{"id":2025,"date":"2022-06-03T12:19:36","date_gmt":"2022-06-03T19:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/?p=2025"},"modified":"2022-06-09T13:18:26","modified_gmt":"2022-06-09T20:18:26","slug":"free-or-accredited-training-which-is-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/free-or-accredited-training-which-is-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Free or Accredited Training \u2013 Which is Best?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>By Jim Ragle<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/JimRagleTestimonialPurple.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2036 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/JimRagleTestimonialPurple.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When preparing to take an IT-related certification exam, one needs to decide whether to self-study using free content found online or to pay for an accredited, on-demand training course specifically designed to prepare you for the relevant certification exam.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ve had to make this choice several times.\u00a0 And while I like to think of myself as resourceful and adept at filtering through online nonsense to find the good stuff, when it comes to certification exam prep it\u2019s not worth the effort and risk to go it alone with free online content.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Choose the accredited training.\u00a0 You\u2019ll get certified much easier and faster.\u00a0 Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First, let\u2019s talk about the certification program content \u2013 the stuff that you will be tested on.\u00a0 For most certification programs, that content is copyrighted by the owner of the certification program.\u00a0 ITIL certification content, for example, is developed and maintained by Axelos, which is owned by PeopleCert.\u00a0 Axelos\/PeopleCert protect their copyright, as any commercial company developing content would do.\u00a0 They make money by licensing that content to accredited training organizations and selling the certification (via an exam) to would-be practitioners like us.\u00a0 As such, non-accredited training programs that do not license the ITIL content from Axelos\/PeopleCert are prohibited from using the copyrighted content in their training offerings.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, how can a free, unaccredited ITIL training program do a good job of training you for the exam if they aren\u2019t allowed to share with you the copyrighted ITIL principles, practices, and methodologies?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One way they try to get around this is to simply provide free (or even paid) \u201cpractice exams\u201d or sets of test questions you can review.\u00a0 Just test questions and answers \u2013 no theory, no context, nothing taken from the copyrighted material (or not enough to raise any copyright issues). I\u2019ve seen plenty of these free exam prep questions and they are often terribly written.\u00a0 Here are some issues I\u2019ve repeatedly seen in free exam prep questions:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>Only basic knowledge of English grammar is needed to select the right answer.\u00a0 The question asks you to select the \u201caction\u201d that is most important in\u2026.whatever.\u00a0 Of the four answer choices, only one of them (the right answer) is an action.\u00a0 The other choices are simply not actions at all.\u00a0 Trust me, your actual certification exam will NOT pull this trick on you.<\/li>\n<li>Only a basic ability to count is needed to select the right answer.\u00a0 The question asks you to select the three elements of\u2026whatever.\u00a0 Each available choice is a list of items, but only one of the choices lists three things.\u00a0 Again, you won\u2019t see anything sloppy like this on a certification exam.<\/li>\n<li>Harder to spot are just wrong answers, where the available choices don\u2019t contain the correct answer or the answer marked as correct is, in fact, not the correct one.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve not been exposed to the program content through training, how would you know that the answer is not D, but is actually C?\u00a0 You are putting blind trust in these free test questions.<\/li>\n<li>Also hard to spot are questions that are simply irrelevant, off-topic, and thus highly unlikely to be on the exam.\u00a0 Again, if you\u2019ve not been trained, how would you even know that the question was irrelevant?\u00a0 Why waste your time on this?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m not saying all the free exam prep content out there is bad.\u00a0 It probably isn\u2019t.\u00a0 But how do you know if it\u2019s good or bad if you don\u2019t know the subject matter?\u00a0 After all, you are admittedly a beginner if you are seeking a training course in ITIL Foundation V4, for example.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a beginner, can you spot training content that is wrong, misleading, or irrelevant and thus highly likely to not be on the test?<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Can you spot test questions that don\u2019t include the correct answer in the available choices?\u00a0 How would you know?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you have a lot of time and are willing to wade through an abundance of ad-supported sites offering free sample test questions and can spot the red-flag test questions as described earlier, then maybe it will work for you.\u00a0 However, you still have to pay for the certification exam, and there is a risk that you fail the exam and have to pay to retake it.\u00a0 Are you willing to take that risk?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019d rather pay for an accredited training program and save the time, hassle, and significantly reduce the risk of failing the test.\u00a0 What you get when you select an accredited training program is the following:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>Actual content from the certification owner\u2019s materials, which is what the test will be based upon.<\/li>\n<li>If the training program is specifically for certification exam prep, then it will be targeted to exactly what will be on the exam, nothing less, not much more.<\/li>\n<li>If the training program is good, it will likely be developed and presented by someone who is expert in the field and who can provide context, real-world anecdotes, and other supplementary information to help build a fuller understanding of the content, but still within the bounds of what will be covered on the exam.\u00a0 This never hurts, as the test questions can and do change and sometimes they are situational and require more than just memorizing definitions.<\/li>\n<li>In addition to training content, good training programs include practice quizzes and practice tests, to help you gauge whether you are assimilating the content well enough to tackle the certification exam.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I was preparing to take the ITIL Foundation V4 exam, I reviewed some of the free content (mostly free mini quizzes) and quickly realized this was a minefield.\u00a0 After some research into accredited training programs, I chose the ITIL Foundation V4 training program offered by GogoTraining.\u00a0 The course is structured as a series of modules (all on-demand) that include video presentations with accompanying slides, delivered by Dr. Suzanne Van Hove, who is a seasoned expert in IT Service Management and ITIL.\u00a0 She brings vast, real-world Service Management experience to the training and does a fantastic job of adding context to the sometimes seemingly abstract concepts in ITIL.\u00a0 Even with this additional context, the presentations were quickly paced \u2013 fast enough that I didn\u2019t feel like I was wasting time but slow enough to follow (also, you can always pause and go back). Dr. Hove\u2019s delivery is enthusiastic and animated, which helped make the training interesting and engaging.\u00a0 Also, after every couple of modules, there are quizzes to gauge your progress and two full practice exams to take after finishing the course.\u00a0 All helpful.\u00a0 Most importantly, after taking the training, I immediately took the ITIL Foundation V4 certification exam and passed quite easily.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Accredited is the way to go, in my opinion.\u00a0 And GogoTraining worked great for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jim Ragle When preparing to take an IT-related certification exam, one needs to decide whether to self-study using free content found online or to pay for an accredited, on-demand training course specifically designed to prepare you for the relevant certification exam. I\u2019ve had to make this choice several times.\u00a0 And while I like to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[221,3,147,292,302,156,163,220],"class_list":["post-2025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-itil-4-2","tag-axelos","tag-gogotraining","tag-it-service-management","tag-itil-4","tag-itil-4-foundation","tag-itil-certification","tag-itil-certification-cost","tag-peoplecert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2040,"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogotraining.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}