I think that Novell has the best grasp on things out of all the
certification programs (too bad they have never invested the same
level of foresight into their marketing department).
They first do an alpha test for a new course. When the results come
in they can weed out obviously confusing and ambiguous questions
without having to deal with a curve. One time I had one with at least
8 stupid typos, and more than a few really screwed up questions, none
of which made it to the beta. No one gets any certification credit
for the alpha since it's never graded, but it gives us a heads up on
what the exam objectives are like.
Sometime between two and six weeks, depending on how well the alpha
was put together, they publish the beta. There they follow pretty
much the same procedures everyone else does to curve an exam. I've
always found their beta exams to be of a higher quality because of the
extra step.
Another thing they do differently is they will revise each product
exam with a new test version and go through the beta process again. I
hope Cisco will be revising their exams every couple of years, since
that's how often they want us to recertify. The other option is
horrible.
I don't think it's right how everyone's favorite monopoly does it, by
shoving in a couple of raw, often times, ambiguous, badly written
questions in the middle of someone's paid, live exam. I understand
they have to reseed the testing pool, but isn't there a better way?
I might be wrong on my critiques, maybe other companies have in-house
alpha and beta exams in a small scale, privately, or in their
corporate campus, but I've never heard of it, have any of you?
Just recently, someone on a Novell educational forum on cnenet
inquired on the results of a beta that was overdue, and the moderator
got an answer for us from the testing people themselves. I posted a
large thank you message for how serious they handle their education
department, and someone from their testing group personally replied on
the board and assured us the results would be posted soon. (The
Netware 5.1 advanced admin exam revision had to go into beta twice
because the first time one of the simulations crashed and prevented
many of us from finishing the exam)
I realized Cisco needed help in their training department when they
changed their beta exam policy on the 5th week of waiting for the
Foundations exam from 6-8 weeks to 8-12 weeks. It took them a little
over 12 weeks to publish beta results for an exam that's supposed to
be made up of questions from the live exams.
For the CCNA 2.0 & CCNP 2.0 exams, the beta test takers had to wait at
least 2 weeks from the time their respective exam went live. I've
convinced myself that Cisco takes this time to validate the pass rate
they've established. The test results couldn't have just been sitting
on someone's hard drive waiting to be sent to Prometric for that time.
At best, hopefully their training department will read our suggestions
and critiques, or someone who has always wanted to know how the beta
exam process works will come across this thread and learn something.
F.G.J. Ruiz-Alaniz
MCSE, CNEx3, CCNP
And if I might add a reply to Priscilla's latter comment that we don't
want them to give us a flawed test. You're absolutely right. With
all the comments we gave them that the exam was not well-written (to
put it mildly) they're kind of stuck since they can't just throw the
test out, since they took our money and HAVE to give us something.
Here's a new suggestion, which I don't know if they'll even read:
They could do a beta retake with a refined, exam. It will never
happen, I know
Does anyone know the size of their test sample? I think Microsoft's
is 500 and Novell's is 300.
On 25 Mar 2001 15:47:27 -0500, in groupstudy.cisco [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Priscilla Oppenheimer) wrote:
>Maybe they laid off the people working on it. Just kidding. Seriously, the
>Cisco training department has always worked at about 1/100,000,000 the
>speed of Internet time.
>
>Analyzing the results of a beta test is time-consuming, though, and
>sometimes there are arguments on the meaning of the results. The test
>writers must go through and weed out questions that everyone got right,
>even the obvious newbies. (Newbies and experts are defined by the test
>results, so it's an iterative process.) They must eliminate questions that
>nobody got right. They must eliminate questions that the newbies got right
>but the experts got wrong. Then they have to rescore the beta results.
>
>If they eliminated too many questions, they have to add new ones. This must
>be done with care since the new questions won't go through the same beta
>test. Then, they must make sure the course matches the test.
>
>Still, I agree that it's egregious that it has taken 14 weeks.
>
>Priscilla
>
>At 02:22 PM 3/25/01, F.G.J. Ruiz-Alaniz wrote:
>>Anyone know who we can call at Cisco? Speaking to Prometric is a
>>waste of time because they blame Cisco (this from past experience with
>>them).
>>
>>Not to spread rumors, but I think this is related to them not having
>>published the updated CID 4.0 class yet. I can't find any mention of
>>it anywhere. Beta exams from other companies are not this bad, I've
>>never even had one from Novell, Microsoft, or CompTIA take more than 8
>>weeks for me to get my report in the mail.
>>
>>Well, I'll continue waiting...
>>
>>On 25 Mar 2001 09:56:29 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ("GNOME") wrote:
>>
>> >14 weeks and still waiting!!!!!!!!!!!!
>> >
>> >
>> >"Tim Noonan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> >[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> >> Hi. Has anyone got the results from the CID beta test yet?
>> >> I have taken several beta test and this is the longest I have had to wait
>> >> for the results.
>> >> Thanks,
>> >> Tim
>> >> Ps. Please cc me with any reply becuase I don't have access to the mailing
>> >> list right now.
>> >> _________________________________________________________________
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>________________________
>
>Priscilla Oppenheimer
>http://www.priscilla.com
>
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