Curriculum and Certifications

The only way I would get down with certification is if it was an authentic assessment that required actual work. Drupal and many other techs are not necessarily about knowledge that can be expressed on a MC test. They are about problem solving based on the understanding of the technology. Just because someone can memorize a list of terms or answers to questions doesn't mean they can solve a problem. For example, I could ask someone on a test what a hook is; however, just because they can answer that question doesn't mean they know what to do with it. I have dealt with too many people that just got a "certification" and have no practical knowledge of what they got certified to do.

I refer to certification as "the other C word" when people bring it up. Because I work for Acquia, people are looking to us for leadership on this topic, and often do ask me about it. Some are vehemently opposed. Yet, far more want certification.

Drupal Lavigne of the BSD community said the topic of certification would start a flame war in their every 5-6 months. Your page is a good round-up of the flame wars in the Drupal community.

Certain sectors require and expect certification, and some think Drupal certification is an inevitability. We can choose to ignore it, but I also think it will come. My fear is that without leadership in the area, opportunists with less accountability will take advantage of the vacuum.

Researching, we can look to other OSS projects for how they approached it. Typo3 has established a not for profit entity to manage the creation of and delivery of certification. I met with Dru Lavigne of the BSD community who shared how they went from a process that took 3 years and they brought it down to 9 months. Their certification is de-coupled from curriculum. I blogged about it here:
http://heather.drupalgardens.com/content/bsd-certification-group-working...

It doesn't need to be costly for the person getting certified, though the investment in terms of developing certification IS costly and time consuming. If any organization were to start today to make a professional exam-based certification programme for Drupal- it wouldn't be available for delivery for another year as a best case estimate.

Alternatives include peer and reputation based metrics. I'm always looking for examples which could be employed. See P2PU - peer to peer university is creating a peer based network for learning, with a goal to giving "credits" and degrees on certain topics. See more: http://opensource.com/education/10/6/crafting-open-web-qualification

Aaron Winborn posted about Drupal Guilds, which I think would be along similar lines?
http://groups.drupal.org/node/88819

So there are alternatives, but in terms of industry recognition of peer based reputation, I have to do more research.

Although, I think Lullabot have used your own Certified to Rock as a metric for hiring people. They ask for people at a level of 5. Which is fun and interesting, and I think reflects the trust they have in you, Greggles, and your company. But would a government institution trust the black box, not knowing how the number was calculated? Maybe someday!

Universities and colleges may be able to lead in this area. Especially for-profit institutions which have a motive for revenue, with assessment and qualifications engine behind them. In that case, the curriculum & assessment are more closely linked. Their accreditation also lends credibility. However, the likelyhood of a Drupal-specific qualification being OK'd by national education authority is not likely. Alternatively, there may be "open source development" qualifications at college or uni level. At least this has been my experience in Ireland.

Though these are likely to be too expensive or out of reach of most individuals. And the long form of higher education is not necessarily suited to all.

Anyway, if you want to start a flame war in an OSS community, bringing up certification is a sure-fire way to do it. Soon we have to tackle it head on- and we can learn from others who have blazed the same trail.

Hopefully more constructive thoughts here. I'd love to see alternative models.

Maybe a comparison with established institutions and the corporate world is in order. Certification is age-old and expected for real world activities like flying airplanes, practicing medicine, fighting wars, teaching school, and preaching to the choir. Here the cathedrals of establishment pay little attention to the bazaars of their detractors - and for good reason.

The corporate world offers a working model for diplomas of any sort. They start with a top-down structure of what a person "needs" to know - yes, from perspective of someone(s) with authority & credentials - and then subordinate people work to develop a curriculum, metrics, and coherent documentation about the process and contents.

How do Linux & GNU do these things? GNU came from MIT with a lot of implicit funding and knowledgeable resources, sadly not available to most other projects, but they still match this corporate pattern in terms of direction.

So it's natural to look to the top for solutions. Now, the OSS community is good at denying top-ness, so let me second the motion that it could be time for Acquia itself to take the lead. It's likely, IMHO, that funding and investment will be needed because coherent documentation / training / certification is less likely to come "for free" than technical constructions of software.

Quality and results will also involve being a bit strict in terms of compliance towards a new program. Dries himself alluded to this at the Copenhagen conference with his visionary fear of 30'000 modules by year 2020. (Yikes!) But keeping things orderly may result in some toes being stepped upon - gently of course. Are we prepared for this?

Thus my question is whether Acquia (or another party) is able & willing to take these steps. Isn't this what happened to Red Hat? Otherwise I see nothing but endless philosophical discussions within the Drupal sea of unherded cats trying to improve this situation. (Meow from me, I'm also one. :-) Leadership needed!