Solving Internet Latency Challenges in Delivery of Performance-Based Certification
Presented by Marcus Robertson and Frederick Mendler, founders of TrueAbility
Thursday, June 18th, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m Central
The testing industry continues to advance its assessment options by leveraging technology in an effort to increase fidelity, efficacy, global reach–and as evidenced most recently–safety and convenience. However, for these new methods to be successful, there are numerous technical challenges that must be overcome. In particular, as the adoption of performance-based assessment continues to increase, one important hurdle to overcome is providing consistent and reliable accessibility of remote environments.
For highly-specialized IT certifications, a seamless performance-based experience demands computer server performance and network responsiveness. Accessing high-fidelity tests over the public internet from remote servers is contingent on several testing environment factors such as internet connectivity or bandwidth.
One of the primary factors affecting the testing process that is less often discussed, regardless of which method is used, is network latency and its impact on performance-based certification.
Based upon extensive research conducted in 2017, and the resulting white paper, this discussion will address the challenges internet latency presents, and the solution to prevent issues delivering a globally scaled hands-on assessment program.
Q&A on the Topics of Performance-Based Assessment and Latency
Why is this topic important to the IT certification industry?
Over the last two years, large enterprises have shown strong interest in moving to performance-based assessment. With more jobs leveraging software and technology, so increases the need to ensure that employees can actually “do” the job. Performance-based assessment has existed forever, but scalable hands-on certification hasn’t always been possible due to hurdles with technology and access. Today, by ensuring a program is considering the primary obstacles – one being latency – a global program is very possible.
What key takeaway do you hope attendees learn or implement based on your presentation?
As recently as three years ago, latency was a major issue for performance-based certification, but due to rapid internet infrastructure growth and innovation by industry leaders to leverage that growth for testing, the majority of the world can now have access to hands-on testing.
What’s the biggest change for the IT certification industry that this topic is driving? Or should be aware of? Trends?
Remote testing is now more important than ever. Performance-based testing is a form of remote testing that puts candidates in a real environment where they can show by doing. This wasn’t always available but now it is!
Join the Conversation
Join us for this session on Thursday, June 18th at 11:00 a.m. Central. Contact the ITCC HQ for a calendar invite.
About Our Speakers
Marcus Robertson and Frederick Mendler founded TrueAbility to solve the problem of determining an IT professional’s “true ability.” Working previously at a large global hosting provider where they pioneered early cloud technologies, it was there they found success adding hands-on labs to in-person interviews. In 2012 they set out to build a scalable cloud-based platform by bringing together both access and automation, creating a standard for the development and delivery of performance-based assessment.
