I wanted to give you a heads up to something we’re excited to be doing, launching, evolving and adjusting as we go.
We launched Test Automation Certifications recently and because community is at the heart of everything we do, we feel it only makes sense to award certificates to those that contribute in the community.
I wrote a bit about it here:
Our existing and future courses will have activities that encourage students to come to The Club to share. It is not essential to do these activities, passing the course depends on passing an exam, not necessarily doing the activities. However, it’s such an important part of learning that we want to award those that contribute and support with a separate certification of it’s own.
We will initially focusing on Community Certificates in Test Automation, but hope to expand fairly quickly to other areas of software testing expertise. (Feel free to nominate suggestions)
We will also be reviewing contributions from members who have contributed in the past and award accordingly.
Glad to see that there will be community support! Is this an appropriate place to ask questions about the cert?
Is the curriculum sourced from currently available media (YouTube, MoT master classes, etc.) or made specifically for the certification?
The JS Pathway mentions using Jest, React-Testing-Library and WebDriverIO specifically. Will other tools be explored and discussed during the Learn to Evaluate Testing Tools portion of the curriculum?
How are learnings reinforced? (projects or exercises or tests/quizzes?)
This sounds very cool, I’m curious to a few elements.
I have a ton of questions!!
What is the overlap / complimentary interaction between the self paced learning courses that are recently released and similarly named community certificates?
Is this like an honourary degree for services to the community… Or more like accredited prior learning?
Would getting the community certificate give you access (free/reduced) to the equivalent course?
Do you need to complete the core paid course first, is this like an extension to take your new knowledge into the community?
It sounds like evidence for getting a community certificate could include outside of MoT work, would there be some kind of transcript to describe what evidence was used in achieving the award?
Will the curriculum be crowded sourced like the paid course’s? … Is there even a course? Is it free?
This is as good a place as any to ask questions about the MoT certs in Test Automation; I’ll do my best to answer them:
The content for the MoT certification courses in test automation has been created from scratch. However, there are pre-existing additional materials that are linked from a variety of sources included. To be clear, they are extra for folks who want to know more about x topic, e.g. ‘Testability’, and they don’t help you meet the outcomes of the course.
Yes, learners will research and evaluate appropriate tools to suit their contexts. The tooling and set-up you’ve mentioned are used in demonstrations to showcase useful automation strategies, methods and principles. These principles and strategies are then applicable to multiple languages and tools.
Every outcome in the course is supported by an appropriate activity that allows learners to put their learnings into practice. For example, if an outcome says “create a model of a context,” the activity will be to create a model of an understanding of a context. There are supporting materials and examples that get learners to a place where they are able to complete tasks.
Here is the full curriculum for all three certification courses: Automation Curriculum Paths - Foundation_Intermediate_Advanced.pdf (132.9 KB)
This is open source and was co-created in collaboration with over 150 test automation professionals; feel free to have a look to see if it meets your learning goals. You can also check out the courses FAQs for more details on the courses. Hope that helps!
First time messaging in this forum I’ve enrolled onto the c# foundation course and super excited to get started!
Just a quick question: I am in a manual role at my current workplace so my coding skills/experience is very basic. Would I need more expansive code knowledge to get started on this course?
As are we for you, @jackd96. Excellent to hear this!
Basic knowledge of coding would be advantageous but is not essential as you will be guided through building automation in code. Notably, coding basics are not covered in these courses, but there are lots of free resources available online.
If you get stuck feel free to connect with the community via the following page:
The Community Certificate does not have content nor is a course. It is based on community contributions made in The Club. The idea is we can show our expertise through studying + passing an exam, but also by conversing and thinking through problems together.
Yes, I think an honourary degree (or certificate!) is a great analogy.
Happy to explore this, I don’t see why not. Just not at this point in time.
There is no need to complete the paid course. I think there are many experts “in the room” who feel they have no need to do the course, but can still be recognised for their contributions.
For now it would be based on The Club contributions, we will then look at expanding to further MoT contributions, e.g. doing a talk, AMA, Masterclass or writing an article could contribute to it.
It becomes more complex tracking things outside of MoT, but a work around could be starting a discussion on The Club which could then be flagged as a contributing towards a certificate.
There’s no curriculum, so it’s free! I would personally look at is a self-directed or “open” certificate. It’s not quite formal education, it’s not quite work specific. It’s perhaps the thing in the middle, the glue, that connects the two, through community contributions/conversations.
I’ve enrolled onto the c# foundation course and super excited to get started!