IU is good, but it didn't really help me much the certification test.
I will admit that it would be pretty difficult for someone to not complete the labwork. Remember, an instructor will be there to answer any questions. Not to mention, I can see everyone's screens at any given time so its fairly easy to see who is struggling and who is not. Overall, we as instructors use the labwork to make sure everyone understands more or less the same concepts that are in the written certification test.
As both a teacher and a student, I think there will always be 1 or 2 people in any class environment who struggle. Our doors/email inboxes are always open to those people and we'll do our best to provide more supplemental learning opportunities for them. Remember, the written test will still be available for anyone to take for free, and eventually its solutions made public. So its learning opportunities will still always be available.
Yes, certification should still remain tied to discounts.
And I think this demonstrates my point... If there is (practically) no way to fail the certification, there is no point in giving out the certification because it doesn't mean anything (logically; it's like trying to prove an unfalsifiable claim). Maybe it's meant to replace the "Certificate of Completion" I got after completing the Core training some years ago and I missed where IA said as much.
From a business perspective, I get why a change like this might need to be made. It's just a shame that in the process, it completely undermines what it sets out to solve.
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it completely undermines what it sets out to solve.
I'm not sure what made you jump to that conclusion.
Let me be completely transparent like Paul Scott was earlier. At some point we realized that our current system was unsustainable. Remember, every single test was graded by a person. If the test was completed by someone who knew what they were doing, and was trying to prove that, then grading the test went fairly quickly, as we just needed to confirm that everything worked the way it should. But, as so many people here have pointed out, people were learning by taking the test. With the test being free, and only having the requirement that you complete IU to take it, many people who were not qualified to take the test took it, knowing that they can go into it with as many retries as possible, and would be given great feedback from which to learn and do better with the next submission. While we are super happy that people love to learn, and can recognize that people learn in different ways, tests from people who were not ready to take the test took up a large portion of time.
To provide a small glimpse into our work now, we have a team of over 20 people just grading Core tests. Our oldest core test sitting in the queue was submitted on October 27th. Our Gold tests being more difficult and requiring someone with more experience to grade has a team of 10 people grading them. The oldest submitted gold test in our queue was submitted September 1st. We get near constant complaints about how long it takes us to grade these tests. We heard them, and make no mistake, it was the driving force behind implementing this new system.
Does this system have other benefits? Yes. For everyone who was taking the test to learn, we would rather people come to one of our (soon to expand) course offerings than take a test that they are not qualified to take. For those that learn better by doing, that is what we hope the improved and increased level of labwork hopes to solve. Now, people have time to complete work on their own, and then go over it with an instructor, similar to how the test would work, just in smaller chunks. Is this system perfect? No. You can scroll up in this thread to read many of the flaws people have pointed out. Some of them we don't have answers for yet, as we are still building out the system. There are people that may not be super happy with this change, but there were people that were unhappy with the previous system as well. I learned a valuable lesson growing up, and it was that I can't please everyone. Is this system going to be the only thing we do. Not necessarily. We always welcome feedback and use that to drive where we go moving forward. We hear you both here in the forum and elsewhere. Like I hinted earlier, we hope to expand our course offerings soon and with that may come new ways of being certified and learning. What this new system has allowed us to do is rather than throwing a constant stream of new hires at grading tests, we can use our growing team to implement new systems that can reach a greater number of people. Like all things, it will take time.
So, do I think this system is without flaws? No. But I do not see how it completely undermines what it set out to solve, which was the growing number of tests that we were falling way behind on grading.
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(Emphasis mine.) Thanks @Paolo.Mariani. These appear to be the root issues. I imagine there are reasons the current overhaul was chosen over the obvious solutions. Perhaps something like the old system could be reimplemented with a cost per test/retake to satisfy those of us who made efficient use of the old system and don't want to sit in a class while the new system addresses the reasons the obvious solution was initially skipped for others' needs.
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Yeah, and solutions like that aren't entirely off the table. I am not saying that is what we are doing.
At the time, we saw just adding a cost to the test as a temporary solution at best. The number of people submitting tests that paid for them have also gone up drastically, so while it may have mitigated the issue short term, we would have had to deal with it again in the future.
Additionally, despite what people may think, I believe the biggest complaint that I have seen about this new system is it went from a free test to a paid class. So while I recognize there are other differences, adding a cost to the test is no different than what we do now, and would still get the majority of complaints we have gotten.
edit: @witman beat me to it.. but
I think the point has been missed, that this herein lies the problem. Unless you can show the comparison of the number of people to take certs both before and after the certs were made free, as well as the pass rates and the number of retries and that these don't prove my point, this is the glaring reason why people started using them as a learning opportunity rather than taking them seriously and for what they should have been - an exam. A test of competence. If you could get a degree in Engineering for free and all you had to do was sit a couple of exams that you got feedback on and could resit forever until you passed, of course people will abuse it. Perhaps cynical, but a lot of people will take what they can get with no regard for others.
This makes me sad to hear that someone could pass a certification course if they're struggling with basic navigation principles... May as well just start handing them out to anyone on the street at that point
I don't think this is quite right. Yes, there have been posts about it becoming very expensive, but this is because it's gone from free to the cost of a 10 day course. There have been many other posts in support of bringing back a fee to sit the original cert tests, as this would price out the incompetents, while still being affordable
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This is what I meant when I said it completely undermines what it sets out to solve: the new system that is being rolled out is trying to solve the problems with the current certification process in place now. In my opinion, in the process of trying to solve those problems with certifications, it gets rid of the entire point of there being a certification (in my opinion).
Again, I completely agree with what you're saying, and, in fact, I hinted at this being the underlying problem in this post above, before Paul or anyone from IA mentioned this whole side of the new certification changes (including it not being mentioned in the original blog post/email). I always wondered how many full time employees IA had grading those exams as they put in a COLOSSAL amount of effort. I'm not trying to minimize the work you do, just trying to point out an obvious issue.
This is coming from an outsider's perspective, obviously. I think input like this could also potentially be helpful (if I wasn't so much of an idiot), I took the Core training from Paul Scott back in 2016 and completed both certs within the past year so what I'm saying is not completely stupid, imo.
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Unfortunately, I don't have those numbers for you. I only have access to submission numbers from the last year. Like I said previously, we considered just adding a cost. But while you may have been happy with that, the majority of the complaints we are getting are that what was a free system now has a cost. The method of delivery aside, that is the biggest complaint. So keeping the test and just adding a cost would not have addressed the majority of complaints. As I also pointed out, we felt that it would have just been a temporary solution.
How was this any different than what we had before? With enough retries, anyone can pass anything. That doesn't prove they know it.
We get more complaint than just what you see here in the forums.
The difference was the cost, previously. Every resit would cost them $1000. An employee simply will not fund someone who is clearly incompetent.
This just proves my point
To be honest, I don't think these complaints are even worth considering. It's like the people who complain about not getting enough icecream on their free sample stick. They are just there to mooch. A business simply cannot sustain an endless supply of ever-increasing number of free tests to mark without collapsing. I feel sad for our society that there are people complaining about them not being free anymore 
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Ah, I see what you are saying. And I don't wholly disagree with that either. Like I said, we are using this feedback to drive our decisions going forward. Nothing is off the table (except maybe going back to exactly what we had before) and we can always implement multiple ways to get certification in the future. With a team of 5 instructors who are responsible for implementing and creating these systems, while also juggling an average of 5 classes a week, it would have taken much too long for us to make everything we want to implement going forward to release all at once. Pushing this system takes care of our immediate problem now, and we can continue to build out going forward.
I will be the first to admit that the wording that we used in our initial communications was lacking, and provoked many questions that should have been easily answered by more detailed explanations. I apologize for that.
Again, we have so many ideas for what we want to do going forward, rather than continue doing the same few classes and two tests we have been doing for the last 5 years. It just takes time.
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A reasonable fee per test including retakes as @nminchin suggests should make this profitable, rather than a blackhole into which IA feeds time. There's no reason for something profitable to be temporary.
As a side-note, I'd weight complaints from people who are happy to pay quite differently than complaints from people who do not want to pay.
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feedbackPositive = happyToPay - notHappyToPay*0.00000001
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I would support showing the pass grade on the certification paper as well, so you can actually see how well someone did. As universities do, give someone a certification paper if they get above x%, but print their grade on the cert and tie that to their name. That way, if people still want to sit the certifications without knowing how to spell Ignition, then they can, it will just cost them money and they will either fail or get a certification but have a low grade to show for it. If they want to resit it, sure, but it'll cost them again, and exponentially more each time 
What would be neat in what you're saying is that every person gets a unique URL/QR/Identification code which allows anyone to check their certification. I don't really care about a piece of paper, but if the PDF I get from getting certified was tied to a live page on IA's site that showed what my current certification level was along with my overall score on the certification exam/course, it could be used by employers during the interview process. This would be similar to the integrator page that shows the live certification level of the company, but on an individual basis that isn't public, but just allows us/anyone to share their URL/QR Code with anyone else to both prove certification level as well as score. (And maybe even certification history, like recertification, when they passed core, gold, etc)
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That sounds like a far better idea than mine; far more reliable. This would most certainly limit the number of applications for certification down to those who actually have experience and are confident in sitting the tests and passing. And if not, it's up on show for everyone to see. It then becomes a true reflection of someone's ability and not just a participation award which it's becoming now with the current direction.
I still can't believe someone would pass if they struggled with navigation... that is so disconcerting
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Isn't this just college though? Certainly many people have failed a course and had to retake it to get their degree. I failed abstract algebra and had to retake it, I wouldn't say I didn't know abstract algebra just because I failed it the first time because the second time I put in the effort and figured it out.
I don't have a problem with the unlimited retries, I mean that's work in a development environment isn't it? You have some engineering problem to solve, you think you have a solution, and sometimes your first thought is right but if it isn't your second or third solution isn't less valid or suitable just because it wasn't first.
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I bet your college charged you for both courses.
I do. Stretching your analogy, note that most colleges and universities have a time limit on credits earned. Seven years was typical for four-year degree programs, last I knew.
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I am concerned an instructor staff this small is going to be a bottleneck to proctor certification tests.
So instead of having 30 people grading offline asynchronous tests, you are going to have 30 people teaching for a solid week. This is not a better solution IMO other than cutting down on people who were abusing the certification test because it was free.