A little more about the Certified Linux Administrator certification

In reading Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ recent article based on my last posting, it occurred to me that I had left one fairly important thing out regarding the Certified Linux Administrator: The Novell CLA is a stepping-stone to the Novell Certified Linux Professional 10 (CLP10) certification.

The Novell CLA is based on the content from two of the courses in the CLP10 track; courses 3071 and 3072 (SLES 10 Fundamentals and SLES 10 Administration); the third course (course 3073, SLES 10 Advanced Administration) is not part of the CLA certification. Think of the CLA as a “checkpoint” on your way to the CLP10. The CLP10 exam (as well as the more advanced Certified Linux Engineer 10) is a practical examination, and as such, it focuses on proving your skills.

Many candidates have a degree of apprehension when being asked to prove that they can do something; being able to do is dependent on knowledge, so if a candidate is uncertain about their knowledge, there is an increased fear of failing at the practical examination. The creation of the CLA was done in part to help remove some of that fear. As I said in my previous post, Linux isn’t hard, just different. I would add to that statement that because it’s different, candidates need to have some comfort in their knowledge. A knowledge-based examination and certification gives candidates increased confidence when going in to take the CLP10 practical examination.

My thanks to Mr. Vaughan-Nichols for the article and the chance to clarify my thinking on this certification.

New Certifications from Novell

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a month since BrainShare 2008 – and yet, here we are, in the middle of April.

At BrainShare, we offered exams for a total of four new certifications – the CLA,, the CLDA, the NCA, and the NCE-ES. In this post, I want to give you my (unofficial) perspective on these four certifications.

The first certification – the Certified Linux Administrator (CLA) – is an entry-level Linux certification based on Novell courses 3071 and 3072. The exam is what we call a “traditional” or “forms-based” exam.

(As an aside: Forms-based exams are useful for determining what a cert candidate knows, but not necessarily what they can do. The way I see it, there is a distinction between knowing and doing (and I think most would agree with that), but there is value in testing both capabilities when it comes to certifications. If you can do something but it takes a while for you to figure out what it is you need to do, or if you need to reference a book in order to do a task properly, that shows a lack of knowledge. Yes, you eventually will get there, but if you know the information you can perform the task more quickly. Testing for knowledge is an extremely valuable tool.

At the same time, knowledge alone isn’t sufficient in the real world – if you know the command-line parameters for the find command in Linux but can’t effectively use the tool to accomplish a task, you’ve demonstrated that you can successfully memorize facts, but there’s no test for applying the knowledge to the real world.)

The CLA is a test designed to let the candidate demonstrate knowledge, not skills. The primary focus is to let people know that Linux isn’t hard – that’s a myth. It’s just different than what they may be used to (NetWare, Windows, Mac, etc).

The Novell Certified LInux Desktop Administrator (CLDA) is based on a single course – course 3086 – and is intended to be taken by candidates looking to learn how to administer Linux desktops. It focuses on the sorts of things that users find important – software management, printer configuration, desktop configuration, and usage. The exam for the CLDA is also a traditional forms-based exam.

The Novell Certified Administrator (NCA) is an introduction to Novell services. Some who have looked at this want to equate it to the Certified Novell Administrator (or Certified NetWare Administrator, for those who have been around Novell long enough), but the goals of the NCA are quite different than the goals of the CNA. The CNA focused on administration tasks around the NetWare operating system – use of the management tools for NetWare to manage the platform.

The NCA is quite a bit broader, as Novell’s product portfolio has expanded since the CNA was developed. The NCA thus focuses on a wider range of products, but with fairly shallow knowledge in each (after all, it is a 5-day course; how much depth can get for 4 or 5 complex products in that time period?). The idea of course 2000 (and the NCA) is to give candidates a taste for what Novell’s product line consists of and the sorts of things the products can do. As with the other’s we have discussed so far, this is also a forms-based exam.

Lastly, we have the Novell Certified Engineer – Enterprise Services (NCE-ES). This is the first of the NCE certifications, and is based around Novell Open Enterprise Server 2, with a particular focus on the Linux version of the product. This certification focuses on doing rather than on knowing, so the exam is a practical examination delivered using Novell’s practicum technology.

NCE-ES is a logical progression for traditional CNE candidates coming from a CNE6 or CNE-OES background, Stay tuned for information about other NCE tracks that are being developed.

Interview Questions from Allan Hoffman

I wrote in an my previous post about an article written by monster.com’s Allan Hoffman. Allan’s article is a great piece, but I wanted to include his questions and my answers in a post here as well. With Allan’s permission, I’m reproducing the Q&A here.

BrainShare Preparations and an Article Highlight

It’s been a little bit since I’ve written something new here – I’ve not forgotten, but just been busy preparing for BrainShare and my annual Novell Instructor Summit. There’s been more to do than I could have imagined a year ago; I’ve got a track of 10 instructor sessions being run (including IPEs for those who want to become instructors – it’s not too late for attendees to register for CNI281 and CNI380 in order to participate)

I did want to highlight something, though – I was contacted by Allan Hoffman over at monster.com after he’d read some of my thoughts here; he was interested in my thoughts about the value of certification. I wrote a fairly long response to his inquiry, which I will repost here after BrainShare is completed.

Allan’s article also talks about a recent Foote Partners survey which talks about IT skills pay and the tie to certification. It’s very good reading, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in pursuing certification.

Cognitive Dissonance: The art of overcoming skepticism to improve certification

The Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines Cognitive Dissonance as:

Anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like, as when one likes a person but disapproves strongly of one of his or her habits.

In my last posting, I talk about being skeptical of certification and describe the reasons why I am. So how do I resolve the inherent conflict between being skeptical of technical certification and the fact that a large part of my job is to help develop and manage certification programs?

Why have I been skeptical about the benefits of certification?

I have long been a skeptic about the value of certification. In this post, I’ll explain why.

Blogging about Certification and Training…

…Or maybe more commonly written as “About this Blog” (but that’s just so cliché).

In the world of Information Technology, it takes a fair amount of skill to be successful. As technology evolves, keeping up with the changes can be difficult, even for someone skilled in doing so. If you’re like I was when I worked in IT, often times you spend so much time fighting fires that you don’t have time to see how to make things more efficient and better as you implement new solutions.

That’s where training and certification come into play.