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Online Exam Experience

Hi Jatin,
That was a disappointing experience. I hope these issues are resolved and you pass the exam.

 

One more thing that I want to add, from my experience and looking at experience of others, is that each proctor acts differently. The knowledge of what is allowed and whats not is lacking. Some allow you to setup your environment, others don't. Some tell you about the time left, others just close the session. Some don't even give you the extra time to make up for the lost time.

 

 



Best Regards,
Certified LabVIEW Developer

Certified Architect
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Message 11 of 26
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Hi all, 

 

I wanted to share what I've heard back from PSI regarding the recent exam experiences. 

 

We experienced an issue with a third party app which cause proctors not to see candidates waiting in the queue. We pushed a fix out on Thursday evening but continued to see issues through Sunday, when we pushed out our regular release. We will provide voucher to all impacted candidates. 

Our operations team was in contact with PSI throughout this issue and worked with impacted individuals to rectify the situation. 

tldr; The online exam / proctoring system should be working as intended now. There was a disruption with a 3rd party application that caused proctors to be unable to see candidates they were scheduled to proctor. 

 

Nate

 

National Instruments
Staff Certification Engineer
Message 12 of 26
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@Jatin_Verma Goodness, I thought it was bad having to wait 15 extra minutes for a proctor when I sat my exam, let alone hours. 😮 That's horrific! I had assumed the extra wait was because I had sat it on a public holiday.

 

Glad to hear that improvements have been made @CertifiNATEtion.

 

Here are my own grumbles to add to the list, some of which I passed on NI.

  • Something that I found bizarre was that they gave me a number to call if I had technical difficulties, and I asked whether I could save it to my desktop as I was not allowed to write it down. Nope. What am I supposed to do, remember the number?
  • I had 1 '(not responding)' freeze and 3 or 4 'LabVIEW has encountered a problem and needed to close'. It couldn't recover my autosaved files. I am used to these crashes at work, but it was disappointing to see them on such a small project. I was given a voucher to sit the exam again because of this.
  • I would like it if the system clock of the VM started at 0:00, not some totally arbitrary time. I didn't have a clock in the room and forgot to note the start time on the system. My proctor didn't give me any time warning.
  • I was notified that the exam was finished, but I still had access to the VM. I had to tell them to stop the session, and it took them a couple of minutes. I didn't do anything during this time, but I didn't like the ambiguity as to whether I could carry on.
  • I had problems with a disconnection too, which I find weird because I am normally remoted into virtual machines over a VPN for 8 hours a day and have never had the connection drop before. It took several minutes for them to let me back in, which was time that I lost. I think I saw that it was hosted on Apache Guacamole... I wonder if the server is located in the US so is more laggy for people who live elsewhere.
  • I think the instructions about where to save your files and the first few (standard) pages of the exam sheet should be made public - people who are sitting physical exams know exactly what to expect (e.g. save to the USB) and don't have to read these sheets.
  • I have been thinking about a fairer way that would allow us to set up our LabVIEW environment, without the proctor understanding LabVIEW. The only solution I could think of would be to add 2-5 minutes to the total exam time to make up for time lost to customising the environment. I'm sure there must be more than 1 colour blind LabVIEW programmer, so this is an accessibility issue as much as a fairness issue.
  • LabVIEW 2019 or 2020 would have been preferred - I too felt the absence of the clean up front panel @Marius_T!
Message 13 of 26
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Another story along those same lines 

 

Obviously, there are problems with this system.

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Message 14 of 26
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Hi guys,

 

I received the results today. Excellent news,  I passed the exam!

This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time! 

 

Regards,

Marius

 

CLD
Message 15 of 26
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I have the same experience with crossrulz, registered for the CLD Online Exam and attempted to take it, yet prove to be a disappointing and frustrating experience, the exam system was such a let down,

First Time:

Proctor No-Show (Waited for 45 minutes straight since the start time yet no proctor take up my session and I chatted with the agent live who offered me the solution of rescheduling)

 

Second Time (Next day after reschedule)

Error 401 Unauthorized error, Proctor could'nt launch the exam, ask me to follow the troubleshooting steps, I followed through, yet exam still could'nt launch, enlisted PSI Technical support,customer service gave me the option to reschedule, technical support side assured me they will resolve this issue, ends up?

 

Third Time (Reschedule again due to Error 401 fault)

I made the effort to verify with the support to make sure no hiccups this time round as they did't got back to me by Email as promised. Yet same error occurs again,the proctor could not launch the exam as the error came back. Proctor requested me to swop laptops and install another extension in an attempt to sit for the exam, yet the error was persistent. Wasted money to call PSI support as IDD calls are not cheap , yet they only could tell me to reschedule and say their technical team is on the issue

 

Really a letdown by PSI services on conducting the CLD Exam. I reported the error early hoping that they will resolve it and this would't happen to other people, yet it happened to me for the second time straight!

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Message 16 of 26
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(A part of) My online exam experience:

 

DISCLAIMER: I took the CLAD exam (not CLD), so the extensions needed may be different for others, but I wanted to make sure I share this experience, in case it helps someone else.

 

TL;DR - For my online exam, I needed two chrome extensions: One for video streaming, another for remote proctoring.

Spoiler

Some people have reported needing to install an extension. Since I knew that...

  • When I did my "system check" on the online system, it said my computer did not allow video streaming.
  • So, I Googled for "PSI chrome extension" and installed what it recommended: "PSI In-application Extension".
  • After another "system check", this had enabled the video streaming.
  • Then, when I launched the exam, I was asked to install *another* extension: "PSI Remote Proctoring Extension". (I thought, "Oh, maybe the first extension wasn't necessary...")
  • I installed this second extension, removed the first, and my video streaming broke again.
  • I re-installed the first extension, and video streaming worked again.
  • So: I needed both Chrome extensions - one for video streaming and the other for remote proctoring.

(For the rest of my online multiple-choice exam experience, see this post. The other post is CLAD exam specific, but some of it probably applies to all multiple choice tests, like the Re-certification tests.)

 

-joeorbob

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Message 17 of 26
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This is interesting. I just want to add another case to the pool - a colleague of mine attempted the CLD earlier this year and had an unforgivable experience. I won't go into the details here, but suffice to say my more than capable friend was not given a fair and reasonable opportunity to take the exam and, consequently, failed it. Similar problems with proctors and connectivity as reported by others above.

Thoric (CLA, CLED, CTD and LabVIEW Champion)


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Message 18 of 26
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still trying to take my CLA-R that was scheduled 12/31/20. 

logged into the portal 1 hour early. 

there was no "Take Exam" button. 

there was a note on the exam details saying "Absent for the Test". 

Called PSI immediately. on hold forever. 

used the online chat. got ahold of somebody in Malayasia who wanted to do a screenshare. ok. showed them the same info. no help. 

 

after another 1.5 hour of 'troubleshooting' with various PSI people they concluded they needed certification@ni help to continue. 

 

so yeah, your not alone!! hang in there. 

Sr Test Engineer at American Innovations - LabVIEW CLA - Kudo's are appreciated!!
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Message 19 of 26
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Hi everyone,

 

I had the CLA exam today and I thought to share with you some useful information.

 

*Check In

- I had the exam scheduled at 09:00, I launched the exam at 08:30 and the check in process started in max. 3-5 minutes

- The whole check-in process, until I started the exam, took about 25 min

 

*Room and desk check

- The proctor  thoroughly checked my room. After I submitted the recorded room scan, the proctor asked me again to show him the room and the desk.

- I had to remove my smartwatch, and show that there is nothing under the laptop or keyboard.

- I was allowed to have a drink on my desk ( water in an transparent glass)

 

*Exam environment

- The virtual machine had LabVIEW 2020 installed

- If you don’t want to create a lot of constants during exam (like me 🙂 ) you can add PopupMenus.ElevateCreation=FALSE to ini file and the right click  menus will be as in the previous LV versions.

- The virtual machine starts with the time set to 00:00, so you can always check how much time has elapsed

 

 

*Connection

- I have a 300Mbits internet connection, on wireless I have an average speed of 70Mbits

- When the proctor started the exam, I was asked to login to an portal ( can’t remember the name) with an google account. The proctor didn’t knew why this happened and asked me to refresh the browser. I logged out from my google account and refreshed the browser, afterward I could see the virtual machine. Most probably this issue was related to my laptop, not sure.

- During the exam I had 3 disconnects and noticeable network lag for ~1.5h, the remaining time the connection has been stable and without noticeable lag

- The check-in process after disconnection was relatively quick, ~2minutes

- I reported all the issues to the proctor, and  my impression was that he logs all the reported issues somewhere

 

* Conclusion

- The proctor was very prompt, I never felt that I have no support during my exam 

- Taking the exam on site would be preferred, but  given the pandemic situation and traveling maybe 6-8h (in my case) to an examination site, the online exam is more than welcome

- I would still recommend to take the exam online

 

Regards,

Marius T.

CLD
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Message 20 of 26
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