Jose,
In your request for information regarding the Designer Council
Certification program I would like to provide you with the following
synopsis.
The program was born during the formation of the designers council at
several meeting in Atlanta as the designers developed their Charter, in
1994. The original procedure called for a written exam and an oral
interview in order to achieve what was called acreditation at that time.
During 1994 the designers developed questions (multiple choice), and the
first 300 were provided to six leading industry designers in order to see
how we were doing. (March 1994).
At that time it was suggested that we needed to have a more proffessional
program if the industry was to respect what the designers council wanted
to accomplish. Members of the Sylicon Valley chapter suggested that the
council use a test delivery service and have the exam available
electronically through-out the United States. The executive board of the
council had a great concern as to the cost of flying designers to a
location for written or oral testing. At that point the council went to a
company in Minneapolis called Drake Training and Testing.
Drake has years of experience in testing. Their clients are Novel,
Microsoft, IBM, AutoCAD etc. They trained members of the Certification
Committee in how to create OBJECTIVES. Before you develope an exam you
must first have an objective that you are trying to achieve. After the
training and several more meetings the committee came up with 188
objectives that should be satisfied for a designer to be proficient in
designing rigid printed boards ( single, double, and multilayer) with
mainly through-hole components and an awareness of surface mounting.
The committee determined that it was best to segment the training along
the line of the objectives into four levels. In addition, a goal was set
to be in Beta testing for the first level by March of 1995. To determine
how many questions should be in the Beta exam the program submitted the
objectives to phsychometric analysis. Over fifty designers and design
managers reviewed the 188 objectives and provided input as to how
important each objective was to doing the job, how profficient a designer
needed to be in accomplishing that objective, the frequency of use of the
objective, and at what level did one need to display that knowledge.
As a result of the analysis the 46 objectives identified for level A
indicated a need to have 283 questions in the Beta exam. The designers
got to work, and re-examined the questions already created. They filled
in the missing holes to meet the criteria of the number of questions
needed to satisfy each objective. They met over seven week-ends in San
Jose, Austin, Atlanta, Morrestown, Hartford, and Boston. The rersults
were sumbitted to congruency and plausability checks by Drake experts,
and then through grammer analysis. By March 15th 1995 the Beta was ready
to be tried. Hundreds of hours, and hundreds of people participated in
this effort.
The Beta was openned in March 1995 and was available at over 300 test
sites that were Drake approved. The Designers Council presented over view
workshops to explain the program, and provided information on the
resources used for the total program. Those that were famliar with the
material studied it and did well; those that were not and did not study
did poorly. As a result of the Beta a total of 174 question were
retained. They were polished and divided into two forms so that all the
objectives are reflected in each of the exams.
At present the level A exam is considered live. There are 104 questions
oin the exam and someone taking it must get 77% correct. This is a total
of 80 questions out of the 104. A two hour time limit has been set which
is ample time to complete the 104 multiple choice questions. You may not
have a book with you so if a reference is needed to answer the question,
such as a table in IPC-D-275 it is provided electronically, as an
exhibit. The exam has quite a few graphic exhibits in it with the idea
that looking at an illustration and then answering a question makes
taking the test more interesting and less boring.
I know that this is much more than you really wanted to know, however I
thought that it was important to complement the many individuals who have
given their time and effort to a program intended to give the design
profession the recognition that I think it deserves. If we don't design
it well it can never be built correctly in a cost effective manner. Their
are those that think good design is accomplished by pushing a button on a
CAD system. We know that such impressions will never achieve adequate
results.
Joe Costello, Cadence Design Systems CEO stated it well during his
keynote address at the PCB Design Conference held in Santa Clara this
March. " A Solution is More Than A CD-Rom". You must have good tools but
they must be in sync with methodology and people. Key is the designers
expertise and the designers knowledge. As designs get more complex and
technology advances we need to bridge the expertise gap. Your Designers
Council and IPC is dedicated toward that end.
Sorry for the lengthy report. Best regards
Dieter Bergman
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