this be transparent also; that assessment is based on standards that do not equate with failure, but in cases where competency is not achieved within a training unit, that an assessment of 'Not Yet Competent' (NYC), be applied and the student have recourse to a further sitting of that competency at a later date, for a minimal fee, if any; that all effort be directed by the training entity, in order to facilitate competency in these cases.

In Australia, the process has been simplified by those supplying the training component also supplying the assessment aspect. One of the aforementioned issues I have been dealing with, because the proficiency/quality levels of Registered Training Organisations (R.T.O.) that conduct the training process, are assessed by comparison of student intake numbers compared to numbers of students that have attained a satisfactory assessment level, has lead to the assessment process being compromised, the process and associated product level on a persistent downward path and the whole national training process effectively rendered /dev/null. Incometent R.T.O.s maintain their existence within the market by way of this quirk, I should like to avoid the high probability of this occurring within the BSD certification process.

I can understand that BSDCert may not have the facility to render this service, especially when applied to an international context, and may, in fact, have aspects as a certification body that prevent that, but I should urge that other personalities be assessed and certified as competent by BSDCert to apply the assessment process and that these people not be the same as those doing the training. Standards of training can then be set to be universal so that any certified assessor could arrive to do the assessment process and any other assessor , if brought in, would reach exactly the same finding. This facilitates the Quality Assurance factor within the process also.

Thoughts?
Regards,

Dave Crosswell.

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Hello,

As a first post, I thought I would just provide a copy and paste of something I sent to the Dragonfly list, by way of introduction:

"I have a project in mind.

I recently qualified, here in Australia,  as a Cert. IV, Trainer/Assessor.
This is the course featured here, which will give you some idea of what that involves:

http://www.carson.com.au/course_TAE40110.php

I've been involved with Debian for some years, so not entirely new to the Open Source area.
I'm running PC-BSD at present, just having a look, although posting this from a Windows piece of filth in an internet cafe
because I'm moving house and don't have 'net access at present.

What I'm looking at doing is getting up and running with the new BSD certification programme, as featured recently in BSDMag,
forming that up into a registered training package in a similar format to those featured here:

http://www.ntis.gov.au/

and training others up on that, while doing server installations into commercial situations to keep my head above water.
Doing the BSD cert up as a registered training package would do a number of things, not least in having it accepted as
an established 'qualification' here in conventional 'establishment' eyes, but also in facilitating a greater exposure of Dragonfly
into a wider training environment and ongoing adoption into areas such as large corporate and govt. projects.

I thought I'd contact the list to find out if there would be people here that would be interested in assisting me with getting my
knowledge within the DragonflyBSD environment up and running as quickly as possible in order to achieve this.
I'd be classified as a bit of a newbie, but I've been round the lists for a while so I know I don't fit into the luser category.
I don't expect anybody to do it for me."
Regards,

Dave Crosswell.

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Will a registration number assigned this year (2010) still be the same for any testing events held next year?

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