Difference between revisions of "SL Certification"

Overarching Goal

Create Second Life Certification as an in-world resource for Residents

Immediate Goal

Develop certification criteria for modeling and scripting
- We are looking for members of the Developer, Instructor, and Volunteer communities to work with Lindens in creating the skills list and certification tasks for those skills in Modeling and in Scripting.

Description

Linden Lab is supporting the development of certification for the use of key Second Life tools. We’ll begin with in-world building tools and LSL. We believe this will benefit Residents, Developers, and anyone who wishes to use Second Life by clearly identifying both key skills and the holders of those skills. This will also enable the creation of training to build the skills required for certification. It is Linden Lab's intent to work with an external certification provider to offer certification testing and maintain a list of those Residents who have been certified.

Linden Participants

Glenn Linden

Resident Participants

SL Certification

Process Guides:

Companies:

Skills Lists:

Land Management:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Textures:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Terraforming:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Scripting:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Event Hosting:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Machinima:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Building:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Sculpty:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Marketing:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
Tutoring:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced

Other Information:

SL Certification Participants

Meeting Minutes

To list yourself as participating in the development of Linden Lab's SL Certification Project, add [[Category:SL Certification Participant|{{PAGENAME}}]] to your user page.

Certification Mailing List

https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/slcertification

SL Certification Group

SL Certification Devs - request membership from Glenn Linden, Sitearm Madonna or Emily Darrow in world. Membership is open to anyone who requests it.

Certification Categories

Initially, we plan to develop certification for Modeling and Scripting. If these two categories are successful, we will develop, in accordance with your feedback, future areas including but not limited to: Avatar Customization, Terrain/Land Editing, and Land/Estate Management.

Modeling

List of Modeling Skills

Architecture
Furnishings/Interior Design
Objects
Weapons and Vehicles

Note: Includes using scripts to animate objects and textures but no writing of scripts

Scripting

Animation
- Note: Animation includes object animation, texture animation and particle systems
Attachments
Movement
Physics & Collisions
Detection & Sensing
Asset Management
Setting Properties
Communications
Interacting with external data stores & web content
Media Management

Alternative Method:

Dynamic Objects - manipulation of objects
- Subcategory: Physics and movement in 3-D space
- Subcategory: Primitive Attributes
User interaction
- Subcategory: User input and communication
- Subcategory: Event handling
Web interface
- HTML, XML/RPC, and any knowledge of web languages - Perl, Python, PHP, Java, etc

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the value of Certification?

The primary value of certification is to those hiring people to create content for them in SL. Certification is one indication that someone has at least a minimum set of skills. Certification is only one of many ways to demonstrate competency. Certification also clarifies skills and helps instructors develop instruction.

Certification also provides a set of skills against which anyone in Second Life, whether they build for fun or for hire, can measure their accomplishments.

By more clearly defining skills related to Second Life tools, certification may improve the quality of construction in Second Life, and may encourage a broader range of instruction about the Second Life tools.

Portfolios already show if someone is competent; why do we need certification?

Portfolios have a valuable role in demonstrating accomplishment, both in RL and SL. In Second Life, many projects are done collaboratively. Builds can incorporate content that is bought and created, and many people can be involved. It can be hard to look at a project and understand what a particular person has contributed. Certification provides one method of demonstrating your own skill set. It should be only one of many potential ways to evaluate a candidate.

Is Linden Lab mandating certification?

You can chose to be certified if you want, or not. Linden Lab has no intent to monitor or mandate that Second Life content be created only by Residents with certification, or to mandate certification in any way. Nor will Certification (or non-certification) be tied by Linden Lab in any way to land ownership, group membership, membership level, or any other attribute of a Second Life account. While Linden Lab may provide a way for those listed in the Developer Directory to identify certification, it will not require it for the Developer Directory, Classifieds, Events, or any other Linden Lab-operated listing service.

Is Linden Lab mandating content of certification?

Linden Lab has engaged the Residents in defining the skills involved in competency, and in developing the appropriate demonstration of those skills. Linden Lab is not defining the skills nor the demonstration of them, it is simply supporting the process.

Will it cost money? Does Linden Lab intend to profit by Certification?

Linden Lab was looking to have a third party organization manage certification; we don't want the administrative hassle of doing it, nor the potential for anyone to claim that we would have influence on who gets certified. We intend to make certification as widely available as possible. We will work with Residents, Instructors and Developers to find the best way to enable certification.

Who will be providing the Certification service?

At this time, the only answer we can give is "Not Linden Lab." We will work with the Residents who participate in developing certification to find the best provider - whether a Resident, an external third party, or some other provider. Ironically, our original reason for only considering an external provider was to prevent any concern that one group of Residents might use Certification against other Residents. Linden Lab has no intent of operating the Certification service - we don't have the expertise or resources, nor do we want the inevitable accusations of bias.

Will certification make it harder to become competent in using Second Life tools?

Certification is a way to more clearly communicate skills. Without certification, everyone has their own idea of what competency is. Some classes will teach one set of skills, others another, and outcomes aren't comparable. That's why we're involving SL instructors in this project. Learning to use SL Tools will still take the same amount of effort. Certification will help guide builders and scripters in what they ought to learn in order to achieve particular measurable standards.

How will information on who is certified by made available?

The Residents involved in developing certification will help us determine the most effective way to list who is certified.

Can we do certification in Second Life?

At least one Resident has started building a set of in-world tasks that could become part of a certification system. This seems preferable to having external tests/tasks.