11-01-2020, 03:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-01-2020, 03:55 PM by zilla.
Edit Reason: bolding questions for easier reading
)
Just took the exam this morning (3 hours ago).
Provider:
Saylor Academy
Course:
Business 402 Project Management
Course content: How is the material presented? Videos? Text? External content? Do you have to buy/have other materials?
There's a smattering of different open source or public domain type materials that includes incredibly dry readings to watching some youtube videos. Because these are all different sources, it was really hard to get some of the definitions straight because it depended on the source. The lack of a single source of truth was very frustrating b/c it was hard for me to tell what was actually worth focusing on.
There are 6 units in all and an ungraded unit quiz at the end of each unit that ranges from 7-13 questions, there's also some ungraded discussion questions at the end of each unit as well, but since it's public, it seemed that people just copied each other's answers. There's also a study guide at the end worth reviewing.
Final exam format: How many questions? Multiple choice? Essay? Both? Something else?
For the proctored final, there are 60 multiple choice questions where you pick 1 out of 4 choices provided. 10 of these questions involves reading a long description of a project scenario and answering 5 questions about it. There 2 such scenarios you have to read about at 5 questions a piece.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Have you seen the information before in the course, or was it a total curve ball?
There are no repeat questions from the unit quizzes or from the "practice" certification test from Saylor (this is the test that doesn't count towards earning credits, just a certificate awarded from Saylor. This test only has 50 mc questions). The questions on the proctored exam are asked in a similar manner to the practice/cert test. What wasn't expected were those 10 questions that required reading the long descriptions on a scenario. I took the certification test twice getting a 72% the first time and an 80% the second time. I felt like the proctored final was a tad bit harder as I barely passed with a 70%. A pass is a pass.
Time taken on course: Hours? Weeks? Days?
I spent a total of nearly 24 hours on the course that includes about 6 hours worth of test taking. This was spread over 2-3 weeks.
Familiarity with subject before course: Never heard of it before taking the course, Low, medium, high, I do this every day. How would you have scored on the final with no preparation?
I was lightly familiar with PM as I had sort of looked into getting a PMP over a decade ago but did not retain any of that information (it would have been hard for me to get a PMP because I had zero PM experience or opportunity to get exp as required of the PMP). The only thing I am moderately familiar with in regards to PM is that I work as a programmer and can see some of this stuff applied to the Agile environment that my Product Managers go through, but it's not enough to wing it. Due to the number of definitions related to PM, I would have failed the cert test and the proctored final without preparing for them. Unless you actually work as a PM, this is not a test you can easily pass based on common sense or uninformed logic.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know:
There is SO much material with SO many different sources that it made it much more difficult than it should have been as there is no single source of truth. I studied and reviewed a lot of info that were not even asked in the certificate or the proctored tests. The questions asked would sometimes ask for straight definitions, some description of the situation and what it is an example of, finding the true/false statement on the list, the cert test asked me about some formulas stuff while the proctored test did not, and most frustratingly, there will be questions where there would be more than one correct answer but it wants you to get the most correct answer though it doesn't say that's the case when they're asking.
If you take this course, take the cert test right away, even if you are expecting to fail it because it is on a 7 day timer to retake that test. You will want to study and retake the test at least one more time. You will be able to review your answers after the cert test and get exposure to the type of questions asked. The cert/practice test gave me the best sense of what to expect in the final and what to study for. The unit quizzes I felt were mostly easy softball questions that wasn't terribly helpful, but still good to go over. There's the study guide which has a list of terms and getting those terms defined (from all their sources) and studying them helped. Judging from the fact that in my final, I got asked no questions that required calculating some ratio/cost or explaining what certain numbers meant, maybe you don't have to spend too time on that. Or I could have gotten lucky/unlucky (depending on how you see it) in my pool of questions for the final and didn't get asked any of them.
1-10 Difficulty level:
For someone w/ zero experience in PM, it is probably a 6-7. The material itself is not hard to understand, but the difficulty for me personally was due to the nature of the many different sources you are learning from and the frequency of those more than 1 right answer type questions.
Provider:
Saylor Academy
Course:
Business 402 Project Management
Course content: How is the material presented? Videos? Text? External content? Do you have to buy/have other materials?
There's a smattering of different open source or public domain type materials that includes incredibly dry readings to watching some youtube videos. Because these are all different sources, it was really hard to get some of the definitions straight because it depended on the source. The lack of a single source of truth was very frustrating b/c it was hard for me to tell what was actually worth focusing on.
There are 6 units in all and an ungraded unit quiz at the end of each unit that ranges from 7-13 questions, there's also some ungraded discussion questions at the end of each unit as well, but since it's public, it seemed that people just copied each other's answers. There's also a study guide at the end worth reviewing.
Final exam format: How many questions? Multiple choice? Essay? Both? Something else?
For the proctored final, there are 60 multiple choice questions where you pick 1 out of 4 choices provided. 10 of these questions involves reading a long description of a project scenario and answering 5 questions about it. There 2 such scenarios you have to read about at 5 questions a piece.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Have you seen the information before in the course, or was it a total curve ball?
There are no repeat questions from the unit quizzes or from the "practice" certification test from Saylor (this is the test that doesn't count towards earning credits, just a certificate awarded from Saylor. This test only has 50 mc questions). The questions on the proctored exam are asked in a similar manner to the practice/cert test. What wasn't expected were those 10 questions that required reading the long descriptions on a scenario. I took the certification test twice getting a 72% the first time and an 80% the second time. I felt like the proctored final was a tad bit harder as I barely passed with a 70%. A pass is a pass.
Time taken on course: Hours? Weeks? Days?
I spent a total of nearly 24 hours on the course that includes about 6 hours worth of test taking. This was spread over 2-3 weeks.
Familiarity with subject before course: Never heard of it before taking the course, Low, medium, high, I do this every day. How would you have scored on the final with no preparation?
I was lightly familiar with PM as I had sort of looked into getting a PMP over a decade ago but did not retain any of that information (it would have been hard for me to get a PMP because I had zero PM experience or opportunity to get exp as required of the PMP). The only thing I am moderately familiar with in regards to PM is that I work as a programmer and can see some of this stuff applied to the Agile environment that my Product Managers go through, but it's not enough to wing it. Due to the number of definitions related to PM, I would have failed the cert test and the proctored final without preparing for them. Unless you actually work as a PM, this is not a test you can easily pass based on common sense or uninformed logic.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know:
There is SO much material with SO many different sources that it made it much more difficult than it should have been as there is no single source of truth. I studied and reviewed a lot of info that were not even asked in the certificate or the proctored tests. The questions asked would sometimes ask for straight definitions, some description of the situation and what it is an example of, finding the true/false statement on the list, the cert test asked me about some formulas stuff while the proctored test did not, and most frustratingly, there will be questions where there would be more than one correct answer but it wants you to get the most correct answer though it doesn't say that's the case when they're asking.
If you take this course, take the cert test right away, even if you are expecting to fail it because it is on a 7 day timer to retake that test. You will want to study and retake the test at least one more time. You will be able to review your answers after the cert test and get exposure to the type of questions asked. The cert/practice test gave me the best sense of what to expect in the final and what to study for. The unit quizzes I felt were mostly easy softball questions that wasn't terribly helpful, but still good to go over. There's the study guide which has a list of terms and getting those terms defined (from all their sources) and studying them helped. Judging from the fact that in my final, I got asked no questions that required calculating some ratio/cost or explaining what certain numbers meant, maybe you don't have to spend too time on that. Or I could have gotten lucky/unlucky (depending on how you see it) in my pool of questions for the final and didn't get asked any of them.
1-10 Difficulty level:
For someone w/ zero experience in PM, it is probably a 6-7. The material itself is not hard to understand, but the difficulty for me personally was due to the nature of the many different sources you are learning from and the frequency of those more than 1 right answer type questions.
![[-]](https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/images/collapse.png)