Today I ‘presented” at the NYC Scrum User Group on “Remote Agile Games“. I’ve been avoiding presenting remotely. I did do a panel. Today wasn’t bad. I think the key reasons were
All this made it feel like a conversation. Which isn’t draining the way an online presentation is.
We recently wrote about Oracle’s at home proctored exams. Amazon is now starting to do the same. They announced it last month. As of now, it is only valid for the practitioner exam. Taking the exam anytime of the day or night is a nice feature to offer.
It’s offered from PearsonVUE so the rules are pretty similar to Oracle’s. See our blog post from when Oracle started offering it for our take. I think more people fall into the category of the online proctored exam being useful for AWS though. Here’s why:
Computer requirements
Same as in the Oracle blog post
Room requirements
Same as in the Oracle blog post. Still a problem for me because it is a physical layout issue.
Privacy
Same as in the Oracle blog post. Prepare your family/roomates so you have a room to yourself.
No Breaks
The AWS exam is significantly shorter than the OCP. Which means you aren’t likely to need a bathroom break and not being to take on is a non-issue.
No writing
This is still a problem for me. I write a lot down during exam. Facts I think i”ll forget. Questions I want to go back to. What I want to remember between questions in case one question answers another. I also like to track how many I am unsure of because it gives me confidence that I’m not failing.
Depending on your test taking style, not writing things down may be a non-issue though. It’s not like you are tracing complex loops here!
My thoughts
While I can’t do this, I think it is a good option for folks who have more space and/or live further away from a testing center. It’s definitely an easier sell than on the OCP!
When signing up for a cert exam from Oracle (via PearsonVUE), you now get asked whether you want to take it “at a local test center” or “at my home or office.”
The online option sounded interesting so I clicked on it and went to the Online Proctored exam page. The gist is that if you can meet certain requirements, you can take the exam from home.
Computer requirements
Computer requirements are pretty standard. Any modern computer with Mac/Windows/Linux should be fine. Don’t take it over the corporate network though; it doesn’t play well with corporate firewalls.
Room requirements
The room requirements are where this falls apart for me. You have to be a walled room with a door. I live in New York City.; apartments are small. My apartment has two doors – one to get into the apartment and one for the bathroom. Everything else is one big room.
You also have to use your webcam to show that you aren’t in arm’s reach of books/notepads/post-its/papers/pens/pencils/etc. Additional monitors must be unplugged. Looking around, I have *a lot* of stuff within arms length. It would take a while to move things even if I had a room with a door.
Privacy
You have to be alone in the room. So prepare your family/roommates.
No Breaks
Ou are not allowed to take a bathroom break. I’ve never needed one during the exam. But it is three hours and some people do. In an exam center, you are allowed to go to the bathroom. It counts against your time, but you can go.
No writing
You aren’t allowed to write anything down. At the exam center, you can trace variables, write down questions to go back to etc. You have to return the paper at the end. Since this can’t be done at home, I understand why they can’t let you write anything down. However, I think it would be really hard to take a Java cert without writing anything down.
My thoughts
While I can’t do this, I think it is a good option for folks who have more space and/or live further away from a testing center. The not writing things down limitation would be hard though!