Skills USA Hierachy

[Mike Meyers]

I'm going to be talking to the SkillsUSA Computer Maintenance Technology National Championships Committee about designing a difficulty hierachy guide.

The idea is to make each level of the competition harder than the first. I think the end result will be a series of skillsets that people at each level can use to judge the difficulty of their level of competition.

Anyway, I'm soliciting ideas from all of you to forward to the Skills folks.

Here's one thought: Component Identification is popular because it's relatively easy to set up. Can we come up with a difficulty on Component ID for each level of competition?

School
District
State
National

[Vankman7]

Suggest stronger guidelines, structure and criteria to SkillsUSA for national fairness:

Hardware Identification:
School-Identify basic hardware components corresponding with A+ Essentials Hardware Domain 1.0.
District - Identify hardware components corresponding with A+ Essentials Hardware and Networking Domains 1.0 and 4.0.
State- Identify hardware components corresponding with A+ Essentials Hardware and Networking Domains 1.0 and 4.0 and Practical Application Hardware 1.0 and Networking 3.0 Domains.
National-All A+ Domains plus possible state of the business/art components. Possible switch/router for example.

Operating System and Network Navigation:
School-Prove skills based on A+ Essentials Domain 3.0 Operating Systems and Software.
District -Prove skills based on A+ Practical Application Domain 2.0 Operating Systems.
State-Prove skills based on A+ Essentials Domain 3.0 and Practical Application 2.0.
National-Prove any operating system skills within and between Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7.

Customer Service:
Examinee must troubleshoot and resolve Customer call.
Suggest using a call level support tier system (1, 2, and 3) similar to an actual IT Support Helpdesk.
School-Resolve (level 1) call, “My monitor doesn’t display anything”.
District -Resolve (level 2) call, “Windows won’t boot up”.
State- Resolve (level 3) call, “Can’t access shared folders on Mike’s office computer”.
National-Examinee must demonstrate/utilize Remote Desktop and or Remote Assistance to resolve multiple tier level issues.

Written Exam:
"Use a CompTIA A+ Certification Simulation Exam (Computerized) - Conduct a controlled, monitored practice exam covering both 220-701 (Essentials) and 220-702 (Practical Application)."

School-School/instructor created/generated basic A+ exam.
District- Multi-School Agree upon A+ Exam.
State -An A+ created/generated basic A+ exam approved by State Level judges.
National-Although it may not be feasible, if at all possible have the national finalists take the real CompTIA A+ exams onsite at the finals!
*SkillsUSA could should consult exam creation company to create School, District, State and nationally approved propriety exams strictly used for SkillsUSA purposes. At present time, there is real uniformity with all of the written exams and this is quite honestly not an even/fair measure of skills across the country.

[Mike Meyers]

Thanks Vankman, I don't totally agree with what you have but I like the way you're visualizing the structure. This is the kind of stuff we need to make a start.

SKILLS FOLKS!!!! If you disagree or have a different vision, now is the time to start talking about this - or don't bitch at me later!