[Bf-education] Blender certification... FYI: indicative assessment times.

Mon Jan 13 18:40:23 CET 2014

Hi, Folks -

As you may know, I sometimes respond to comments made on our topic, but I always read all the emails.  I thought I would add my two cents at this point.

I agree with Ann.  As an employer who hires game designers and animators year-round, I always consider the portfolio before any written assessment, such as grades in animation classes.  I do expect them to know the fundamentals, such as the 12 Principles of Animation, etc.  But, more importantly, I can assess their understanding of the software by looking at their work.

As an instructional designer, I can safely state that the person to help design any written assessment needs to be a qualified person in Measurements and Evaluation with a background in technical writing so they would have the mindset to understand the Blender tutorials from which they would derive the test questions.  They would not necessarily need to know instructional design.  That would be more for writing training materials.  I don't think we need training materials since there are tutorials.  We need to assess what the person knows about the software - not train them in the software.

Also, I don't know how important evaluating a person's academic credentials would be in their being assessed for certification.  That would be a concern for the employer - not for a person to get a certification - especially since most people right now are self-taught in Blender.  Some with more education than others.  But, more education does not guarantee they are better at using Blender.  I have 10-year olds in my classes that do better animations than some of my (game design) teachers.  I just don't know if we need to get into assessing education credentials.

Just my thoughts.

Debra E. Brown-Thompson  M.S., M.O.B.
Executive Director
GenTech NFP
773-324-7772

-----Original Message-----
From: leung, ann [SD] [SD] <ann.leung at polyu.edu.hk>
To: Blender Educators and Trainers <bf-education at blender.org>
Sent: Sun, Jan 12, 2014 11:19 pm
Subject: Re: [Bf-education] Blender certification... FYI: indicative assessment	times.

Hi Andrew,

Am a lecturer/instructor in Hong Kong teaching animation and design subjects. In 
Hong Kong, showreel is king or for instructor, it would be a teaching portfolio 
on top of showreel or students reels.

In our school, all animation and design subjects would have projects than exam. 
to assess students achievement towards end of each semester and employers here 
also prefer hiring a good animator/designers than merely look at the academic 
results

Hope my info. helps

Cheers,
ann

-----Original Message-----
From: bf-education-bounces at blender.org [mailto:bf-education-bounces at blender.org] 
On Behalf Of Andrew Buttery & 
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 11:05 AM
To: bf-education at blender.org
Subject: [Bf-education] Blender certification... FYI: indicative assessment 
times.

Hi everyone,

FYI: I did a bit of asking around with some educators in Melbourne and Hong
Kong as to how long they would take to assess the competency of a student as
after the conversation a month or so ago I was curious as to how long it
really takes...

One said at least an hour and half for a written assessment (e.g. exam),
less if it was an oral assessment (i.e. a Q&A session). She thought that
multiple choice questions (MCQ) were a poor way to assess unless they were
very well written.

The other said that assessing a portfolio of work on average takes two to
two and a half hours even though he is very experienced and assesses quite a
few a year. I'm guessing that is over a hundred a year as he assessed my
Certificate IV Training and Assessment evidence folder along with 20 other
students. Mine was just one course of many he teaches during the year.

So if we want a certification to have creditability, it needs, at least, to
have:
- a qualified individual doing the instructional design and
assessment;
- an assessment approach that demonstrates student competency, not
just the ability to answer MCQ,
- clear student authentication; and
- clear education records which can be audited.

This could easily add up to a full-time job and therefore you would expect
that there would be some fees involved...

- andrew

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