Instead of discussing this topic again and again, LPI should do its
homework and take care about a serious cert guide which is accurate and
well designed.
On 19.04.19 11:33, Alan McKinnon wrote:
On 2019/04/19 10:04, Simone Piccardi wrote:
Il 16/04/19 14:45, Mark Clarke ha scritto:
I would suggest that its not an either or approach. We could have a
part that is multiple choice and a practical part. The practical
part doesn't have to be under exam conditions. It could be a task
like write a bash script that does x or some other assignemtn. The
student is given 2 days to do the task and submit the
script/assignement and the testing can be automated.
And how do you avoid having the student getting "help" from a friend?
That's an excellent point.
Another is how will an automated tester account for every variation
that the candidate might have or do? Perhaps a candidate might
validate an IP Address (sensible) and naturally uses Python with
netaddr. Automated testing is likely to fail and the assignment,
whilst correct, is marked wrong. Now manual intervention is needed and
that means salaries. The cost of an exam just multiplies many times.
I've stayed out of this current discussion as it rears it's head every
few years and never goes anywhere. Such discussions are tiring.
Someone earlier mentioned the perception that hands-on testing is
better. I very much agree that it is a perception. It might not be true.
So what is hands-on testing good for? It's great for testing if a
candidate can perform a series of predetermined steps in response to a
given situation to produce a determined result. Hence why we test
student pilots with it. And electricians, scuba divers and almost
every action a sailor will do on the job (when sailors can't pass
these tests, other sailors die).
It's why RedHat, Cisco and SuSE use practical tests - those distros
provide specific tools to do specific functions and the candidate can
rely on the tools to be present and work correctly. To do task X on
RHEL regarding selinux, RHEL provides a tool, and it will be present
on the test machine. The candidate is required to show they can drive
the tool to produce the result RedHat demonstrated in the course.
In truth, this has very little to do with results, it has everything
to do with the tool and how it is used, and the result is a
side-effect. RedHat never puts anything in their low and mid level
exams that is not covered in sufficient detail in their course
materials, to do so would be very unfair. You can't expect someone to
perform a task they were not taught how to do.
If we look at LPI's mission, we see that it is to a large degree
exactly opposite to the above. LPI is not about RHEL tools, it is
about the candidate proving they understand Linux systems within the
scope of the level tested. Because the scope is not bound to a
specific distro or release, testing has to be done on a somewhat
abstract, conceptual level. There is nothing wrong with measuring the
extent of conceptual knowledge and this is what LPI does.
Testing conceptual knowledge is not inherently better or worse than
practical testing, they are simply different. Both have their place
and they are answers to different questions about candidates and
should not be conflated.
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