Edit: I have been on several teams that have written tests over the years, and I hope to be on more in the future. The link no longer works.
Originally posted November 11, 2008 on AIXchange
If you’ve worked on AIX machines for a while, you’ve probably taken an IBM certification test. But have you ever taken a certification exam on a subject you weren’t especially well-versed in?
I have. I attended a conference where a free certification exam was included in the registration fee, so I tried my hand, even though the test I choose covered material I didn’t know well. Still, I thought I could pass. I was wrong. I lacked the relevant experience and knowledge, and I couldn’t guess my way through to a passing score.
When you take a test, assumptions are made about your skill level. In order to pass, you must know specific information, and you need to understand real-world scenarios and how to apply that knowledge. You need to know different commands and, in some cases, the specific flags that go with them.
While this is a good time to re-emphasize the importance of studying for your certification, the primary purpose of this post is to note the work that goes into developing certification exams.
With hardware and software ever-evolving, certification tests are regularly updated. And with the availability of POWER6 and AIX 6, now’s an appropriate time for another test refresh. I recently joined a team that was writing one of the revised certification tests. The professionals in our group came from all over the world, and have many different backgrounds. I thought you might be interested to know a bit about the test-writing experience.
The first thing I noticed was the strict confidentiality required for all team members. We were not to discuss questions or answers with anyone outside of the team for any reason. The last thing we want to do is allow a test taker to get access to the questions and answers. If people are able to cheat their way through an exam, it lessens the value of the certification for those who pass the exam legitimately.
Team members write test questions and corresponding answers on their own–you’re also responsible for including the documentation (IBM Redbooks, Web sites, etc.) that supports your answers. Once all the documentation is created, team members go over them as a group during frequent conference calls. We discuss the questions and make sure they’re clear and grammatically correct. We also see that the answers are correct, and, in the case of multiple-choice questions, we make sure that the wrong answers aren’t overly obvious. We want to be sure that you pass the exam because of your knowledge, not because of your ability to make educated guesses.
A nice side benefit to being a certification test writer is that, in exchange for helping write the test and putting in the time to verify the answers, I automatically earn that certification. I don’t have to go to a Prometric site to take it.
The test we wrote, Virtualization Technical Support for AIX and Linux, is now live, so once you take it, let me know how we did with the questions we chose.