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Sorry that this is long, but I'm finding myself rather insulted as a
professional.
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Nick R wrote:
> Well I think the problem is that you shouldn't be testing rediculous things
> like the name of the third item down in such and such a menu. You should be
> testing the person's practical knowledge. You should be required to do a
> standard task or 2 and then do a few random minor tasks that take a minute
> or 2 each. & depending on the test, you could be confronted with some
> problems that you have to solve, like somebody breaking into your system or
> something. Of course I seriously doubt you could get M$ to do that kind of
> thing. If only competant people weren't wasting their money taking those
> tests, then their profit would drop off considerably.
Umm... you've never taken one, have you? Contrary to the popular
misconception, the MS tests don't ask you questions like "what's the third
item on the second menu." They ask you a variety of questions ranging
from basic knowledge ("what does the /x option of winnt setup program
do?"), to analytical problems ("given the following goals and the
following actual actions, which goals have been achieved?"), to even
giving you a task and a mock GUI to accomplish the task with.
There are limitations to the format, but these are limitations common to
any multiple-choice format. I'll point out that according to what I was
taught in college, when I was working on my degree in education,
multiple-choice questions, when well written, are the BEST objective
question you can use; and objective questions are the only kind you can
use in this type of test. And, as someone who has taken a number of MS
tests, I can say that their test questions are well written and require a
functional knowledge of their product in question.
And as far as MS making scads of money off the tests, not really. MS
tests, at least in this area, are administered by two companies: Sylvan
Prometric and VUE. MS tests are $100 per test ($50 if it's only an MCT
test), which I doubt MS gets much of.
Microsoft professionals are just that: professionals. Yes, some people
are able to get their certifications just based on being good test takers.
I've found, however, that there are too many good, knowledgable
professionals among the ranks of MCPs, MCSEs, MCSDs, and MCDBAs to let
someone trivialize their credentials. Don't get me wrong, their is a
difference between a paper MCP and an MCP with real world experience, but
they both include certifications, which are a necessary part.
Oh, and by the way, MS didn't create their certification program to make
money, but in order to answer a demand by the industry to have some way of
having proof of knowledge. Hmm... much like Linux certifications.
Michael W. Ryan, MCP, MCT | OTAKON 1999
mryan@netaxs.com | Convention of Otaku Generation
http://www.netaxs.com/~mryan/ | http://www.otakon.com/
PGP fingerprint: 7B E5 75 7F 24 EE 19 35 A5 DF C3 45 27 B5 DB DF
PGP public key available by fingering mryan@unix.netaxs.com (use -l opt)
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