By: David Blatner
February 19 2008 • 9:38 PM
Update on InDesign CS3 Certification Exams
Hot off the newswire… I just received this note from someone at Adobe:
“We have written and re-posted the InDesign CS3 recertification exam, rewritten the practice questions on the prep guide, and this week we are going to temporarily take down the InDesign CS3 certification exam and revise that too. The new recertification exam is listed as “rev 2″. The InDesign certification exam most likely won’t be made inactive for at least one more day.”
I haven’t confirmed this yet, but I would say that’s a resounding “we’re listening” message from Adobe! Obviously, they’ve been hard at work fixing these problems after Anne-Marie and others commented so, er… vigorously.
It would surprise me if the new tests were suddenly keen, insightful, and brilliant. I mean, they’re still just multiple choice tests and there’s only so much you can cover in this kind of medium. But I’m sure most people would settle for “decent, fair, and not overly cryptic.” 
Thats fantastic! You cant ask for much more than that.
Neil
Well you can’t get too much more responsive than that. Bravo, Adobe!
In military life, “hooyah” is a common cheer. I think it is highly appropriate here. It is shorthand for Heard, Understood, and Accepted. Three cheers!
Oh, good news! Now all I need is David’s new Lynda.com tutorials — and I might just work up the nerve to try again. At least when I have good reason to believe the all-new tests have propagated to Oslo. But I guess some further manual studying is in order, too, alas . . . oy joy. Still, it’s great to know that someone at Adobe have listened to us — and acted.
Ok. Great news. Then, hopping Madrid will be updated soon too. Thanks!
There’s power in numbers! Great job everyone.
That’s great news, but what happens since i took the exam yesterday and failed by one question. How long is it before you can take the exam again? To any one trying to take it time is the biggest factor. Make sure you pace yourself correctly. Anyone taking the the CS3 Indesign exam (before the revision) may have noticed that one of the questions had answer b and c word for word exactly the same. In an computer checked exam (I dont know if either was correct) but if one was correct and you marked the other would you be wrong??
Reading between the lines of the Adobe note, while the Prep Guide contents have been revised (notably the number of questions dropped from #47 to #31), the overall objectives remain the same. So I wouldn’t expect the exam to become “keen, insightful, and brilliant” if it wasn’t already. My guess is some parts of the exam have been revised but not the entire exam, which would be a huge task.
Have to say, the exam roll out has been a comedy of errors this time around. Not only the exams delivered some 8-9 months late, but wrong links to exams (the Acrobat recertification exam pointed to the full exam originally and the recertification Prep Guide has only been added now many months later), wrong links to the Prep Guides, wrong objective headings in the Prep Guides (Ai has objective headings from the Photoshop exam) and so forth. It’s not something you expect from a major name.
Shangara.
Carlie, I sympathize with you! I flunked the ID CS3 myself in late January — and one of my questions was exactly as bizarre as the one you describe, two identical answers which yields, probably, a 50% chance of selecting the wrong one, even if you know the right answer!
Shangara, yes I too saw wrong category headings in the prep guide, I alerted Tim Cole at Adobe to that and other errors, and he did “do something”.
I’m going to wait about a month before I take the exam again, and hope it has been further debugged by then.
Klaus, it’s 33.3% of choosing the right one, seen as I think there are four options, and 2 are the same, then that leaves 3 answers. If anything, it improved your chances of selecting the right one, if you didn’t know the answer.
What remains is, was the answer that was put in twice the wrong answer and the two other answers were also wrong, leaving the fact that the right answer was not in the selection of answers?
Maybe it was the question that was wrong and all the answers were right.
Eugene, my good man — who can unravel the logic of the insane? So let’s not go there.
Well done Adobe! It’s refreshing to have a software company react with such urgency. Reading the updated Exam Prep Guide from their website it would appear they’ve made the questions less ambiguous/convoluted and set them to test the user’s true ability with the program. I guess my sitting the exam shortly will confirm this or not, but I’m encouraged.
I’d also like to thank InDesignSecrets for providing the forum with which to get stuck into Adobe and let them know their customer’s concerns. Thanks especially to David, Anne-Marie and Klaus for pushing hard on our behalf.
Definitely ‘power to the people!’
I guess I took (and passed) the original InDesign CS3 recertification. This was before any exam guides were posted at the Adobe website. I was astonished by the lack of clarity in the questions. I am a full-time college instructor teaching Adobe software and make up tests on a routine basis. I would give the test I took a D grade for whoever made it up.
I took the ID CS3 Recert exam again… I passed this time, 90%. I have to say the questions and answers were worded in plain english this time round. Anyone wanting to take the exam again can rest assured, it is in plain english, my simple mind could understand it!
Neil
Sorry to keep harping on, I know this is an exclusive InDesign site, however seeming were on the topic already, has anyone seen the prep guide for the Illustrator CS3 recertification exam? It is a complete shambles as was the initial ID recert exam.
I’ll give you an example: Topic 6 has a heading of “Working with Vector Tools”, listed below it are the content in which the questions will be based, - List and describe the functionality Adobe Bridge provides for viewing assets?… What! Hah! Ummm! followed by - Explain how to apply metadata and keywords to assests in Adobe Bridge? Now I don’t consider myself a genius but last time I checked Adobe Bridge doesn’t have much to do with Vector Tools, Correct! Then you go down the list a bit to no.8’s Heading “Managing Assets with Bridge” followed by “Not covered in this exam”. What the!
Hmmm, I have a question Adobe, Question-
A. Should Neil take this test and risk failing it because I wasn’t give clear direction from the exam provider?
B. Should Neil just risk it and see if the questions are as cryptic as the first InDesign exam was and risk his 50 bucks and sanity?
C. Just dont bother?
D. Wait becuase Adobe will come through with the goods again?
David & Anne Marie can you help in this regard by informing Adobe of this? It would be appreciated.
Neil
Neil, the couple weeks ago I noticed this and personally spoke with someone at Adobe. I also emailed them my list of comments. So they know about the issues with tests other than InDesign. The Illustrator prep guide was obviously the Photoshop prep guide, saved as, and barely updated. Oops! They have been notified and I was told they are working on it and other exames. They said InDesign was amoung the worse though. That is why it was fixed first.
Please could those who have managed to get any success in communicating with Adobe about the quality of the ACE exams let me know to who they addressed there complaints.
I just sat the Dreamweaver CS 3 ACE and though I passed it it felt to me frankly arbitrary. Those questions!
Who do we complain to about this?
Wow, it’s good see others have also had problems with the exams. I have not done the ID one but I sat the Dreamweaver CS3 exam today and failed by 1%. The questions are so convoluted and obscure it was hard to know what they wanted you to answer. I have worked with DW for 5 years so it is a worry that I failed! There are currently no Certified Trainers in DW (CS3 or otherwise) in Australia other than Training companies who rely on their staff to have the certification, not many do, makes you wonder who will do the training if no-one can pass the exam.
Andrew, the Adobe folks tend to have emails according to this formula: “John Smith” = jsmith@adobe.com. Fire off emails like that to people on the Dreamweaver team — that should reach at least a few.
Hello all, well, I’ve just completed my InDesign REcertification test, and I’m happy to report that I passed with a score of 100%. Much better than the my 64% from the last horribly written test.
I’m still not completely happy with the test, but the questions have all been rewritten and are much clearer. If I didn’t know the exact answer, I could at least follow their line of thought and get the answer (which this time WAS an actual answer).
There were about half the same questions from the previous test, but I think they’ve been edited a bit to be more clear. The recert test should be able to be passed by competent users of InDesign.
Best of Luck!
Laurie
Is anyone else getting the runaround from Adobe about having their recertification acknowledged by Adobe? It’s been almost 3 weeks since I passed my exam, with nothing from Adobe, and no update at my Certified Community page. E-mails have been answered with a stock “i’ve passed this along to the appropriate people to be fixed”.
Frustrating, and I know of at least one other person who this is happening to as well…
David
David, I took and passed the exam on Friday and I just checked my page and it’s updated to show my current certification.
David,
I had the same problem for both PS & ID recertification exams. What happened was that prometric had supplied me with two new Adobe ID’s each time I passed my exam for some reason. I contacted adobe about this, they did a search and found all three Adobe ID numbers assigned to my name and merged them into my original account. It took them 4 weeks to fix the problem in my case…
Hi, could anyone recommend what materials I should study to pass the InDesign CS3 exam? I read the Users Guide and use the program extensively but, it wasn’t enough to pass it the 1st time, help!
I’m pleased to report that I finally got around to taking the online recertification test (31 questions) and passed with only 4 questions missed.
I know that I got one actually wrong (involving formatting a rollover state of a button). The other 3 must have been among the dozen or so that were ambiguous, poorly worded, or–in one case–just plain insane.
That said, the majority of the questions were fair, and far better than the CS2 test I took. That is, they tended to ask questions that really did test knowledge of the program, rather than focus on picayune things that no one needs to know. So I’m pleased with Adobe’s progress.
Hi Linda
I agree - I read the entire user guide in my spare time, and found it doesnt help all that much. After reading it, I then had 2 weeks before my exam for active study. In the last two weeks I learnt more than in the 3 months of casual reading. I can recommend using the Exam Aids Program, they go through the relevant sections with multiple choice answers. I also have conference material from the New York Indesign Conference (last June). I am not sure if this is available anywhere now. I took the exam the day before they pulled the bad exam and failed by one question. I feel that the main reason I failed was due to taking too long, with ambiguous questons, re-reading over and over to make sure I understood it right. I completed the last 20 questions in 15mins and missed answering the very last one due to being timed out.
I must say going through these blogs has also been great study material.
Carlie,
Thanks for the info. Anyone else have any other suggestions for study material for the InDesign CS3 ACE test?