FW: Fronteers certification - opinions?

I agree, many people not only refer to cheat sheets or reference guides (or stuff like TextExpander and code snippets), but it's actually considered a good practice to refer to specifications for "per-case" usage queries (to reinforce knowledge and question standards that may be incorrect). W3Schools in particular are well known for reinforcing that "memorize the tag names and it's general purpose" philosophy and look at how frowned upon they are. Context matters, especially on the Web - what is a good case for usage in one situation may not be semantically in another so it's pointless to get students to just memorize all the tags if they've no conditioning as to when it should be used (the critical why in preference to just what). I've seen far too often the issues of people just learning elements and not having a clue about their usage - a case in point... tables. I hear people claiming tables shouldn't be used at all because they're bad for layouts (which we all know is nonsense as tables for tabular data is the right thing to-do), the same thing happens with people saying "use strong not B because it's better" when there is clear cases and situations for both to be used. The only way you can ensure students understand context is to have them experience such situations and let them understand why it matters, not just teach them all the terms and hope they can magically pick the right tag for the right job (without experience).

PS: Regarding Fronteer's, I think testing is important, but what we're offering goes beyond that (the ability to self-tutor or evolve beyond a proprietary testing format - like others have done, see IWA's associations with the CWP (Certified Web Professional) system - which I know from experience is pretty popular but lacking in the same way academic teaching is (not to mention expensive). So I'm not too worried about the idea, to be honest, we're aiming for the most open system I've come across, and that will be extra important with all of this talk of intellectual property strangleholds on the Web (if SOPA goes ahead) if people want access to viable, free learning in the industry.


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>Hi guys,

> Does anyone else feel that a memory based 'quiz' is unrealistic? I'd be surprised if there are any front end web professionals that don't look something up or copy + paste on a daily basis.

> If we want to train people for real life than either we have the quiz 'open book' or make it project based. We need to test understanding not memory.

> --

> Lewis Nyman

Received on Tuesday, 10 January 2012 23:28:49 UTC