Certification applicants are beginning to hear about an entirely new submission process. What is it, and how is it better? Here's a brief explanation and description of the process.

The Performance Exam Automated Rating System (PEARS), developed by The Caviart Group, is a distributed certification scoring system that manages the process of collecting, evaluating, and scoring certification materials. PEARS is easy to use for both applicants and evaluators. The system knows how many submission sections are in your certification, how many you've already uploaded, and how many you have left to go. The upload process is very simple, but if you load the wrong file or need to make an edit, you can upload a replacement file as many times as you want. You can upload sections as you complete them or all at once, and in any order. You can upload on your own schedule: some files now, others later. If you make changes to a section after uploading a copy, you can replace it as many times as necessary.

Once you've uploaded all your sections, you submit your packet. PEARS notifies evaluators that they can begin evaluation. PEARS tracks the evaluation process section by section, and when a packet is completely evaluated it's removed from the evaluation queue and the administrator is notified. In this way PEARS automates most of the administrative processes.

On his blog Tech Writer News, Angel Candelario, moderator of the LinkedIn group Technical Writer in Action, interviewed STC Certification Commission chairman Steven Jong about the CPTC credential. Read his interview with Steve here: http://tinyurl.com/bgmtogl