And now for something different

I was a teaching a class recently - a Microsoft class - in which 10 of the 11 students had never taken a Microsoft certification test.  In fact, of the eleven students, 7 had never taken a Microsoft class before!  Most of these students had over 10+ years experience in the IT world (mainly telephony - which with the release of Office Communications Server 2007 we will probably see more of in the future).  What amazed me about this class was the sheer number of students who had never attended a Microsoft class and who, obviously, had never taken a Microsoft certification test.  Don't get me wrong, these were dedicated, IT professionals, they just never had a need to take a Microsoft class or test before.

This made for an interesting week of training.  Not only teaching the subject matter at hand, but also explaining about Microsoft certification tests, how they work, study methods etc.  Now some of the students were not new to taking certification tests, they had through other vendors.  These students were glad that they could actually go back and review their answers - something they could not do with the tests they had taken from other vendors.  There were a few students who were taking their first certification test - ever.  In told, this had the makings of a fun week!

Every once in awhile I will have a student who has not taken a certification test - sometimes their job didn't require certification, in other cases, their employer didn't cover the costs for a certification test.  But these were not common.  So to have almost an entire class of IT professionals with years, in some cases decades of experience, not having taken a Microsoft certification test, much less ANY certification test was a novel experience. 

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