Still retired still bored

[Birken Vogt]

I just love that HM test. Questions like, what section of the law code are explosives packing groups found? Possible answers are:

a) 17740.2(a)
b) 17740.2(b)
c) 17770.2(a)
d) 17770.3(a)

How should I know and why would anyone besides a cop ever care? Somehow I make it through that test but it is always dicey. If they took out trick questions like that and put in more common sense maybe we would have a better caliber of driver.

 

[DMiller]

Exactly.

The 'New' thing as to testing is NOT testing for what you 'Know' but how well you can read the questions to determine the answer the test giver wants. Does not have to be correct to anything you have studied or perform just has to be worded such to trip you up. When that fails resort to such nonsense as what you dealt with, unnecessary and worthless.

A gift from egocentric educators.

 

[ianjoub]

I love the question: How far do you stop behind a school bus when flashing.

The follow up question should be how far is 100'? Many may get the first answer right but not have a clue what 100' is. I imagine we would get answers between 10' and a mile if we were standing on the road asking which landmark was the correct distance.

 

[Birken Vogt]

Exactly.

The 'New' thing as to testing is NOT testing for what you 'Know' but how well you can read the questions to determine the answer the test giver wants. Does not have to be correct to anything you have studied or perform just has to be worded such to trip you up. When that fails resort to such nonsense as what you dealt with, unnecessary and worthless.

A gift from egocentric educators.

It seems the caliber of the wording of the question and correct answer (in multiple choice) has deteriorated too, in various kinds of tests. Makes it hard to fathom out the correct answer.

Couple that with the new trend to not hand you back your marked up test form.

If you have a complaint about a question and answer being wrong, you have zero documentation to bring to anyone, if you could find anyone that cared. Questions on things like a truck driver's license, the greater driver population should be the standard. They are the professionals, not the bureaucrats that write this garbage.

But with the secret test questions and answers, all you get is "trust us, we know what we are doing."

 

[Spud_Monkey]

No one stood over my shoulder as I took the test, in fact the building was empty except the receptionist who could care less what day of the week it was. Guess I should of just went ahead and took every single test and just worry about having right vehicle another day to take the road test hehe. Though they did misspelled one the words on the test that was on the computer, breaking instead of braking.

 

[DMiller]

Dealt with this at the Nuke, tests every six weeks, would incorporate material from up to six months prior training sessions. I got pretty good at reading what they wanted to get as a answer and pissed the instructors off terribly. Average 20 question test took me 12 minutes, I do not and as fate would have it still CAN not read sentences, I scan them looking for key words and tricky phrases, I scan answers and pick one, end of test I go back and change two answers to incorrect to keep my Grade point less than 100% and the ones I usually picked were the Gimme Questions that everyone else would not have a problem with. They tried three different times to get me, to fail me, all three times they had the rest of my crew in for remediation and retest as they would miss one to three too many(80% to pass), I would show the instructors where the questions were wrong in procedures JUST to make them rewrite them as would inform management as to the incorrect answer issue. They were like that with myself and two others for almost 20 years.

 

[DMiller]

This change in questions and answer format was the brainchild of a College professor that did not like students just regurgitating the class materials and getting great grades as told me by a dear friend in the Nuke Training department(He was one like that).

This is what they base it on, and has NO relevance to real world conditions.
https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/writing-good-multiple-choice-test-questions/

 

[old-iron-habit]

Sounds like a hunter safety test I took a hundred years ago. Another fellow and I were comparing tests as we each had one marked wrong. We both had the same question wrong. It was a true/false question and both answers were correct. One of us answered true and the other false and we were both marked wrong. After the class we asked the instructor which one of us was correct as we both could not be wrong. He confided that everyone is marked wrong on that question as they want to expound that no one knows it all and that you still need to think thru every occasion. As I got older I better realized the wisdom in that statement.

 

[John C.]

I took classes year ago working toward getting a certification for adult education. Basically it was to be an instructor at a community college working on re-education for adults that were surplussed out of their jobs by automation. The whole series of classes was focused on competency based education and focused on what a student would be able to do at the end of each training segment. You designed your class around a particular task, say running the rack on a Detroit, remove and install a head on Cat 3406, read a wiring schematic for an excavator or checking hydraulic pressure on any machine. Writing tests under that type of format is incredibly hard to do because your entire training session has to be written from that.
So take that back to a school teacher who couldn't handle a class room and knows nothing of the trade they are writing a test for. What do they do? They go to accident reports and lawmakers for material to write the questions from. They also have to write gotcha questions that make no sense plus break all the rules of language in writing them because they have to achieve a failure rate. The failure rate makes the lawmakers look good because now they have a statistic to use showing how their program is keeping poor drivers off the road. The lawmaker is happy, the test writer is happy, the news media is happy if something actually gets there.
In this state they turned all the testing over to private parties who charge an exorbitant amount of money to complete their course of instruction. They give those providers the tests so they can teach to the tests instead of the competency. Now the provider looks good as well.
The exact same thing happened to me years ago when obtaining an insurance adjuster license. You could have been selling or adjusting insurance claims for years in another state but if you hadn't attended this state's provider's training course, you could never pass the test.