Frank,
To quell some rumors.
To say that more designers are failing the examination than expected, is not
giving justice to the examination and all the designers that gave input to
it. The beta process and the resulting review process definately gave us good
feed-back. If the designer read the recommended materials and understood the
basic concepts and industry standard definitions, they passed. Not only did
they pass, but they passed with a high score! The grading fell into three
distinct groups. The passers, the guessers and the curious.
It was evident who the curious were, since they made little attempt to answer
any of the questions.
The guessers fell somewhere between the curious and the passers.
It wasobvioust that those that did not pass, were ill prepared.This does not
mean that they did not study or look through the recommended materials, but
perhaps they underestimated the completeness of the examination.
An independent examination of the missed questions revealed that the majority
of those questions should have indeed been answered correctly by an "A" level
person. If credit were given for those questions, that may have been
marginally an "A", there still would not have been a difference in the number
of designers who passed.
In any event, the certification procedure allows for continuous evaluation
and improvement of the entire certification process and examinations. The
committee is currently reviewing the process of examination creation, as well
as the requirements for certification.
A study guide has always been a part of the educational process plan, prior
to certification. It is unfortunate that it was not available to the beta
testers, and is currently unavailable at this writing. I do know that release
of the study guide is a high priority, and should be released in the near
future. However, a list of what reference materials to study was released
prior to the beta test phase, as well as a series of one day workshops. These
workshops were intended to inform designers what type of information would be
on the examination and what standards the information came from.
The IPC and representatives from the council are currently looking at
improving communications to the designers. We have utilized trade
publications, E-mail, and FAX, but it seems to be not enough. We hope to
utilize the IPC WEB page, that has recently come on line, as well as better
use of the current sources of communication. We are aware that we need to
maximize the availability of information for those designers that have been
following the process, as well as those that are new to the council
activities.
Thank you for your concerns and input.
Regards,
Gary Ferrari
Chairman- IPC Designers Council
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