New Video- "BSD Certification Group: A Case Study in Open Source Certification"

Dru Lavigne, Chair of the BSD Certification Group, gives an informative talk about the creation of the Open Source certification system for BSD operating systems. This talk covers the BSD Associate (BSDA) and BSD Professional (BSDP) certifications and describes how they were developed. It presents the value of psychometrics and the process of creating a psychometrically valid exam including

• Job Task Analysis - Determining which skills are frequently used and how important they are
  
• Exam requirements - Determining what should be covered on the exam
  
• SME Question Development - Creating and validating test questions
  
• Beta Period - Creating and distributing a limited version of the new exam
  
• Angoff Session - Determining the final pass/fail score for the exam
  
• Final Launch- Getting the exam out the door
  

The talk also discusses other goals of creating Open Source exams- affordability, local availability, the encouragement of local study groups, commercial training materials, Open Source Testing Centers, and more. Finally, it shows many ways you can help improve BSD Certification and Open Source exams.

The video takes about 35 minutes and is available here, or you can just click on the image below.

Thanks to Patrick McEvoy and the fine folks at Manhattan Neighborhood Network for putting this professional video together, and the Internet Archive website for hosting.

Enjoy!

BSD Professional Job Task Analysis Survey

The first step in getting the BSD Professional exam underway is the Job Task Analysis (JTA) Survey. What is a JTA? It's an online survey where you can help define what skills are important for a BSD systems administrator at the "Professional" level.

The survey presents a collection of tasks organized into Knowledge Domains. Each task includes two rankings- one for Importance and the other for Frequency. These rankings are used in Psychometric Analysis to identify the key skills that should be tested on the exam.

The survey takes about 20 minutes to complete and contains several opportunities for you to express your thoughts on the selection or description of tasks for each Knowledge Domain. Your comments are very important, as they help form the direction and style of the exam.

The survey will be provided in other languages besides English as soon as our translation teams get finished. We hope to have the survey available for 30 days in each language.

As soon as the survey is complete, we'll start compiling the results.

One of the questions asked is about whether the BSD Professional exam should be just a multiple choice exam, just a hands-on lab, or both. We are very interested in your opinion on this issue. There are those who say certifications are useless. But if you can really assess skills, like you can with a hands-on lab exam, this makes the certification verifiable, and provides real value to potential employers.

Let us know what you think. Give the BSDP JTA Survey a go and express yourself.

Update on the BSDA Exam

The BSD Associate Exam is now over a year old! Here are some interesting stats so far:

• 12 Events in all of 2008; 14 events in just the first half of 2009
• Over 1000 people have registered for a BSDCG ID (needed to register for an exam)
• The exam has been held in US, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, France, Denmark, Ukraine, Netherlands, Argentina, and the UK
• So far, 66 people have passed the BSDA exam and received their certificates
  

As of April, 2009, there are 6 exam locations coming up: Canada, Germany, Argentina, UK, Netherlands.

If you know of an upcoming conference near you, let us know (send email to www AT bsdcertification.org) and we'll get in contact with the conference organizers to see if they will provide a time and place for the BSDA exam. We'll bring the pencils, you bring the know-how.

In Other News...

We're in the process of reviewing the exam for the next version. Our psychometrician, Dr. Sandra Dolan, has provided us with a report of the exam results for the first year. BSD subject matter experts, drawn from the BSD community have helped modify some the the questions to increase the accuracy of the exam.

The Winter 2008 DVD is out. This edition includes the QEMU virtualization software (and the AQEMU front end) that enables working with multiple BSD systems at the same time. Additional information on using the software is here [bsdwiki.reedmedia.net]. Purchasing a DVD is an excellent way to prepare for the exam, helps fund the exam development effort, and helps keep the cost of the exam globally affordable (still just $75USD).

Planning for the BSD Professional Exam (BSDP) is underway. We will start with a Job Task Analysis (JTA) survey similar to the JTA we produced for the BSDA exam. The BSDP JTA should be ready in a month or two, and we will announce the survey through all our regular media channels. Stay tuned for the next level.

BSD Associate Certification Adv. in BSD Magazine

If you are in your local Barnes and Noble or Borders book store, you might see a copy of a new magazine devoted to all things BSD- BSD Magazine.

Published by the same folks who put out Hakin9, an excellent magazine devoted to information security, the new BSD Magazine has several cutting edge articles about BSD. Some articles in the current issue include:

• Pushing BSD as an open source desktop...
• PC-BSD overview...
• Sguil 0.7.0 on FreeBSD 7.0...
• How to Dual-Boot Vista with BSD – a step-by-step approach...
• Keep smiling, waste spammers' time...
• OpenBSD pf – the firewall on fire...
• Instant Messaging with Jabber/XMPP...

and more. The issue includes a DVD containing FreeBSD 7.0, documentation, and some extra applications.


And if you happen to look closely, you'll see the very first advertisement for the BSD Certification Group. The ad is for the recently released BSD Associate certification.

Special thanks go to the fine folks at iXsystems who helped developed the professional quality graphics and layout. That's their logo in the lower right corner.

We hope to have more advertisements in BSD Magazine in the future.


The BSDA certification is gathering steam. We've presented the exam at conferences in Los Angeles, Ottawa, Krakow, Brussels, Toronto, Berlin, Ede, and Chemnitz. So far, over 400 people have registered for a BSDCG ID, which you need to do before you register for an exam. Some of the comments we've received from the exam said it was "harder than I thought it would be" and it "made you think". Be sure to read the Exam Objectives, currently available in English, Mexican Spanish, and Russian.

If you would like to see the exam at a conference near you contact us, and we'll try to arrange for an exam at that conference.

Certificates, Seals, and More BSDA News

The certificates are back from the printer, and they look good! They have a blue border with dark blue and black printing on a heavy, light grey card stock. The seals are embossed gold foil and are applied separately. The seals look very sharp. The actual certificate doesn't have the dark brown border, but it is positioned so you can use a nice frame for your wall or desk. The whole thing looks very attractive.

We've held the BSD Associate Exam at three conferences so far- SCALE, FOSDEM, and Linux-Tage Chemnitzer with over a dozen candidates. All the exams haven't been scored yet, but they should be finished in a few days. Those sharp enough to pass will get one of these certificates as soon as we can send them out.

The next conferences to host the BSDA exam are Flourish (Chicago, IL, April 4-5, 2008), IT360 (Toronto, Ontario, Apr 09, 2008), NLUUG (Ede, The Netherlands, May 15, 2008), and CONFidence (Krakow, Poland, May 15, 2008).

See the list of upcoming conferences, and register for a BSD Associate exam at https://register.bsdcertification.org//register/events. Cost of the exam is $75 USD (or half that if you took the beta exam). More conferences are being added all the time, so check back frequently to see if there is a conference near you. If not- let us know! Select the Info subject through the "Contact Us" page at http://submit.bsdcertification.org/contact.

Remember, you have to obtain a BSDCG ID before you register for an exam. The BSDCG ID is free, and we keep your ID information private. It is not shared with anyone.

As always, more information on the BSD Certification Group and the BSDA exam is found at www.bsdcertification.org.

BSDA Exam Launched!

The BSD Certification Group launched the first BSD Associate Exam at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) conference held in Los Angeles, Ca. , last weekend. As it was, there was not enough time to promote the first exam, so the number of candidates was limited.

The next BSDA Exam will be held at FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium, on Saturday, Feb 23, and Sunday, Feb 24. Seating is limited, and you must pre-register. We already have over 30 registrations for FOSDEM. Also coming up is Linux-Tage Chemnitzer(link in German) in Chemnitz, Germany in March, 2008. All exams are paper based and are in English. Cost is only $75 (or half that if you participated in the beta exam.)


So, we're underway with the first exam! Sign up for a BSDCG ID and get to a conference near you to take the BSD Associate Exam.

Get Involved. Get Certified. Get Ahead.

BSDA Certification Moves Forward

Last weekend, members of the BSD Certification Group met in New York to finalize some standards for the BSD Associate exam. The exam is now in its final form- all that is needed is to select the actual 100 questions to be used in the first version. Our psychometrician, Dr. Sandra Dolan, is pleased with the progress so far. We will have a psychometricaly sound exam, that will provide a solid basis for determining the skill level of all candidates.

And the latest news: we now have two slots for the exam at SCALE- the Southern California Linux Expo. A big "Thank You!" to the folks at SCALE for allowing us to hold the exam during their conference. This is our inaugural exam, and we are looking forward to it!

Several other conferences have generously allowed us to hold exams. See the list, and register for an exam at https://register.bsdcertification.org//register/get-a-bsdcg-id

Thanks to all our supporters and friends for getting us to this point!