[Qgis-psc] QGIS Certification

[Tim Sutton]

Hi


On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 12:25 AM, Gary Sherman <gsherman at geoapt.com> wrote:

> PSC:
>
> Where are we at with QGIS Certification? I've received an inquiry from
> someone interested in providing training and certification.
>

I have been in talks with Arnulf Christl (in CC) about building a
certification platform - we had a good brain storm session on this last
week in Kuala Lumpur and a previous one at the last QGIS hackfest.
Currently there isn't anything concrete in place yet but I think we are
ready to start building something. The idea is to build a web app (probably
django) that creates a testing platform that is all based on multiple
choice questions. There will be a heirarchy something like:

* Topic: e.g. QGIS
* Certification: e.g. QGIS User
* Module: e.g. Working with vector data
* Exercise: e.g. Adding vector layers
* Exercise detail: e.g. Unzip this sample data folder and add the roads
layer to QGIS.
* Question: e.g. How many road features are in the roads.shp layer?
* Answer options: e.g. [10] [20] [30]

The examination would work in discrete exercises so that if the user fluffs
it on e.g. adding vector data, they can still successfully complete
subsequent exercises because each would start off with a clean slate.

If we compose the app like this we will be able to certify different levels
(QGIS User, QGIS Advanced User, QGIS Trainer, QGIS Developer) and also
repurpose the platform to other parts of the FOSSGIS stack (postgis, gdal
etc.).

The idea so far has been that Arnulf / Metaspatial will act as the
certification body offering a number of different certification tracks and
ensuring consistency and QA througout all testable topics. They would also
do the financial side and push a cut from every exam back to the relevant
projects, maintain the needed infrastructure etc.

I would like to stress that these are just talks and so far we have just
been trying to come up with a workable system with the aim of bringing it
back to the PSC / community for comment and then going off to build a
prototype that others can pay with.

In practical terms for the person making the enquiry to you, we at this
stage have only the training manual (the idea being that we would match and
extend the training manual and the certification tests to correspond to
each other), while the certification platform is being planned for
hopefully the near future. If others are interested and have concrete ideas
of how things should work it would be great to form a little team and join
Arnulf and myself in actually building this. Naturally the testing platform
would be all open source but for obvious reasons the content would not be
and we would use funding from the exams to also help in development of the
examination content.

Regards

Tim



> Sorry if I have been out of touch...
>
> -gary
>
> --
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Gary Sherman
>
> Founder, QGIS Project
> Consulting: geoapt.com
> Publishing: locatepress.com
>
> We work virtually anywhere
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-psc mailing list
> Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc
>



-- 
Tim Sutton
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Visit http://linfiniti.com to find out about:
 * QGIS programming services
 * GeoDjango web development
 * QGIS Training
 * FOSS Consulting Services
Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
Tim is a member of the QGIS Project Steering Committee
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-psc/attachments/20140627/d11eb3c1/attachment.html>