Villanova's Certificate in Software Testing

I don't know about a trend, but the concept is neither new nor odd. For example, the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension offers professional certificate programs in various Software Quality areas to include Software Test Technology, Software Test Automation, Software Test Management and preparation for the ASQ/CSQE certification (see the website).

It is worth noting that this is the same organization for which Cem Kaner initially developed his Black Box Software Testing Course and that this program currently has instructors like Doug Hoffman, top trainers from Logigear (i.e. Hung Nguyen's company) and myself. This is not a degree program, it is a professional certificate program. What that means is that only folks who already have a college degree are eligible to attend AND that it is focused on professional development. It's not a college degree. The certificate is fairly easy to achieve, BUT if the students take it seriously, they can learn a lot.

As an example, my class is structured as follows.

- 4 full days of intense face to face instruction followed by 4 independent study projects.
- Show up for class, participate and pass fairly simple quizzes (i.e. prove that you paid some degree of attention) and you can earn a 'C'.
- Add to that, a reasonable attempt at the projects and you can earn a 'B'
- Impress me and you get an 'A'
- The projects can be either OpenSource based assignments from me OR demonstrations of applying the concepts you learned in class to your day job.

Bottom line - the professional certificate (often called a Master's Certificate) from the college/university should be viewed as a certificate of completion - not a certification... however, it's roughly an associates degree worth of instruction. Any "certifications" earned as a result of these programs should be given the benefit of the doubt, since they were earned AFTER some good instruction that wasn't exclusively based on memorizing multiple-guess answers. AND some of the folks who earn these certificates will have put in the effort to become well trained and significantly improved testers.

Right now, this concept is the best of breed in terms of professional training - but like everything else, its quality all depends on the individual program and how seriously the students take the program.

--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus
Executive Director, Association for Software Testing
sbarber@perftestplus.com

In Latvia we (or company) is working with a university in order to create ISTQB Latvia testing board. To create one you need mostly practices and environment for academic training and examination – not an experience in software testing (yes I join James Bach in being skeptic about value of certifications ). There are also (as far as I know) some organizational limitations set by ISTQB board that makes this choice preferable one, but I’m not very knowledgeable about those organization formalities.

Hi John,

with universities it is no new trend:
here in Germany there are courses from universities available,
which are based on the ISTQB certified tester foundation level syllabus.
(at the moment there are 5 universities/university of applied sciences:
Technische Universität München and Darmstadt, Universität Dortmund and
Fachhochschule Köln and Hochschule Bremen ).
At the end of the courses students can take the exam.

I must say it is no certificate program like the one from University Alliance,
but it was just a matter of time when one smart guy/woman would think of this one too :-)
As I see the course for ISTQB from University Alliance is cheaper than normal training costs in USA.


so, question here is to what extent this is:

* just because of making money
(see my comments here please: http://www.testingreflections.com/node/view/4147 )

* or increasing testing knowledge in general (so, that testing knowledge gets into business field).

* or other aspects :-)


In theory the idea is great, but let's wait for the implementation/ practical application.

Cu,
Erkan YILMAZ