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 developing 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
• Eric Linden
• Blue Linden
• Heretic Linden

Resident Participants

If you are interested in participating, please add your name to the List of Resident Participants. There is an in-world group named "SL Certification" after adding your name IM Iridium Linden for an invite.

Target Date

Ready to launch by fall, 2007

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

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.