There’s a big difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something

There’s a big difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something

I used to do Cisco Academy training, but I always struggled with the questions provided. In many cases I disagreed with intellectual level of the questions asked, and also disputed some of the answers. For the practical side, it was wonderful, but from an academic point-of-view, it struggled greatly.

The content, too, struggled in any way to spark interest in what was — at the time (and still is) — an interesting area. For me, there was great magic behind switching and wireless systems, but the coverage of the content basically took away all the fun and interest away, and ended up with just a focus on just doing one thing on one system.

“What does WEP stand for?”, and for me the answer wasn’t “Wireless Equivalent Protocol”, but, “I really don’t care!”. But I couldn’t find that answer. I thus leave it to the mighty Richard Feynman to outline why knowing the name of something is not quite knowing something:

Another question from the tests was:

“What characterizes a WAN connection?”

…. the answer …

“A slow connection which connects to other sites”.

For me that answer was wrong on so many levels, especially as the question itself lacks the core information required to answer the question. Your brain can thus either go into an infinite loop, or you just leave the exam, and never return to it.

To me, studying professional certification was never an easy task, and I found it quite soul destroying. When it came to the practical elements, the certification was often excellent, but for the more academic parts, it struggled to even get into first gear. There is, thus — I hope — a happy balance between academia and professional certification and that the two can sit side-by-side.

The other type of professional certification question that I disliked was the one that went on a ramble in order to make the question sound more difficult that it really was:

A software developer in the Bay Area has just had a promoted to senior architect and has a bought a new green Porsche and decides to take it for a test on Highway 92. As his milometer passes 70 mph he wonders how he could represent his speed within the company’s .NET 2.0 architecture. What should he use:

A. ChannelServices.RegisterChannel(channel); RemotingConfiguration.RegisterWellKnownServiceType (typeof(newclass.ShowSpeed), “ShowSpeed”,

B. string country,cap; 
country=textBox1.Text; 
cap=sh.show(speed); textBox2.Text= cap;

This type of question was an endurance test in having the stamina to get rid of all the bits that were not important. As an external examiner, I would have rejected this question in an instance, and ask the examiner to concentrate on the core of the question, and not confuse the candidate. The other thing that was common with the Microsoft certification was to show you many different ways to do the same thing, and not actually tell you which was the best one.

Unfortunately I soon found the flaw with some of the professional certification exams … brain dumps. Basically with the exams — at one time — all the answers to all of the questions were available somewhere on the Internet, and those studying them would just have to find the brain dump and use that as a study guide. In the end the students often knew the answer to that question, but not actually the reasoning behind the answer.

In essence, often, the gap between professional practice and academic practice is often based on different learning models. In academia, we look more at a cognitive domain model (Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, … Evaluation), but where professional practice is increasingly focused on effective (Receive, Respond, … Internalize) and phychomotor domains (Perception, Set, … Origination).

Conclusions

I must say, I did learn lots of things when I studied for professional certification, but often ended up with a broad and thin knowledge. In academia — we hope — that we can sometimes give a bit more depth to knowledge, and provide a long-lasting foundation. Both types of study are flawed, and perhaps — when put together — they provide a road map for a skills platform.

For cybersecurity, academia needs to find its place, and understand that academic study is important, but that the developments of key practical skills is also important.

Education should be life-long, and you should never stop learning. A model that works for many is to build their initial foundation within academia, and then continue on their learning with professional certification. If there’s gaps, then postgraduate studies are often a good route to may sure that their practice is not just based in the present, but also into the future. No one model works, so find your own route.