During the JoomlaDay Marseille on 12 and 13 May 2017, 11 participants tried to obtain their Joomla 3.x Administrator certification. The participants were all french-speaking people.

During each of the two days, participants were trained and counseled by a certified Joomla Administrator, Mehdi Baba Ali, and Agnès Francomme, Examination Supervisor, both employees of the Octopoos web agency.

Having worked with the Certification Marketing Team for many months, certified since January 2017 via the JLP of Toulouse and the agency Com3elles, organized a certification session with the JUG of Bordeaux, it seemed interesting to me to watch this certification session for a JoomlaDay. That is why I asked for the opinions

Organisation :

• Sébastien Lapoux, current president of the French-speaking Association of Joomla!'s Users (AFUJ) and manager of Octopoos,
• Mehdi Baba Ali, trainer, employee at Octopoos and first certified French
• Agnès Francomme, exam supervisor, employee at Octopoos

Candidates (in alphabetical order)

• Caroline Aouat, C3RB INFORMATIQUE, uses Joomla since 2007
• Valérie Isaksen, SARL ALATAK.NET, uses Joomla since 2004
• Catherine Mollet, KIRACTIVE, uses Joomla since 2007
• Frédéric Olivier, SARL SENSO MEDIA, uses Joomla from Mambo
• Ghislain Perret, EIRL GPWEB, uses Joomla since 2012
• Jean-François Questiaux, BETTERWEB.FR, has been using Joomla since 2001
• Florent Tendil, EASY CONNECT 83, uses Joomla since 2008

The look of the organizers (AFUJ and Octopoos) of the examination:

For others who wish to organize an examination session for certification, attention must be paid to certain points, in particular:

• Before the exam:

  • Find and book a quiet room

  • Submit a request to OSM to arrange the exam 1 month before (go to https://certification.joomla.org/host-exams/who-can-host-exams)
  • Communicating with applicants, making them aware of the importance of a good review by submitting a revision program and relevant links
  • Ensure that each candidate is registered on www.exam.joomla.org
  • Provide participants with the Safe Exam Browser download link and the "Startup File.seb" file for installation on their computer or install on the computers that will be loaned
• During the exam:

  • Remind candidates of the prohibitions: no smartphones, electronic devices, paper supports, and of course no cheating

  •  Make sure the room is closed and calm for the right concentration of candidates

After the exam:

•  Provide a "catch-up" solution for those who have failed

• A nice document (unofficial) personalized to their name of type "diploma". It would be great for OMOS to issue a document of this type in an official way, which is always a pleasure after passing the exam. 

Agnès Francomme, Examination Supervisor and Mehdi Baba Ali, Trainer


The view of Mehdi Baba Ali, trainer and first certified French:

Mehdi a little more on the training as such?

"A good review is more than necessary to pass the exam, so the Certification Preparation Day allowed candidates to review some points and get advice from a certified to manage their time on the platform. We are convinced that the success rate achieved is mainly due to this on-the-job training.
The difficulties of the candidates are essentially the language for the non-English speakers and the ambiguity of certain questions which necessarily is all the more difficult to apprehend for french-speaking users."


The view of Agnes Francomme, supervisor of the exams, employed by Octopoos:

"The stress was present for some candidates with, at the end of each day, a friendly atmosphere as the day of result of the BAC. It is clear that the examination requires very good preparation"

 
The view of the president of the AFUJ (Association Francophone des Users of Joomla!), Sébastien Lapoux, manager of Octopoos :

"It is very important for the Joomla community to be able to host occasional exam sessions at community events (JoomlaDay, JUG meeting) to facilitate access to the exam geographically and financially and promote certification to professionals.

 

We organized 2 complete sessions "Training + Exam" during the JoomlaDay, one on Friday and the other on Saturday. 1 month prior to the event we contacted each participant to give the proper preparation instructions and we restarted them several times until the day of the event so that they are well prepared and aware of the difficulty.
There are several Joomla Learning Partner in France that are authorized to pass the Joomla certification. These companies are contractually contracted to OSM and we invite all Joomla! To offer this service.
The organization of examinations at the level of a JUG or a JoomlaDay is not entirely mature, the AFUJ has relied on the company Octopoos, which is officially a Joomla Learning partner to organize these trainings and examinations . We thank them and hope that next year we will be able to put forward more Joomla Learning Partner companies, see resting completely on a JUG."



Preparation for certification requires calm and concentration!

The view of certificated:

Why would you want to pass the certification?

• Caroline Aouat : I wanted to check my knowledge (and get them recognized)
• Valérie Isaksen : The satisfaction of having :)
• Catherine Mollet : Obviously, there is not a single answer. To prove my knowledge of Joomla! In the workplace. To self-evaluate against Joomla !. To dive deep into the CMS and discover or rediscover features that I almost never use. To enrich the trainings that I can give on Joomla !. Because I like the challenges. To make the time spent at JoomlaDay profitable ;-)
• Frédéric Olivier : Credibility with my clients. Certification is an effective way of ensuring the level of expertise. Personal assessment also (what is objectively my real level of expertise?). Certification is a good measurement tool.
• Ghislain Perret :
  • Highlight my skills on the CMS for those who do not know me
  • Support Joomla: I refuse any project that is not JOOMLA, I strongly urge any project developer to abandon the idea of using Wordpress in favor of Joomla ...
  • Enhance my business
• Jean-François Questiaux : More visibility with prospects and more credibility vis-à-vis customers. A form of respect for what Joomla! represent.
• Florent Tendil : To validate my knowledge and experience on Joomla

The preparation

To each of them I asked the question of preparation. We all know that Joomla certification is not an easy exam and I will add "so much the better! "As this adds to the credibility of this certification. So it was important to know how long each of them had spent on revisions before the JoomlaDay. The answer is unanimous: all of them have prepared their certification, more or less long but all have followed the documents provided by the official platform, through the links proposed by the agency Octopoos or the AFUJ.
It should be remembered that within the framework of the JoomlDay of Marseille, certification was compulsory after a day of preparation. This day was also unanimously appreciated by the participants. It is always useful to see and review the processes, the details, the latest news from a version that we do not know yet, etc. The proposed format of 5 people maximum was also ideal for the Personalization of questions / answers.

Then I asked them a series of short questions to qualify some of the test, here are the results :

1. In all honesty, before passing the certification and on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the lowest, 10 highest), what level of expertise would you be given?
2. On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest, 5 highest), how would you rate the following points :
   1. preparation time
   2. Difficulty of the event
   3. allotted time

The results, on average, are these :



You surely saw immediately that each participant has an estimate of his own level of expertise very high (average of 8.14) whereas, contrary to what I thought, the time allotted is the lowest result. In other words, for our new certified athletes the results would be even better if the time spent preparing the event was longer.
For example, Catherine Mollet said to me: "An hour or two more would have been good. But it is also because I sometimes had the impression that we spent a lot of time on topics too sharp for simple administration (we were almost close to dev) or too simple or even simplistic for who has been working since Some time with Joomla! (Including articles). "



From left to right : Medhi Baba Ali, Valérie Isaksen, Frédéric Olivier, Caroline Aouat, Catherine Mollet

I hope this feedback on the first administrator certification session organized by the AFUJ and the company Octopoos during JoomlaDay in Marseille, will make you want to start your turn and that is why I will let a last time to our neo-certified by summarizing here their valuable advice :

• Work on the interface in English. This seems obvious but it is a wise advice in the sense that the certification is only in English. It is quite possible that you have a perfect mastery of Joomla and that you are in default by a hasty interpretation of the translation.
• Review all configuration settings, all views: and yes this is not a detail! There are not only ACLs in the configuration tabs and maybe we have not been seeing it for a long time, beware there are novelties that appear between the different versions ....
• Review corectly all the native features and ausculter the least corners of the Cms. There also pay attention to our habits. As you can see on these two sessions, and I see it also in other sessions, the participants have been practicing Joomla CMS for many years. And if this is a good point for their customers it can also translate deployment habits: we usually work with such extension / component ("ah yes but it is too good this one !! ...") That finally we have not seen that now Joomla allows to do it natively and without additional component. So you have to agree to go back to a basic oomla! and crush it in all directions.
• Do not hesitate to ask questions during the preparation phase: enjoy it, in a few hours it will be too late!
• Take your time to read the questions, and the answers. Again, do not be impatient. The time allotted for the event is 90 minutes and you will not have an extra medal if you go out after 40. So do not hesitate to mark the questions on which you have doubts and to come back after having the first past. My advice ? Do not put any answer on the questions or you have to come back, at least you will not be influenced by your hesitations when you come back on it later. And do it again until you have answered all the questions. Be careful not to be overwhelmed by stress and doubt. You took the time to answer a question and you did not mark it, so assume that the answer is good. The trap in MCQs is to put doubt and end up modifying a response that was good.



De gauche à droite : Medhi Baba Ali, Florent Tendil, Ghislain Perret

Some additional links:

• Official website for certification: https://certification.joomla.org/
• Find a Joomla! Learning Partner around you: https://resources.joomla.org/en/joomla-learning-partners
• Find  Joomla! User Group around you: https://community.joomla.org/user-groups.html
• The articles of our neo-certified : https://gpweb.fr/liste-des-articles-actualites/42-offrir-a-ses-clients-des-services-bases-sur-le-meilleur-de-la-haute-technologie