Pearson Vue - Online Exam - Review

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pearson view online exams this is a review  of my experience doing a pearson view   online exam okay so i'm going to be talking about  a proctored exam now proctored exam means that   there is an invigilator if you know what  that means that's basically somebody who's   keeping an eye on you to check you're not  cheating so i'm going to talk about that   i'm going to talk about uh yeah the  whole experience from start to finish now obviously this has been quite uh drastically  affected by kovid and the global pandemic   and in the uk obviously it's still an option or  still the best way and possibly even the only way   to take a professional exam for instance if you're  trying to get a cisco ccna cisco cc whatever   you know juniper f5 oracle amazon microsoft  any of these certifications you will need to   take via pearson view now traditionally you would  drive or travel to a test center sign in hand over   your passport or some form of id take off your  belt take off your shoelaces empty your pockets   put all your possessions into a locker and then  you would go into an exam room and sit at a desk   and they would log you in and then you would  begin your exam and they would watch you via cctv so having counted up i've actually taken nine  of these exams and um they cost in between   100 and i think the cisco ccnp exam was actually  240 pounds which is probably 280 300 dollars   now for those of you lucky enough to have  a good employer they will typically pay   these fees but if you're not in a job or  you're self-employed or your contractor   you'll need to pay these fees and they soon rack  up for instance to achieve cisco ccmp it cost me   three lots of 240 pounds and that would then  last for three years and then after three   years you have to retake one of them to renew the  certification so yeah not to be sniffed that it's   it's something which is best if you can get your  employer to pay for it however i couldn't so to be so to avoid becoming a dinosaur in my industry  i thought i would just take advantage of some   free study materials provided by oracle oci oracle  cloud infrastructure now there's a foundation exam   which you can pretty much pass  with the free study material   and the exam was actually reasonably  priced around about 88 pounds i believe   it might have been 82 i can't  remember i'll need to look it up so i booked it and i read this training  material for approximately two weeks you   may have seen another video which i'll  put the link for which is where i did   the online lab session which was also free you can  create a compute instance a virtual cloud network   you can edit the security lists uh you can create  a an apache server and you can ssh into it via a   linux vm which is also part of the lab session  um so yeah i did that and then i on the day of   the exam as per the instructions i logged in  early and let's talk about what happened next so the first thing i did was i cleared  my desk as per the instructions   and i also unplugged or sorry i didn't unplug  but i powered off my monitors so i've got two   mon a monitor either side of my main screen so  i turned those off cleared the desk and then i   clicked on the link in the email from when i  registered for the exam and then i waited for   i think it was probably between five and ten  minutes for a little pop-up chat screen to appear   waiting for that i actually had a message which  said you are held in a queue first i was number   one in the queue and then it went to zero and then  i had error connecting retrying and then for about   another two or three minutes i went from three  to two to one in the queue to being chatted to   by somebody called anu a-n-n-u so if you're  watching i knew you weren't that helpful really so oh yeah i also forgot to mention i'd  had to enter my exam passcode which is fine   once i did that it asked me to  upload a photo of my workstation and   the surroundings so to the left of me to  the right of me behind me and in front of me   and basically all i was doing was taking a photo  of a blank wall behind me and it was such a small   room i was sat in my house that it was quite  difficult to actually take any meaningful photos   but i did that and then i had to upload those  from my phone um so yeah you need to make sure   you've got plenty of um plenty of battery life  on your phone because um without that you know okay so by this time i had uploaded my  photos of my workstation and my room i had   established a chat messenger kind of  screen with anu and then i knew us   this was all about um probably 15  minutes after first starting to log   in so by this time i was already aware that  the time to the exam was fast approaching and it was scheduled for 10 30 am and i was fully  aware of it also if you did not make the time then   you forfeited your exam so or you lost your money  and you couldn't take the exam so um yeah that   nobody actually said that you know this is fine  just because there's a delay with us administering   the exam you're still fine so whilst waiting for  uh for the exam to begin anu then asked me to   show that both of my other monitors were unplugged   so i actually had to then start dismantling my  home office and this is fair enough obviously if   somebody had three monitors they could be cheating  and reading the answers off the other screen but if you're being watched by a webcam and  you oh yeah the other thing was this was all   being recorded so um there was a red circle  in the screen saying recording um so already   you just think well this is quite secure this  is you know this doesn't really give up much   opportunity for cheating so why do i actually have  to crawl around some plug in all of my monitors   and oh yeah the other thing  was there was a biro on my desk   and yeah without any courtesy whatsoever  just had one liner say remove pen okay so hopefully you're with me so  far so i've i've clicked on the email   i've logged in i've uploaded photos of my driving  license as a former photo id i photographed my   home office left right forward behind me i've  uploaded all those i've unplugged my monitors   my second and third monitors i've removed the  pen from my desk which was otherwise clear   and then i've kind of just waited and waited and  eventually anu said okay starting the exam this is   where the fun began so once he had clicked start  exam i thought well that's good job done so we're   we're up and running now and um yeah i  really wanted to get just get going because   i was fairly confident i was going to pass it and   yeah it was a hot day and i just wanted to  get it done and move on so first things first   there was i think there was a button to  say start once you click start exam um then   believe it or not there was a pop-up with  three choices and i think it was sort of   okay cancel and the third choice was um closed  task no or closed program what it detected was   about six months ago when i was uh working  with a client um i was having to use selenium   remotely on his machine uh it's a long  story i won't bore you with but because   he was then getting tired of the endless testing  um yeah bug um yeah tip to you there selenium and   testing if you ever do a selenium project allow  hours and hours for testing anyway he was getting   frustrated i said just let me stay on your machine  and remote on and it was uh i believe it was um   any view i don't it does it makes no difference  it could have been team viewer it could have been   logged me in or whatever  anyway the the software on the   exam had scanned my machine and obviously it had  done a scanning through the registry or whatever   and it detected that i had this remote software  running as a background service in windows   oh that's the other thing you can only  take this exam with mac or windows   um now obviously the exam i was taken  was actually an oracle exam and oracle   um oracle i write oracle have always promoted  developed whatever uh linux so the fact that i   was already slightly miffed that i could not take  this exam using my main linux mint pc or my i've   got uh also i've got fedora laptop and i've got a  manjaro laptop so i've got three linux computers   and a couple of raspberry pi's but  yeah so scanned the system it found   these two background programs right  this is where the fun began because i had no way of doing of ending these  services without quitting the exam   i've subsequently realized  that this was probably because   when i was trying to bring up task manager of  control delete i don't know but i think windows   was potentially throwing up the task manager  window either on screen two or screen three   um so it might it may have been popping up but  i couldn't see it and i had the only way i could   close uh close any view or any of these  services in the background was to close the exam   well i say that was the only way it shouldn't have  been because all this time i was being viewed or   supposedly i was being viewed over a webcam with  a little red circle in the top saying recording   and somebody was being paid to proctor i think  i believe proctor means kind of monitor or watch   so yeah what was annu doing and i would love  to have recorded it obviously i couldn't   because i was obeying all of the the rules but  for about five minutes i was frantically waving   pointing my fingers at the screen screaming  at the screen shouting at the screen just going berserk and nobody noticed  so what does that tell you it tells you   that you're not actually being proctored  really whoever's at the other end is either   way too busy or not doing their job  properly i don't care which because   i've paid 80 quid 80 pounds and i've not  got what i asked for or what i was sold   so as far as i'm concerned person view you should  really hang your head in shame over this um it's bicycle yeah so that was procted exam once  the exam allegedly began i was waving my arms   around screaming at the screen swearing at the  screen and i was doing this probably for about   five minutes i it felt like more but i don't  want to exaggerate so i would say five minutes   five minutes i was waving arms shouting i could  now this is the bit this is the important bit   and i'm not advising you to do this  but i could have got a textbook i   could have got my notes i could have  got my kindle could have got a laptop   my phone i could have done anything i could have  been looking up the answer to all these questions   and they wouldn't have noticed  they would not have noticed because despite the fact that they were recording  i you can't tell me that they go back and   watch these recordings the whole point  of being proctored is so that they can   observe you whilst you're taking  the exam once the exam's finished   i really really don't think that they're going  to go back and look at the recording maybe   they do have you ever taken a an online exam and  they've gone back and looked at the recording and and then messaged you to say that you sneezed or  that you looked down at the floor and then your   exams void because they think you were cheating  i really don't think that is the case so personal   view do not record me take 80 pounds off me  and then fail to acknowledge me when i have a   technical problem which is beyond my control and  all this time i knew that the problem would be   as soon as i tried to bring up task manager  any other way the only option left to me was   to close the window which effectively closed  the exam and then to actually restart the exam   i was thinking it was almost certain that i would  then be late for the exam because i would have to   go through the entire registration sign-on process  again and i was so angry i had to go away for 10   minutes and by the time i came back and tried to  retake the exam all i got was a message saying   your exam is expired or you've missed the date  for it or i can't remember i'm so angry i couldn't   really remember and my head wasn't clear but  pearson view please give me my money back   i'm not currently employed 80 pounds might  not be much to you but it's a lot to me i'm   even getting angry talking about that because i'm  again pearson view shocking absolutely shocking   how you can say it's proctored how you can say  it's an online exam and make me unplug my entire   home office get photographs of everything remove  the biro from my desk and then have the cheek to   ignore me when i'm jumping up and down for  five minutes i really think that is poor   and if any of you have had similar experience  uh or if any of you have actually cheated um   you don't have to give me too many details but  just say say yeah person viewer shambles and   you can cheat exams now this is the other  thing i've now emailed them to say that   why why do i have to go for all these jump  through all these hoops when you only have to   go on youtube and if you've watched one of my  recent videos you'll see where i was actually   using pi tesseract to scan or not scan to  take screen um effectively take a screenshot   25 screenshots a second and then do ocr so what is the point what's the point of being  ultra secure when there are dumps out there it   makes a mockery of the whole exam system it's the  money-making racket and i know this sounds angry   sounds it i am angry 80 pounds is even in england  for me that's almost that's about a day's pay   okay so you've probably got the gist of what  happened with this exam so um i'm not going   to rant about it anymore all i need all i'm  going to say is if you're going to do the exam   do it on a laptop make sure you've got no  software running so before you even attempt it   open up task manager and just close all of the  processes what they call services and windows   close all of your windows services yeah make make sure you've  got nothing in the background   not even a make sure you've not  even got a pencil on your table and you'll do fine well i'm guessing you will  but don't expect the exam to be fully proctored   because from my experience and it's just  me i'm not saying this happens to everybody   for from my experience the whole  exam was a shambles because   how can it be secure how can it be secure when i  literally was jumping up and down swearing at the   screen for at least five minutes um this makes  a mockery of the whole exam online exam system   um i was actually looking forward to it  because in the old days i used to have to drive probably a three hour round trip to reading once i drove to pool another time i drove  to bridgewater so these are all three hour   round trips and obviously if if you're paying  your own petrol that's expensive you're paying   parking in reading that was eight pounds so  to take an exam if you're taking a day off   of your own time you're paying for the fuel  you're paying for the parking and the exam   this could cost you over 300 pounds  well in the old days it would have done   i don't know what the current  cost is for a cisco exam online   obviously the oracle one that i was attempting  to take was much cheaper and i would have guessed   that's because oracle were trying to claw some  market share from uh microsoft and amazon with um   obviously with azure and aws um to be honest  i'm not really that i'm not i'm all i'm cross   about is losing my money oh yeah so the final  thing just to finish off about is moan and   then we'll look at some countryside the final  problem when i tried to contact um pearson view um the only way you can go to their website  and try and contact them i can't find a way   so you'll go on there and it  says contact us or something   then you're presented with a page full  of questions and unless your question   matches um one of their existing questions on  the page there's no other way to contact them   um i don't know maybe you can go  on linkedin and find the boss of   pearsonview and email him direct or something  to be honest i think that's a long shot and   he's probably fed up of getting so many ira  exam takers emails that he's probably kind of um   no i don't think that's that's  even even even an option so yeah   to try and contact pearson vue with a  problem which is not really your fault   and i had a legitimate reason for not being  able to take the exam that was their software   had given me no option but to quit and then  as soon as i quit i missed the exam slot i can fully imagine them even if i had got hold of  them they would just then say well we'll give you   a new exam voucher to be honest you can stick it  up here i don't even want to take the exam anymore   i was i was not that enthusiastic to start  with and i was kind of forcing myself to do   it because sometimes you have to force  yourself to do things you don't want to really i just want to try and i was only  attempting to kind of stay relevant and   just have some broad knowledge of cloud  infrastructure and to be honest whether i'd done   a microsoft examining an aws exam or an oracle  exam probably the same thing would have happened   um so oracle i have a word for pearson view why  do i have to use a windows computer firstly two   have a word of have oracle please could you have  a word of pearson view and just say you've got a   very unhappy customer and potentially i'm a ccnp  network engineer i've got cisco ccmp that is not   a trivial exam i don't mess about oracle you could  have a ccmp network engineer moving across to take   more and more of your exams and i'm sure you  want to compete with with other cloud providers you've lost me i i'm not going to be doing  any more exams anytime soon for start   i'm not upgrading to windows 11 or windows  10 point whatever so i've pretty much   been my windows computer and whenever i start it  up now i get messages saying that it's not secure   need to upgrade blah blah blah   no and any of you have watched before you'll know  that i'm not upgrading it because as soon as you   i try to upgrade windows 10 it then forces  me to uninstall vm workstation which is what   but virtually for past year and a half  look at my channel all of my scrapey all of   all of my videos have pretty much been done on a  linux distro whether ubuntu or linux mint using vmworkstation so yeah why why does everybody have to use windows  or mac to take an exam surely well oracle should   know i mean java why can why can an exam not  be taken from linux android chromebook whatever   yeah i've got a chromebook as well so i've got a  chromebook three two linux laptops a linux mint pc and i've got an old hard drive which i  had to go into the bios and then make my   make my pc boot from so i could take the  exam using windows 10 and then this random   service that was running in a background that  i didn't even know was on there to be honest   what was going to happen with some if you're  proctoring the exam then surely if somebody's   got remote software on their screen um can  you not see no you probably can't but even so   surely you would see them surely you would see  them randomly typing when really to take um   to take an exam you only need the mouse it was  multiple choice so if you were seeing somebody   doing lots and lots of typing or a screen sharing  then surely you would see somebody typing when   anyway i don't care the exam was a complete  waste of my money my time and oracle have   a person view because there are shambles pearson  view i've taken nine exams with you over ten years   all of them have been proctored and  i've had to travel to a test center   and as much as that cost me lots of money it  got the job done i passed every single one   however i will not be taking any of your  more any more remote online proctored exams   the staff were rude and helpful and you have no  method of contact now i want my money back if you   don't this video will stay up here other people  can watch it they can decide for themselves they   might just think i've got an axe to grind  but really all i'm doing is explaining how   you have no form of contact and you  do not proctor your exams correctly   well you not even correctly you do  not monitor the exam takers at all   i was yelling at the screen five minutes  and you took no notice so well done bye-bye you

2021-07-25

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