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Online Exam Experience

I was scheduled for my CTD this morning at bright and early 7:00.  I spent a good amount of time last night making sure I was ready for the exam: cleaned up my office area a little to remove papers, pens, phone charger, etc, tested my system with PSI (the online test system), and left everything alone for the night.  First issue was I overslept a little (6:20).  So I hurried up to put in my contacts, put decent clothes on, get breakfast and water, sit down to sign in for the exam.  It is now 7:30.  I redid the PSI tests, all pass.  Enter the exam (you are allowed 30 to minutes before your exam).  "You must install the PSI Extension".  Why wasn't this done when I ran the system tests?  Ok, fine.  "Your IT has blocked this extension."  Turn everything off, grab my wife's laptop, install Chrome, log into the exam again, install the plugin, and go through the sign in stuff (take picture of your ID, take a picture of yourself, show your cleaned up area).  It is now 6:50.  "You will be connected to your proctor at your exam time."  Ok, let's just sit here for 10 minutes trying to keep the nerves down.  It gets to 7:05 and I click a little box to send a message.  I complain that the proctor is 5 minutes late.  I then find a chat button.  Wait a couple of minutes to be "connected to chat".  They ask for my name and email and tell me "I will be right back with you".  Every 3 minutes I get that same message.  Eventually, it is 7:30.  I had been waiting for 40 minutes.  I try to complain over the chat "You are no longer connected to chat".  And I cannot find any other way to try to talk to anybody.  I just gave up.  Closed Chrome, uninstalled it, and put it back where my wife likes it.  Then I reconnect my work laptop, go through email, come here.

 

So the TLDR:  Way too many hoops to jump through and in the end PSI failed me.

1. Why isn't the PSI extension installed when performing the system test?  That would have saved some frustration.

2. My proctor did not show up by 30 minutes AFTER the exam start time.

3. I got so frustrated waiting I just gave up on taking the exam.

 


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Hi Crossrulz,

 

I've reached out to our account manager at PSI to investigate this. 

 

I 100% agree with you the extension should be part of the compatibility check, and the proctor no show is unacceptable. 

 

Please contact us at certification@ni.com to work with our ops team to rectify the situation. 

 

Nate

National Instruments
Staff Certification Engineer
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@CertifiNATEtion wrote:

Please contact us at certification@ni.com to work with our ops team to rectify the situation. 


Email was sent ~1 hour ago.


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So the aftermath:

There was apparently "a technical concern that prevented our proctor from reaching" me.  I was refunded my exam fee.  Maybe this was just God's way of telling me I'm trying to do too much right now (we'll just say there is a lot happening in the LabVIEW community and NI)


GCentral
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I read this post earlier today, fingers crossed that I wouldn't have a similar experience. I was scheduled to take my CLAD exam today at 4:00, but here we are 40 mins and a couple unanswered chat messages later with no response.

 

It said I could launch the exam up to 30 mins before my scheduled time, so I did at 3:35, finishing the ID and room checks by 3:45. I've been staring at the "Thank you. You will be connected to your proctor at your scheduled exam time" message for an hour now.

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Hi  Master_Samwise,

 

Did you had a chance to start\finish the exam?

I have the CLD exam tomorrow, hopefully it will go smooth.

 

Regards

CLD
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Message 6 of 26
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Hi Marius_T,

 

Hope your CLD exam went smoothly! For me I was taken to the "waiting for your proctor" screen where I disconnected after an hour of waiting.

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Message 7 of 26
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Hi there,

 

I logged in to take the exam 25 min before scheduled hour, and after the ID/room check the proctor showed up in 5 minutes.

During the exam I could  feel a bit of lag  and I got disconnected after ~3 hours but i managed to login back relatively quick. 

As other members  mentioned, there are some issues with CTRL+quick drop shortcuts (mostly missed front panel cleanup) and you will need a big monitor.

 

Overall I can say that my experience was a positive one, but if you have the chance to take the exam on site you should so.

 

P.S. The proctor didn't gave me an environment setup extra time but he did announced when I had 1h30 time  left. 

 

Regards

 

 

CLD
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Until now, I was under the impression that it was only me! Now that I wasn't singled out, I thought I'll voice my surreal experience here as well. All times mentioned below are in IST.

I had scheduled my CLD exam for 1.30 pm Indian Standard Time on the 28th, May 2020. After logging into the PSI exam portal at around 12.30 pm, I proceeded to complete the system compatibility prechecks and was done with it by 12.45 pm. Things were all going fine and I was all done with my ID, Face, and Surrounding checks by 1.20 pm. What followed after was an unprecedented test of time with the screen displaying an overly optimistic message: "Please wait, a proctor will be assigned to you shortly."
I was staring at the same screen for around 45 minutes. That was when some anxiety kicked in and I was starting to getting frantic. I immediately tried contacting the PSI support over the phone. They call went on saying "We are unable to service you at the moment." Then I tried calling the certification department at NI India's Sales office. Interestingly, they had not even the faintest idea of how the online exams were being conducted, let alone about the predicament I was then facing.
They directed me to get in touch with NI/PSI Customer Support in the US. I was utterly shocked to know that even the NI US Customer Support couldn't resolve my issue and the IVRS message just mentioned there was no support personnel available to help me with my issue. 
It was almost 3 pm when the proctor finally arrived. The screen changed after almost 100 minutes and now read "The proctor is checking your details and shall let you in soon." I was able to sense some relief after this, but I hadn't tided past all the troubles yet.
I again had to wait for another 30 minutes after which the chat window opened for the proctor to give me a few instructions. The proctor asked me to do the facial, ID, surrounding checks once again. Wondering what the previous check was for! Probably the tests and checks had timed out. To be frank with you all, the proctor was a No Show on the day of my test!
It was only after going through all these "tests of time and patience" was I able to start my exam at 
3.50 pm.I wasn't fully aware until the exam started that I can't use keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+N, Ctrl+B, Ctrl+R. I sincerely feel what has been discussed as exam challenges in the NI forums regarding the online exams should actually feature in the guidelines for the test!  I subconsciously pressed Ctrl+N (to create a new VI). And Boom! Chrome opened up a new tab and my exam got paused. What a pity! I immediately got back to my test window and started texting the proctor. Time flew but the proctor never replied. This was even more distressing than the initial wait and drove to me to the point where I requested the proctor to release the exam once and for all. Still, there was no response from the other end. Well, the proctor came online exactly after 20 minutes. The exam was then un-paused. The proctor told me the connection got lost. I was totally online all the time until then. So I have no clue as to what that connection loss actually meant.
And the catch?! I never got to get those lost 20 minutes. The connection was hardly stable and kept disconnecting frequently (4 complete disconnections throughout the exam.) The precheck never told my internet was unstable.(FYI, I had a stable 20 Mbps connection). 
When I got back into the session, I asked the proctor for the extra time to compensate for what I lost because of no fault of mine. He gave me only 5 minutes. And even during that session, the connection got lost again. The best highlight of this unforgettably pathetic exam experience came at the end when the proctor asked me to SUBMIT my answers. He even asked me to search for an EXIT button which was nowhere to be found on the entire window. 
I told the proctor that the exam was desktop-based and so he started figuring out a way to end my exam. I sincerely hope the person who proctored my exam is actually an authorized proctor for PSI.

After the exam ended, I looked at my clock and it displayed 8.30 pm!

Message 9 of 26
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Hi Jatin, 

 

Thank you for sharing your experience with our online exam system. I apologize sincerely that you had to go through this. The CLD exam is stressful enough without the additional burden of dealing with this. 

 

I have reached out to our contacts at PSI and asked how they intend to resolve these issues, and to understand what is causing unacceptable experiences similar to yours. 

 

Please bear with us while we try to resolve these issues with the online exams. 

 

Nate

National Instruments
Staff Certification Engineer
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