Additional Resources

[Chris Posey]

When students reach out and ask me for additional training materials, we often share Jason Dion in Udemy and Mike Meyers. Does anyone else have a go-to training program that they share that doesn't go against CompTIA guidelines?

 

[Rick Butler]

When students reach out and ask me for additional training materials, we often share Jason Dion in Udemy and Mike Meyers. Does anyone else have a go-to training program that they share that doesn't go against CompTIA guidelines?

Well, we usually don't advocate for one or another provider's materials apart from CompTIA here on CIN; I personally think they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I've used Cybrary before, books from Cengage, Pearson, Sybex, and McGraw Hill, even as secondary/auxiliary. Dion, Myers, and Messer have track records of preparing students successfully. Thing is, I have never advocated that a serious student constrain themselves to any one provider - always have two sources of reference before going into the practice phase.

That being said, are you using CompTIA or TestOut materials now? I think in the last five years, they've improved quite a bit. CertMaster 1.0 - well.... CertMaster now, very good. And I think the whole of CIN is waiting to see what the "unified product" will look like, when they finally blend up CertMaster and TestOut.

The hardest challenge in this arena in my experience has always been with practice testing. I've written on this topic a number of times here on CIN, but the hardest thing about practice testing is building that confidence up - that if a student is getting 80, 90, or 100s on the practice tests that they would be "ready" to take the live exam. That is a very tough thing to achieve, and yet, when dealing with students where the overall goal is "to pass the cert", well, that's where the pressure is.

/r

 

[Chris Posey]

Well, we usually don't advocate for one or another provider's materials apart from CompTIA here on CIN; I personally think they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I've used Cybrary before, books from Cengage, Pearson, Sybex, and McGraw Hill, even as secondary/auxiliary. Dion, Myers, and Messer have track records of preparing students successfully. Thing is, I have never advocated that a serious student constrain themselves to any one provider - always have two sources of reference before going into the practice phase.

That being said, are you using CompTIA or TestOut materials now? I think in the last five years, they've improved quite a bit. CertMaster 1.0 - well.... CertMaster now, very good. And I think the whole of CIN is waiting to see what the "unified product" will look like, when they finally blend up CertMaster and TestOut.

The hardest challenge in this arena in my experience has always been with practice testing. I've written on this topic a number of times here on CIN, but the hardest thing about practice testing is building that confidence up - that if a student is getting 80, 90, or 100s on the practice tests that they would be "ready" to take the live exam. That is a very tough thing to achieve, and yet, when dealing with students where the overall goal is "to pass the cert", well, that's where the pressure is.

/r

Thanks, Rick for the insights. Our students are using CompTIA CertMaster Learn and Practice and we have found they are struggling more and more with the PBQs. Some of our instructors have even mentioned the PBQs are not similar to those of the actual exam. We have used some of the other resources you listed and they have been great for those basic questions to help students prepare. Always looking for new and credible resources to share. Thanks again.

 

[Gregory Childers]

When students reach out and ask me for additional training materials, we often share Jason Dion in Udemy and Mike Meyers. Does anyone else have a go-to training program that they share that doesn't go against CompTIA guidelines?

I stopped recommending Dion, Messer, and Udemy.

I had a free subscription to Udemy at a previous company, and I canceled my account because I couldn't find any quality content.

Dion posts CompTIA questions of the day on LinkedIn. It's frustrating how many times he has incorrect answers or references to deprecated standards.

Messer just re-records his stuff every time a new version of an exam is released but pretends that the new exam is 50%+ different than the previous exam. I've passed more CompTIA exams than he has and I can assure you that is completely false. It's closer to 10%-15% new material.

My recommendation to students who ask for additional resources is to target individual topics that challenge them. Watch a video on subnetting, zero trust, or SNMP. Don't use multiple resources that cover all the exam objectives when you already have one that does that.

 

[Rick Butler]

Thanks, Rick for the insights. Our students are using CompTIA CertMaster Learn and Practice and we have found they are struggling more and more with the PBQs. Some of our instructors have even mentioned the PBQs are not similar to those of the actual exam.

So, this is exactly my point. Review questions coming out of CMLearn are not going to be certification grade - because the student is learning the material. Even the final exams that you see are not going to be to that level. CertMaster Practice questions, I've found, sometimes are certification grade, sometimes they're not.

Now, I've said this before out here on CIN, but let me restate - there are two uses for practice tests:

1. Sharpening - In this mode, the student goes through questions, being made aware of the things they didn't know. This is where students usually find themselves because they want to get that improvement from 60 to 70 to 80 and so on. But the cost is high - each question revealed and answered diminishes its utility. Getting a 100 is not overly difficult for someone with a good memory, but that doesn't directly say that learner will get that high a score, or even a passing one, on the live exam.
   
   
2. Validating - In this, answers to fresh questions are never revealed. This would more closely model the certification exam. The benefit is that you can replay the questions and, for the most part, be able to measure improvement. The detractor is that a student doesn't get much feedback on the specific topics that require remediation. In this case, they would know how well they did in each domain objective, but not the specific learning points.

Remember, the subtle difference in all of this - are you training students to pass the exam or perform on the job? Sure, we'd LOVE both, but I have seen many training houses that are more diploma mill types - pay money, get the info to pass the exam as their ONLY focus. Sure they get defensive when challenged on it, but it's all too prevalent. I would impress upon your students to "seek to know", not "seek to pass".

PBQ's are really another way to see a question's content. Rather than 'multiple-guess', it's either matching or fill in the blank. There are some PBQs that are very good at helping students think through a problem. We've even had entire TTT sessions where, for two hours, the attendees focused on 1-2 questions. But I have never yet seen the content from a PBQ on a live cert exam - and that's quite okay. If you use the PBQ as a training tool, it will help more in my experience.

One other thing that often gets overlooked with practice testing, particularly in instructor-led scenarios is "the answer is A, but why not B, C, or D?" Many times, there is some really good enriching training when we ask questions like, "Okay, the answer is Platform-as-a-Service, but why not "Software-as-a-Service" or "Infrastructure-as-a-Service"?

That is one thing I found on Microsoft Learn that is helpful - the explanations to questions will say why a question is NOT the answer.

Finally, any old salt out here on CIN will tell you, the industry is replete with "paper certs" who pulled up brain dumps or dumped info on Quizlet.

/r

 

[jarrelrivera]

So, this is exactly my point. Review questions coming out of CMLearn are not going to be certification grade - because the student is learning the material. Even the final exams that you see are not going to be to that level. CertMaster Practice questions, I've found, sometimes are certification grade, sometimes they're not.

Now, I've said this before out here on CIN, but let me restate - there are two uses for practice tests:

1. Sharpening - In this mode, the student goes through questions, being made aware of the things they didn't know. This is where students usually find themselves because they want to get that improvement from 60 to 70 to 80 and so on. But the cost is high - each question revealed and answered diminishes its utility. Getting a 100 is not overly difficult for someone with a good memory, but that doesn't directly say that learner will get that high a score, or even a passing one, on the live exam.
   
   
2. Validating - In this, answers to fresh questions are never revealed. This would more closely model the certification exam. The benefit is that you can replay the questions and, for the most part, be able to measure improvement. The detractor is that a student doesn't get much feedback on the specific topics that require remediation. In this case, they would know how well they did in each domain objective, but not the specific learning points.

Remember, the subtle difference in all of this - are you training students to pass the exam or perform on the job? Sure, we'd LOVE both, but I have seen many training houses that are more diploma mill types - pay money, get the info to pass the exam as their ONLY focus. Sure they get defensive when challenged on it, but it's all too prevalent. I would impress upon your students to "seek to know", not "seek to pass".

PBQ's are really another way to see a question's content. Rather than 'multiple-guess', it's either matching or fill in the blank. There are some PBQs that are very good at helping students think through a problem. We've even had entire TTT sessions where, for two hours, the attendees focused on 1-2 questions. But I have never yet seen the content from a PBQ on a live cert exam - and that's quite okay. If you use the PBQ as a training tool, it will help more in my experience.

One other thing that often gets overlooked with practice testing, particularly in instructor-led scenarios is "the answer is A, but why not B, C, or D?" Many times, there is some really good enriching training when we ask questions like, "Okay, the answer is Platform-as-a-Service, but why not "Software-as-a-Service" or "Infrastructure-as-a-Service"?

That is one thing I found on Microsoft Learn that is helpful - the explanations to questions will say why a question is NOT the answer.

Finally, any old salt out here on CIN will tell you, the industry is replete with "paper certs" who pulled up brain dumps or dumped info on Quizlet.

/r

I've bookmarked this.

I echo Rick's comment above.
but I'll also add, try using AI perhaps?

 

[Edna Chimpeni]

So, this is exactly my point. Review questions coming out of CMLearn are not going to be certification grade - because the student is learning the material. Even the final exams that you see are not going to be to that level. CertMaster Practice questions, I've found, sometimes are certification grade, sometimes they're not.

Now, I've said this before out here on CIN, but let me restate - there are two uses for practice tests:

1. Sharpening - In this mode, the student goes through questions, being made aware of the things they didn't know. This is where students usually find themselves because they want to get that improvement from 60 to 70 to 80 and so on. But the cost is high - each question revealed and answered diminishes its utility. Getting a 100 is not overly difficult for someone with a good memory, but that doesn't directly say that learner will get that high a score, or even a passing one, on the live exam.
   
   
2. Validating - In this, answers to fresh questions are never revealed. This would more closely model the certification exam. The benefit is that you can replay the questions and, for the most part, be able to measure improvement. The detractor is that a student doesn't get much feedback on the specific topics that require remediation. In this case, they would know how well they did in each domain objective, but not the specific learning points.

Remember, the subtle difference in all of this - are you training students to pass the exam or perform on the job? Sure, we'd LOVE both, but I have seen many training houses that are more diploma mill types - pay money, get the info to pass the exam as their ONLY focus. Sure they get defensive when challenged on it, but it's all too prevalent. I would impress upon your students to "seek to know", not "seek to pass".

PBQ's are really another way to see a question's content. Rather than 'multiple-guess', it's either matching or fill in the blank. There are some PBQs that are very good at helping students think through a problem. We've even had entire TTT sessions where, for two hours, the attendees focused on 1-2 questions. But I have never yet seen the content from a PBQ on a live cert exam - and that's quite okay. If you use the PBQ as a training tool, it will help more in my experience.

One other thing that often gets overlooked with practice testing, particularly in instructor-led scenarios is "the answer is A, but why not B, C, or D?" Many times, there is some really good enriching training when we ask questions like, "Okay, the answer is Platform-as-a-Service, but why not "Software-as-a-Service" or "Infrastructure-as-a-Service"?

That is one thing I found on Microsoft Learn that is helpful - the explanations to questions will say why a question is NOT the answer.

Finally, any old salt out here on CIN will tell you, the industry is replete with "paper certs" who pulled up brain dumps or dumped info on Quizlet.

/r

Good methodology to pass!

 

[precious]

When students reach out and ask me for additional training materials, we often share Jason Dion in Udemy and Mike Meyers. Does anyone else have a go-to training program that they share that doesn't go against CompTIA guidelines?

Another excellent go-to training program that many recommend without conflicting with CompTIA guidelines is Professor Messer's free online training, especially for CompTIA exams. His videos are widely respected, and he also offers paid study resources for those looking for more in-depth material.

 

[Rick Butler]

Another excellent go-to training program that many recommend without conflicting with CompTIA guidelines is Professor Messer's free online training, especially for CompTIA exams. His videos are widely respected, and he also offers paid study resources for those looking for more in-depth material.

Earlier in this post, we touched on Professor Messer's work. I do like that he puts those videos out, free of charge for folks. He's been in the business for quite a long time and is a respected name in IT training. They're not bad, self-standing. And so many folks in the business have seen or latched onto copies of Professor Messer's notes for prepping for an exam.

I love John Savill's work with Microsoft products - wish we had a similar one for CompTIA. There are a lot of ham-and-egger video producers out there as well, if you take a moment to look that also do a great job explaining concepts in different ways.

The point I made earlier and repeat again - don't limit yourself to one source for your content, even from CompTIA or in-house instruction. Different content producers will explain things differently and those varied perspectives can make all the difference between deeper learning and missing something.

/r

 

[precious]

Earlier in this post, we touched on Professor Messer's work. I do like that he puts those videos out, free of charge for folks. He's been in the business for quite a long time and is a respected name in IT training. They're not bad, self-standing. And so many folks in the business have seen or latched onto copies of Professor Messer's notes for prepping for an exam.

I love John Savill's work with Microsoft products - wish we had a similar one for CompTIA. There are a lot of ham-and-egger video producers out there as well, if you take a moment to look that also do a great job explaining concepts in different ways.

The point I made earlier and repeat again - don't limit yourself to one source for your content, even from CompTIA or in-house instruction. Different content producers will explain things differently and those varied perspectives can make all the difference between deeper learning and missing something.

Great insights, Rick! I completely agree about not relying on just one source for training material. Professor Messer's free resources are indeed a gem, especially for anyone just getting started with CompTIA exams. I often recommend his videos to students as a supplement alongside Jason Dion's and Mike Meyers' content.

I also appreciate John Savill's expertise with Microsoft products – his ability to break down complex concepts is impressive. Having different content producers to explain topics in unique ways can really help solidify understanding, especially for hands-on fields like IT and pentesting. It’s all about finding the right mix that resonates with how you learn best!

 

[dlross]

When students reach out and ask me for additional training materials, we often share Jason Dion in Udemy and Mike Meyers. Does anyone else have a go-to training program that they share that doesn't go against CompTIA guidelines?

When my students ask, I recommend a few, trusted resources:

• Mike Meyers: All-in-One Certification Exam Guide
• Mike Chapple: CompTIA A+ CertMike: Prepare. Practice. Pass the Test! Get Certified
• David Prowse: Exam Cram
• Professor Messer- his website: www.professormesser.com. Encourage them to purchase the bundle with the notes and practice test. Also, better to watch from his website. If you watch from youtube.com, then you get all the crappy commercials.
• Jeff T Parker, Audrey O'Shea: CompTIA A+ Practice Tests: Core 1 Exam 220-1101 and Core 2 Exam 220-1102, 3rd Edition. The book has a great online test bank that will give you 1400 questions spread across Core 1 and Core 2 (about 13, 70 question exams, and it will track how many unanswered questions you have, how many answered questions you have, and how many wrong answers you have for the questions banks, plus give you the option of setting up which of these banks you want to use to create questions, and you can do them in exam mode or in practice mode).

My favorite of all of them are either Professor Messer, if you're pressed for time, or Exam Cram, if you've got time to spare. I recommend using them together to supplement each other, and then use the Sybex as a starter test bank, then move to Professor Messer in exam mode (where you have to time the exam yourself) as you are closer to the exam. Now, if your students use Sybex for their test bank, they will need to use their own timer, because Sybex automatically gives 2 minutes per question. That's tomfoolery. They should set their clocks for 1 minute per question and set the alarm to go off for the appropriate time. I recommend for 70 questions, because it's the most realistic. Realistically, you'll get (usually, I guess) 3- 5 PBQs. That leaves 70 questions for Core 2 and 65 questions for Core 1.

As an extra push for Exam Cram- David Prowse is my man! He is on point! And I believe you get access to his online content when you buy the book, which is excellent. He broke down those laser printers, and it was real! I just frikkin' love his book so much.

DLRoss

​

 

[Dan]

my students get free access to https://www.oreilly.com/online-learning/, LinkedIn learning, and some other resources, as part of their enrollment in the program. Here is the list of resources I share with them, in case they want to use other resources

 

[precious]

my students get free access to https://www.oreilly.com/online-learning/, LinkedIn learning, and some other resources, as part of their enrollment in the program. Here is the list of resources I share with them, in case they want to use other resources

Amazing resources. Thanks for sharing

 

[Gregory Childers]

When my students ask, I recommend a few, trusted resources:

• Mike Meyers: All-in-One Certification Exam Guide
• Mike Chapple: CompTIA A+ CertMike: Prepare. Practice. Pass the Test! Get Certified
• David Prowse: Exam Cram
• Professor Messer- his website: www.professormesser.com. Encourage them to purchase the bundle with the notes and practice test. Also, better to watch from his website. If you watch from youtube.com, then you get all the crappy commercials.
• Jeff T Parker, Audrey O'Shea: CompTIA A+ Practice Tests: Core 1 Exam 220-1101 and Core 2 Exam 220-1102, 3rd Edition. The book has a great online test bank that will give you 1400 questions spread across Core 1 and Core 2 (about 13, 70 question exams, and it will track how many unanswered questions you have, how many answered questions you have, and how many wrong answers you have for the questions banks, plus give you the option of setting up which of these banks you want to use to create questions, and you can do them in exam mode or in practice mode).

My favorite of all of them are either Professor Messer, if you're pressed for time, or Exam Cram, if you've got time to spare. I recommend using them together to supplement each other, and then use the Sybex as a starter test bank, then move to Professor Messer in exam mode (where you have to time the exam yourself) as you are closer to the exam. Now, if your students use Sybex for their test bank, they will need to use their own timer, because Sybex automatically gives 2 minutes per question. That's tomfoolery. They should set their clocks for 1 minute per question and set the alarm to go off for the appropriate time. I recommend for 70 questions, because it's the most realistic. Realistically, you'll get (usually, I guess) 3- 5 PBQs. That leaves 70 questions for Core 2 and 65 questions for Core 1.

As an extra push for Exam Cram- David Prowse is my man! He is on point! And I believe you get access to his online content when you buy the book, which is excellent. He broke down those laser printers, and it was real! I just frikkin' love his book so much.

DLRoss

​

Meyers and Chapple are great resources. I strongly recommend both.

I've never used Prowse, or Parker and O'Shea, so I can't comment on them.

I stopped recommending Messer a while back. Too many new learners exclusively watch his extremely abridged video series, take his practice exams, and exam-cram their way to a barely passing score while learning nothing meaningful that will help them be more productive at work. Not to mention that Messser keeps spinning yarns that 50% of the exam objectives change every three years, which is completely nonsense.

 

[dlross]

Meyers and Chapple are great resources. I strongly recommend both.

I've never used Prowse, or Parker and O'Shea, so I can't comment on them.

I stopped recommending Messer a while back. Too many new learners exclusively watch his extremely abridged video series, take his practice exams, and exam-cram their way to a barely passing score while learning nothing meaningful that will help them be more productive at work. Not to mention that Messser keeps spinning yarns that 50% of the exam objectives change every three years, which is completely nonsense.

Definitely take a look at Prowse and Parker/O'Shea. They are really good resources.

I never recommend Messer exclusively. Like many pointed out, using only one resource is not advantageous As an instructor who is thorough and wanting my students to use other resources than the books we use, I find that my students do exactly that, and they do better on the exams as a result. It's all in how you frame your narrative when you give them supplemental materials.

 

[Gregory Childers]

Definitely take a look at Prowse and Parker/O'Shea. They are really good resources.

I never recommend Messer exclusively. Like many pointed out, using only one resource is not advantageous As an instructor who is thorough and wanting my students to use other resources than the books we use, I find that my students do exactly that, and they do better on the exams as a result. It's all in how you frame your narrative when you give them supplemental materials.

I tell them they need one good exam prep book, one good class, and one good practice exam.

They should research those independently if they have any difficulties with any individual topics.