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#11
September 5th 03, 06:57 PM
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Bob Brock wrote in message . ..
On 05 Sep 2003 11:19:23 GMT, (N2EY) wrote: In article , Bob Brock writes: On 05 Sep 2003 03:41:16 GMT, (WA8ULX) wrote: Then what do you think that they test for? Oh I know what they Test for, and it is not knowledge,it is nothing then Memozizing some Q&As that have no meaning to the test taker. The writtens are nothing more than jumping thru hoops Bob, If you're bothering to argue with Bruce.... I'm beginning to understand him better. :-) He's been asked to at least turn his spellchecker on. Refuses. That tells ya something.... In other words, since they provide the question pool, you don't think that people have to learn the answers in order to correctly answer the questions? How do you think that they figure out how to fill in the correct answer then? You weren't provided with an answer sheet where you only had to memorize the correct sequence were you? The point is that the level of UNDERSTANDING required to pass the writtens today is a lot less than it would be if the actual Q&A were not made public. His contention was the learning was not required. Which is obviously an invalid contention. Proved wrong many times. My contention is different. I've shown him where it is required and a very similar system is used in a validated educational system. Similar but not equivalent. I used to train people at a nuclear power plant. The way I did it was to provide the students with a list of objectives, which were usually in the form of questions. I told them up front that when I was finished with the class, I expected to have covered those objectives and that they needed to know the answers. When I wrote the test, you know where the questions came from? Yup, they came from those objectives word for word because that was what I wanted them to learn. So, if they would study those objectives and know the answers to those objectives, they could pass the tests with no problems. OK, fine. Did they KNOW, from Day 1, that the test they would be taking would consist of the exact questions and answers you gave them on Day 1? They did if the believed me when I told them. OK, fine. Was the passing grade 74%? For most subjects, 70% was passing. However, after academic training was completed, the employee was required to pass an ETQS performance based test prior to certification. There ya go. Not the same system at all. Passing the written tests was only the first step. In amateur radio without code tests, it would be the only step. Was there a penalty for wrong answers? The lost points on the exam...we didn't beat them or anything like that. ;-) Sorry - "test score penalty". Like in the SATs, where, on 5 choice multiple guess questions, a right answer is 5 points, a wrong answer is -1 point, and no answer is 0 points. Eliminates any benefit from random guessing. We didn't play games with them and train them on objectives and test them on something unrelated. We taught them, they learned what we wanted them to learn and we validated that they had learned it without playing mind games with them by extending the tests beyond the objectives. And the class was how many hours? Nobody's saying the tests should go beyond the stated objectives. No amount of academic training is going to make someone proficient at performing tasks. Only experience actually doing it will make that happen. Bingo! And the closest thing we have to a performance test in amateur radio is...the Morse code test. What's left of it. That worked very well in a nuclear environment. I imagine that the class has a lot of motivation towards safety. Mistakes are not acceptable. Yet they happen. I live about 100 miles from Three Mile Island. We maintained a SALP 1 from the NRC during the time frame I was there and I was there for quite a while. Were the employees tested once at the beginning of their employment at the plant, and never again? Or was continuing education an integral part of that environment? Academic training and testing was a one time affair. Performance based retesting was annual. There ya go! Continuing education and skill development is an integral part of that environment. Perhaps it's you contention that getting a license to operate a radio is somehow more complex than the nuclear environment, but that's simply not true and anyone who is rational would know that. Not a question of complexity. In both cases, the material is taught and the student learns it or they don't pass the test. Not all hams take formal classes - in fact, most probably don't. In the bad old days, the FCC published a study guide that listed, in essay form, the type of questions and typical solutions that would be found on the tests. For example, there were questions about Ohm's Law for a DC circuit and how to solve them. Any prospective ham knew he/she would be expected to know how to solve E = I/R and P = IE problems, resistors in series, parallel and series-parallel, etc. And anybody who had a basic UNDERSTANDING of that stuff would have no problem on those test questions. But the actual Q&A were not made public. Today, with the actual Q&A in hand, less understanding is required. That's what bothers some folks. As I said in a previous post in another thread, regulatory agencies are not democracies. Of course! Sometimes they do things that I don't like. When that happens I have two choices...conform or boycott. There's a third choice: Work to get them to change their minds and the rules. Consider this: Today, the test for Tech is 35 questions from a published pool. Most of those questions are on regulations, with some operating practices, theory and safety stuff. Yet the license granted for passing that test gives alla amateur privileges above 30 MHz, including the authorization to design, build, repair, align, modify and most of all operate transmitters of up to 1500 W power output on 'meat cooking frequencies' as WK3C puts it. There is no separate safety testing nor ongoing education - someone can get all of the RF exposure questions wrong and still pass. Do you think that the test and its methods are really adequate for the privileges granted? No I don't. Nor do I. In addition to dropping the code requirement, I would like to see the academic testing made much harder with a performance based test included. However, that's not going to happen. Probably not. It will never ever happen if hams don't ask for it, though. And you can count on this: Propose harder written tests and other performance-based tests, and there will be opposition for exactly the same reasons some people oppose the code tests. FCC does. In fact, back in 2000 they lowered the written requirement for the Tech license by almost half. See my above comment regarding regulatory agencies. I can see where they are coming from though. They have limited budget and ham radio is a very small part of their plate. The FCC does not spend one cent on training hams. Nor do they spend very much on testing and test generation - volunteer hams do almost all of that. All FCC does in connection with license testing is process completed applications after the VEs have done most of the work, and approve questions generated by the QPC folks. We could have all better written exams and different performance tests without it costing FCC anything. But it goes against the fashion. And the "Smith chart effect" opposition would kick in, guaranteed. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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