Re: Certification Issues

[Jim Purcell <jimpur -at- MICROSOFT -dot- COM>]

Bill DuBay wrote:

>   I have stated the answers to your questions already so many times in
> so
> many ways, everyone is tired of hearing it. In case you didn't catch
> them,
> I'll go over them again:
>
Let me endorse George Hayhoe's request for more light and less heat. I
think the frustration of nonparticipants and participants alike might be
relieved if instead of seeing this mantra repeated we had some
understanding of what it all means. We are discussing certification in
the abstract, but this thread in no way gives us a picture of what an
actual certification program would be like.

As others have pointed out, certification will be a long way from free.
Since every tech writer will be asked to pony up--what was it,
$400-$1000?--to obtain this credential, it has to add an awful lot of
value to present methods of evaluating and selecting technical
communicators. It can't just be better than nothing, it has to be better
than what we're doing now.

What I want to know is, what would a certification process look like?
What would its features be, and what would make them worth the money,
not to speak of the loss of control implicit in letting an external body
decide whether I'm qualified to do my job? What would certified
technical communicators do that isn't being done today?

Let's look at the benefits Bill offers:
>
>  Certification will give us a real profession with identifiable and
> certifiable skills.
>
In what sense do we not have this now? George Hayhoe took a pretty good
stab at describing skills that cross the boundaries of particular kinds
of work in particular industries. That he managed to come up with this
list in the absence of a certification process is telling. What will a
certification program uniquely do to identify, foster, and evaluate
these and other skills? What kind of certification process would be
required to evaluate these skills in ways useful to employers and
employees, and how would the process add value to the way these things
are evaluated today?

> We won't just be a gang of people doing whatever pleases
> us and making some money at it.
>
We aren't that now. Like everybody else, we receive work assignments
from our employers and clients and we do what we are paid to do. If we
are doing whatever we please, we're looking for work again sooner than
we planned. What feature of the certification process will define the
work of technical communicators? What will it add to the way work is
defined today?

> It will give us a way not just to learn
> skills but to be qualified for them.
>
We have this now. We can take courses, gain experience on the job, play
with the technology, read books, ask more experienced colleagues. It is
fairly easy to measure low-level skills such as basic grammar, spelling,
and familiarity with tools. How will a certification process uniquely
measure not only these low-level skills but also the higher-level
analytical, organizational, and technical skills involved in our work?

> And it will put members of the
> profession in the driver's seat to decide the standards for the skills
> that
> define the profession.
>
This is what managers do today. How will a certification process
uniquely define such standards? What kind of certification process will
have more authority in setting standards than the writer's manager?

When somebody is ready to get down to specifics, we will have something
to talk about. Until then, I have to agree with those who say this
thread has exhausted itself.

Jim Purcell
jimpur -at- microsoft -dot- com
My opinions, not Microsoft's

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