So after reading through that thing, I am actually a fan of what they are doing. IU will still exist, you can use that as training, track progress, and get credentialed. What I think Inductive is trying to do is actually verify that people know what they are doing when they get their cert and call themselves 'Core' or 'Gold' certified. Too often I interview people who say they have a Gold cert, and then turns out they worked on one Ignition project (sometimes zero) for a couple weeks. So its watered down to a point where I don't care. I trust IA as a thought leader and if they want to shake things up, redefine what it means to be certified, and have people actually prove they know what the heck they are doing in order to call themselves certified in their platform I am all for it.
That's the thing though - if you are worried someone has worked on one project and say they are gold certified. Now you will have someone who has no experience no projects but attended a 10 day class that you don't know if they paid attention in. If assuming someone actually didn't cheat on the gold test you atleast know they do know some scripting and DB. This new structure will water that down even more IMO.
Totally agree with this. We use IA University to get our new staff up to speed on the basics of Ignition, however the certification test are what really tested the knowledge they got from the videos.
Personally I got certified after doing a few real world projects and I still found new parts of the product that I had not used before. The team at IA should have refreshed their test but taking it away is a step backwards.
The issue I have with moving it from a test to training is the training is basically a walkthrough. Click here, copy this script, watch it work!
That in no way means someone is actually certified at a Core or Gold level even if they went to the class.
I'd happily send people to training if it helped teach problem solving skills, troubleshooting skills, etc. but everyone I have sent to training that has worked on an actual project finds very little use in the class because it is not a replacement for real-world experience.
Virtual or in person there is still a significant cost to keeping everyone re-upped every 3 years, not only in terms of the class, but also in terms of lost labor hours while in training.
That is not to say training isn't important, and can't be valuable. It is saying that the current format of the training courses is not worth the price of admission when we can get people up to speed on Ignition through projects, internal mentoring, and internal training focused on actual problem solving and troubleshooting.
Will it still be free for integrator program companies?
My issue is simple. By removing the online take at home option I cannot get gold certified. I got core certified on my own time. I had to find the time on nights and weekends to get this done. As an integrator getting any training for anything is extremely difficult. I feel in the end this is going to hurt inductive automation more than it will help them. This will make it harder to get capable people working on their software out in the world. I hope that they will reconsider this decision and maybe look at doing a at home test plus call it a short online spot check test.
Seems like a really bad move. I'm an integrator that has done my core certification and a few projects and was looking at going to gold.
I did the core certification and learned a lot from the IU courses, far more than I have from in person sessions with other providers, which tend to be too simple, with lowest common denominator content.
The test project was a great format that filled in a few gaps that I had and meant that I hit the ground running when I did my first project.
Secondly:
We're in New Zealand, where Ignition has exploded in popularity in recent years. If you need to go to California to get certified, that will end. Without a doubt. (Having it in Australia would mitigate it, but it's still not ideal).
Only the very biggest firms will send their best employees to lose two weeks and travel to the USA. And that's assuming the in person course is as good as the self-directed ones.
If this decision is driven by volume and resources, which seems likely, why not just deal with it by either a queue (I'd sign up and wait a year, not the end of the world), or price, or some combination of both - a queue with the ability to expedite for money?
See above, this is not the case. Virtual training is offered as well, and it counts just the same as in-person for certification.
Ah, OK, thanks Kevin.
So re: the virtual certification, it actually does work basically like a queue then, right?
You book an available spot in the virtual certification for a particular date and do the certification with the instructor virtually over a few days? No big deal if true.
No, if you read the previous posts or the announcement, you'll see that core and gold certification will soon* be attained by attending instructor-led courses, not by taking any kind of test.
Take the week-long core class, either in person or virtually, and you get core certification.
Take either of the week-long advanced classes, either in person or virtually, and you get gold certification.
* the announcement says that until Nov. 13, 2023 you can choose between the certification test or attending a course to be certified. The certification test will no longer be offered after Nov. 13, 2023.
Will there be anything in the courses that actually test someone's ability or knowledge (and I mean actually test it, not "have a go, but here's the answer"), and can someone actually fail? or can we have a sleep for 10 days and still get core and gold certs (like most other "certifications")?
Without the ability to fail a certification, there's no point in having it as it just becomes a paywall. Engineers can become certified without having any more knowledge or ability than someone new to the platform, all because they paid some money and doodled for 2 weeks
To obtain a Core or Gold Certification level, you only need to attend the appropriate course and complete the assigned labwork. Labwork will consist of a series of prompts each day that follow the class material. Each day’s labwork will be reviewed the following morning before instruction starts.
I don't know any more than that.
I can speak to my experience - I started 10 years ago as a beginner Automation Engineer toying around with the software at my bosses request. I worked for a small Integrator on the east coast. They didn't have the time or money to send me to California. After going through the Inductive University online and taking the test in version 7, it put us in a position where we were able to build some great projects and grow our offering. It has also led to me getting new jobs twice in my career, and now I manage 15 redundant Ignition gateways for a large food manufacturer in North America. My point is that I could have easily not gotten certified, not done the full training etc if there were stumbling blocks like needing in person training to get certification. Free training and certification is what helped me grow and as a result led to me selling or implementing Ignition at several plants, and it will continue to empower those without resources to learn and grow and be fluent with Ignition to make it a better overall product.
I think it's appropriate that IA change the certification process. Taking a test and passing doesn't mean that much, especially when you have months to complete and there is no guarantee it was taken honestly. However, enrolling in a virtual course is really no different, except now it's not free. Maybe I am missing something here.
Virtual training isn't free. Inductive University remains free. These are not the same, and only the training leads to certification.
Unless I'm totally misunderstanding this, virtual training is still live, instructor-led training. It's just done via Zoom or something. A live 5 day training course, but without having to fly to California. @Paul.Scott is this right?
I know virtual isn't free, that was my point. How is the current process and a virtual course any different, besides one is free and one isn't? How are you going to moderate?
Edit, example, are you going to force the user to have a camera?
My first thought would be to have a phone-interview type section of the gold test for the first two go-arounds for each person.
Basically, after submitting your gateway for the gold test they schedule a call with you and you have to walk them through what you did and why you did it. It should be pretty apparent, pretty quickly, if this person actually did it themselves and if they know what they're talking about. And I say the first two years because, as Ignition users grow, this would create an increasing workload. However, once a person has passed twice with the phone interview process, you can likely trust them to complete the gold test in the traditional "submittal" way, as it was when I first got my gold.
Just wanted to put the idea out there.
I pinged Paul to come in and hopefully answer some of these questions.
I'm just here to correct people who couldn't be bothered to actually read the entire update they're complaining about.
Hey gang. Full disclosure: I'm not directly involved with the new certification changes, but I do have some knowledge about them.
There won't be a hard knowledge check that fails folks, but there will be a soft knowledge check in reviewing the labwork: we'll point out why things they attempted didn't work and give them some input, but we won't deny them certification if they missed the mark on a prompt, assuming the attendee put in some earnest effort.
There won't be any moderation on the level you're hinting out, which is also true of the past process: there was no way for us to prove anyone submitting a test did their own work. The lab work won't be proctored or anything like that.
What would be the official IA response be to allowing OEMs and End-Users to take the classes and become core and gold certified. Allowing them to bypass their integrators and buy software direct now at the discount that we usually pass to them?
Ignition was built with Integrators selling the software like us since 2012.