Certification
Online Exam Experience
Hi everyone,
I'm so happy to share that I received a positive feedback from NI.
I can't de describe in words how happy I was when I received the results (10/18.9/28.9/40| 97.8% using Actor Framework).
Regards,
Marius
I took my first PSI exam today, and oh boy am I not looking forward to having to do that again. I was so wound up and frustrated by the sign in and validation experience I'm surprised I was able to control myself and sit the exam!
I logged in early, to find a Chrome extension is required. Click it - blocked by Admin. Ah shoot!
Quickly close my work laptop, retrieve my personal laptop, open that, log into the system, install the extension (still got 5 minutes before my allotted start time so I should be ok).
Step 1 - Take a video of your room
Step 2 - Take a video of your floor and ceiling. Sadly I didn't realise this because on the webpage the text falls underneath an always-on-top translucent banner that overlaps the webpage. It can be docked away, but I didn't dare in case there was something there I needed to notice. So I ended up submitting a second video of my room thinking the first had failed.
Step 3 - Take a video of your desk, including underneath your keyboard and laptop, then also show us your cell phone and throw it away. That's a lot to squeeze into 15 seconds. In fact, I found 15 seconds barely long enough for each video - it's amazing how awful a webcam video looks when you spin it around 360 deg - especially an auto-focusing camera.
Step 4- Show us your wrists, ears. What!? I had headphones on! I'm not allowed headphones? But what if you want to talk to me? I don't want to use the laptop speakers. Sigh, fine, I'll remove the headphones.
Step 5 - Video of your ID. Again, a standard webcam with autofocus doesn't cope particularly well when you're slightly nervous and holding up a passport in front of it.
Then the waiting. 20 minutes later I start a Chat to ask if there's a problem, I'm told to be patient. I apologise.
10 minutes later I'm told I failed three of the validation steps. ID photo is blurry. No video of floor to ceiling (I only realised at this point that I'd messed up a step). Didn't show my entire desktop.
I was booted back out to resubmit the videos. Tried again.
Rejected on two counts - room sweep and desktop again.
Tried those again.
Rejected on desktop again. So I threw all my desktop items to the floor leaving just laptop and external monitor.
Tried again.
Accepted the video this time.
Then I'm at the last step before being allowed into the exam when I'm asked "Can you switch off the monitor you're not using". I'm using my external (nice large) monitor, so they're asking me to switch of my laptop screen. Can you do that? I've never done that. I tentatively explored my Display Settings and figured out how to keep the external display on and the laptop display off. Good.
"Can you now close the laptop?" - What?? That'll send the laptop into a shutdown! We negotiated to "closed within an inch of shut".
"Can you show me one last video of your desktop?" - Really? Really!? Each time I have to do this I have to dismount my webcam from the top bridge of the monitor, peel the USB cable from behind everything, step back three feet and hold it aloft pointing downwards.
OK, now I'm allowed in.
Exam begins - no virtual desktop. I was promised I could use the virtualised environment Notepad to make notes. But it's a webpage of multichoice questions, so no desktop and no notepad. So naturally I'm using my imagination to make notes, and occasionally I'm uttering to myself - No Talking Allowed!
I have a cup of tea, that settles me. - No Tea Allowed (only an unmarked/unlabelled clear bottle of water). I don't have one, I didn't know I wasn't allowed tea. Blimey.
Not a great experience, it took too long to get set up, the invigilator was nowhere to be seen for far too long at the beginning. Most people are a bag of nerves when starting an exam, the last thing they need is an obstacle course tech complexities, cameraman trial-by-fire testing and undeclared constraints on your allowances.
And I just thought: what if I had no webcam except for the one built into the laptop - that probably would have ended me!
1 STAR to PSI.
Hey there.
Today I took my first NI certification exam with Examity. Here was how it went:
- For preparation:
- I cleared my desk in my home office completely. This was no small task. 🤣
- I cleared my immediate work area, which involved rearranging a lot of clutter and equipment to the other side of my home office.
- I physically disconnected and removed my second monitor, since I can do this easily using the mounts I have
- I shut off my phone and placed it out of reach.
- I locked the door and put a sign up with stern words and a jolly roger to dissuade people from knocking
- Logistical things I hadn't anticipated for preparation:
- The proctor had me close the blinds in my home office, presumably so people can't run by and flash signs with hints, use semaphore, communicate with me using Morse encoded eye blinks, or use telepathy in the lizard people frequency range that isn't attenuated by glass.
- The laptop I was using was on my desk, closed, and connected to my docking station, but the proctor had me cover it with a "cloth" just in case it might open on its own and start displaying all the answers. This seemed silly to me, but I humored her and placed a nearby fleece blanket over my laptop to test its thermal robustness.
- I have a security camera in my office, which thankfully has been disconnected for a long time. (Shhh... criminals everywhere might find out.) She asked me about it and I assured her that it is off, although she didn't have me tape over it or anything.
- Audio / Video annoyances
- Examity has you connect with Zoom and share your screen with them. This sounds pretty straightforward, right?
- I was using my personal laptop which hardly has any software on it, but no matter what we tried, I couldn't hear her and she couldn't hear me. This was odd because I've used Zoom on there plenty of times without issue.
- She had me restart the computer.
- I restarted the computer and the same issue persisted. She asked, do you have another computer? "Sure," I said.
- I connected my work laptop and proceeded to boot it up.
- The same problem persisted, so she asked me to reboot that computer, even though I had just booted it fresh. I learned in the PSI days not to argue with the proctor, so I humored her and rebooted it.
- This time, before connecting audio to the meeting, I tested my speaker and mic with Zoom's built-in test. Everything checked out and worked properly. I could hear a recording of myself through the speakers.
- The problem persisted, so she said, "I need you to reschedule your exam to another time slot"
- This filled me with dread. I wrote in the chat something to the effect of, "I have planned my entire day and week around this. I have studied on and off for months. I'm not giving up that easily." The psychological sinusoid would drive anyone nuts.
- I asked her if she was sure she'd checked everything on her end, because everything was working on my end with Zoom's test.
- She said that they had already checked everything.
- Finally, an inexplicable miracle occurred and the audio just started working, albeit 15 minutes past the exam's scheduled time.
- She then said, "can you hold for a few moments?" This repeated three times for various intervals until about another 5-10 minutes had gone by.
- Then we went through the whole regiment of checking my ID, unscrewing my webcam and pointing it at things, covering things up, and the long list of questions to confirm understanding and compliance with policy.
- Only then did I actually start the exam, and thankfully the entire hour was still available to take it.
When you get to the end of the exam, you hold your breath and submit your exam results... wait for the page to load... go through an entire face journey...
...and the page basically says "test complete." Your eyes scan over the page quickly and your heart sinks as you realize that you don't know what the result was.
It's been a couple of hours and I still don't know if I passed. I know it hasn't been that long, but it's still unnerving.
It feels like the really old days where you'd submit your test and wait a week or two for a large, white envelope from NI.
They said "look for an email." I wonder how things actually proceed. Do the Examity people mail the result on a once-a-week flight to an outpost in the Falklands, where it is forwarded by whale courier to Austin? I have no idea. I'm sure it's my anxiety talking and I'll probably get the result on Monday or something.
What I took away from this is, make sure you get online and try to connect to a proctor far in advance. 15 minutes early wasn't nearly enough for us to sort out Zoom, which oddly enough has worked flawlessly on both of my laptops in the past.
Prepare yourself for the letdown that you won't know for a while if you passed.
Is it an improvement from PSI? I mean, kind of. Maybe? I'm trying to be optimistic. PSI rejected my test the first time because my ID said "James" and my NI account said "Jim." That's long since been rectified, so who knows if Examity would have done the same.
It was still kind of a hassle if I'm honest, though, and I miss the simplicity of either going to an NI office, an NI partner, or even a Pearson test center to take the test in person.
Here's an update: NI were prompt in acknowledging the test results. The confirmation came around 8 AM local time (7 AM Austin time) the next morning from:
"NI (National Instruments) via Credly <admin---at---credly.com>"
I was pleasantly surprised that they sent it out even on a Saturday morning. (Thanks to whomever is doing this or has set up the automation behind the scenes! 👍 )
If you were to fail your exam, I doubt it would come from Credly, but I assume they'd be prompt in delivering your failing result.
