Thursday, November 12, 2009

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!