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Walter & Group...
[GH] I'm now fine, after checking in with my own Dr.
I'd had a morning of global amnesia. After many tests in the hospital, nothing of consequence was found and within a few hours I was fine.
I've just climbed back on the horse.
My personal thanks for the many of you who wrote to wish me well !
Gordy
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This from Dusty Sprague :
Gordy,
The string of messages below.....I still have scars from the beating Floyd Franke, then chairman of BOG, gave me when he was told by a candidate I was going to fail him if he could not perform some tasks I asked him to do on the masters test that were not on the test. I had asked the candidate to demonstrate curve casts and wanted to see how many ways the candidate could do it. We had a break in the test and during the break Floyd made it perfectly clear to me that we cannot fail a candidate for something not on the test. Ever since that experience I am especially careful not to get out of the box, so to speak....staying within the bounds of the test. We can certainly ask questions and ask to see this or that to confirm or dispel a strength or weakness but we cannot fail someone for not being able to do something that is not on the test, e.g. failing someone for not being able to execute a task 3 ways when the test called only for two ways.
Dusty
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[GH] Dusty & Group....
A difference in philosophy, leads to a different "style" of testing.
Floyd did try to do the same thing with me. We had a meeting of the minds in which I made it clear that despite his dictum of no teaching during an exam, that we would "agree to disagree" on that point and look at it as a matter of testing style.
First, let me point out that I agree with Floyd that it would not be fair in the least to flunk a candidate on any particular task or portion of task which is not specified on the exam.
That is the way I test candidates.
Having said that, I am one who enjoys doing some teaching as I test candidates who are quickly identified as being very competent and confident..... exceptional candidates.
For those exams, I enjoy spending extra time ferreting out the limits of the candidates' knowledge by asking many questions way beyond the stated task requirements .
If I get to the end of his string of task related performances and answers, I'll teach him a new one or two if I can. I'm really impressed if I can't.
Some of you who fit that pattern will remember the enjoyment this gave both of us as I tested you in past years. I learned some things from you, and we both profited from the experience. You know who you are and will remember what we did together during your test.
Was this my idea ?..... NO. I learned it from two experiences. The first from my own exam years ago when Tom Jindra and Bill Gammel tested me. It turned out to be 4 1/2 hours of fun as they asked me many things not on the performance exam .... including about 10 different ways of making change of direction casts. I got great pleasure from learning a couple of ones new to me from them.... and taught my examiners one additional one they hadn't known. I passed the distance task, and then Bill showed me some tricks which improved my distance performance.
The second one was when Bruce Richards was lead examiner as Paul Arden was taking his MCI exam at the Idaho Falls Conclave. Several of us watched Paul's exemplary performance .... Took several thoroughly enjoyable hours. I'm sure we all learned a few things.
Even with a candidate of average competence, I have found that I can sometimes improve performance by asking him to do something I'm reasonably sure he can do well as an expansion of a task requirement. When he does it and I praise him, it builds his confidence and the rest of the exam seems to go even better. If he can't do it, I cannot and would not flunk .... but I'd take a few minutes to teach it, and go on from there.
This is just one of the many tricks I have in my "testing bag of tricks" to help accomplish what I feel is most important :-
BRINGING OUT THE VERY BEST THE CANDIDATE HAS TO OFFER !
Of course, this technique is open to valid criticism on the basis of time constraints.
If our CBOG rules eventually prevent me from doing this, I'll stop examining altogether. Period.
Gordy
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[GH] From Shaun Ash :
If a test requirement becomes harder, different of completely changed surely the testers must be capable of each new tasks, I have to be retested each year to maintain a teaching qualification for adult education, when the department changes a test everyone retests,
They believe this makes it fair on everyone last year the test changed we all had to do a large retest and one of our most senior instructors was no longer capable of a few of the more physical tasks he fail we lost a true master. But the reasons for maintaining skills is important, hard to balance the two.
Why the change is needed is hard some times to work out or not very clear and this does tick people off the why does this have to get harder than when you did it question comes up.
The problem with testing it is never a true indication of knowledge or rarely is, it is a sample of what a person seems to know under test conditions.
This is a big problem , knowledge can be massive, a student may be capable and understand a task more than the tester, but nerves, and test mind blank may effect them.this means the tasks only tested nerves.
Next is wording how a question is asked along with real and unreal expectations of the tester do they enter the test with I need to see and hear this or else mentality or instead a lets see what this person knows, next is how often can the knowledge be shown does a student have more than one opportunity to demonstratet knowledge or re-enforce a previous statement,level of understanding of whats is really needed, has the test process been fully explained and understood by the student and has both knowledge required and expectations of the examiners been fully explained.
If a student had to demonstrate a task 8 ways for example as given, then me as a tester would need at least 8 ways to ask the question this way the student is given every chance to understand what is required, this would take a long time.
I have taken the CCI test and been a witness when others take this test and would have to say the Masters in Australia in my opinion conduct the tests isn a fair and balanced way, the student is given time to get in the groove, they seem to want each person to pass so they test with an open mind, I have witness a few fails and at each time its was allowed to come to a very good conclusion hard to do.
People don't realise that often the examiner is nervous as well because they want to do a good job. Sometimes to become a good examiner like a good masters just takes times not knowledge or skills.
PS DEALING WITH FAILURE IS HARD.
A person who fails must have very clear reasons why and what what they need to do better, or they may not ever retest. A person who tests another must be able to create an environment that enhances the outcome, I believe that a test is a very poor way of sampling knowledge, but we need some thing, I think by having three testers, and series of practical tasks and a talk about overall knowledge.
This is a pretty fair way of sampling the knowledge some one has under test condition.
Shaun
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