I recently renewed my Certified Kubernetes Security Specialty certification, and it reminded me, hard, why I don’t like taking remote proctored exams. This is going to be rant, probably not educative.
All CNCF certification exams are remote proctored. This means that you book the exam online and then take it online at a place of your choosing. Sounds unbelievably simple right? There’s a reason why it’s unbelievable.
The “place of your choosing” has a lot of restrictions to adhere to.
and I’m not complaining about any of those. I see why those restrictions have to be there. I’ve seen the video where someone sits for a remote interview and it turns out it’s even them speaking when questions are asked. There are some weird/desperate people around.
You get remote proctored all throughout the exam, where your screen, webcam feed, and sound is streamed to their endpoint. Now this is where I have the most trouble with.
Doing remotely proctored exams at home is a sure fire way to increase your stress levels. You don’t know what kind of disruption would appear for your electricity or internet connection. Granted, the uncertainity is also there if you go to an exam center, but then you have a party to depend on (and put blame to). I once had the exam screen freeze when I was taking the AWS Machine Learning Specialty exam at the exam center. This was a particularly stressful one for me, because I wasn’t overly comfortable with the domain. But because I was at the exam center, I just needed to escalate to the person in charge and get the exam going again.
If I was at home when that happened, it would’ve been an immediate suspension (and a probable ban) because I had to stand up from the table. I know people who had this happen to them. Something goes wrong with your laptop, your phone is outside, proctor calls the phone, BAM!!! you’re suspended, because you stood up to get to the phone.
I have sat for more than 10 exams that have been remotely proctored, and in almost all of those, I have had negative experiences with the proctors. They constantly disrupt you to remind you to “keep your eyes on the screen” or “not to go out of the frame” when clearly you are within the frame and focused on doing the exam 100% of the time. I had this happen even during this last exam, where I was racing against the time (and an unresponsive remote desktop, more on that later) to finish all the questions, and here comes the huge chat box disrupting everything I was focusing on to give me a warning to be in the frame all the time, even when I was within the frame (I suspect this warning was caused by me leaning into the screen to see clearly, when the open book documentation had to be zoomed out because the remote desktop resolution was too low… you know what, I give up even trying to explain).
I don’t know why they do this, but it is extremely jarring to break your concentration. It is the real-life equivalent of the invigilator coming over to your desk every 10 minutes to remind you to not to stand up from the desk.
I take the exam in a small room with no furniture. Literally, NO FURNITURE at all, other than the small desk and the chair I use for the exam. The walls are bare, and white. I’m pretty sure this is the best case scenario for a remote proctored setup (I like to say the only better place would be a CIA blacksite).
Even with this setup, I’ve had proctors make ridiculous demands all the time.
One time, a proctor asked me to remove the “thing on the wall”, which turned out to be a power outlet. He/she wanted me to rip the damn thing out of the wall, because it looked suspicious.
And another time, during the winter, another proctor asked me to remove the portable heater I had in the room. Because sure, the $20 Warehouse heater can be rigged to cheat on an OPEN BOOK EXAM!!!
As part of the check in, you have to scan the entire room with the webcam, under the desk, over the desk, the whole shebang. Even with this done, I constantly get warnings to not look at the wall in front of me.
I get if this was for a really strict exam where I had to remember things from the study material and answer MCQ questions. But when most of the exams I’ve done with remote proctoring are open book exams with all the documentation available to access, how am I going to cheat by looking at the wall? Could it be because, just hear me out, that I’m thinking on the problem? Humans do that, they focus on a problem, and their visual input gets redirected to /dev/null.
I get the rules on not touching your face or covering your mouth excessively. Again, I’m not saying people don’t cheat. But in certain types of exams, like open book ones, you can’t literally cheat. If you don’t know the answer to a question, and if you don’t know how to get to the answer (or the solution) with the available documentation, what more can you do with cheating? (yeah, okay, an LLM with a voice interface could probably answer that question, but hey, I’m not giving anyone ideas. Also, you have to show your ears, your hands and everything before admission. I don’t know how this would be possible, but cheaters are known to be creative).
My theory is that remote proctoring has a common set of guidelines for the proctors to follow, irrespective of the exam being monitored. It makes sense to have a general set of guidelines, to keep costs of training low. But it makes the whole experience utterly miserable.
Just to be clear, I’m not putting the blame on individual proctors. I know they are probably following the guidelines to the letter. I looked up job postings for remote proctoring, and in some US states, the compensation seems to be close to minimal wage. So this could be an industry with very low margins, with very low pay, and very low investment warrented (fairly so).
My grudge is, however, with CNCF and other certification owners who don’t provide an option to go to an exam center to take the exams. It should at least be an option for people who are not capable of sticking to the remote proctored guidelines fully. If the “blacksite” I have at home gets scrutinised, I don’t even dare to think of the average setup. Most of these exams are around $400-600 range, so at least a small part of that could go for exam center partnerships.
I did all my AWS exams at exam centers (all 15 times). And I’ve had no trouble, not one disruptive warning, no requests to strip down to my underwear because there could be a wire, no warnings to be still for 3 hours straight under threat of immediate suspension and a ban. Even the most stressful exams have been a breeze because of that reason. There have been occassions when the person in-charge at those exam centers have been late, or unavailable. And I don’t have to worry even a bit. Because the responsibility is not on me, the only responsibility is to do the exam correctly.
Anyways, that’s the rant. Pay up for exam centers CNCF! Please!