On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:23:07 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> Yeah, I'm curious to know what happens for the ones where you have to
> enter text. How do they measure "how close" to being right you are?

Well, those tend not to be essay questions, but rather "what command does 
'x'" - and that's fairly straightforward unless you overthink it.  
Typically, an exam like this is looking for the most commonly known way 
to do 'x', not the most obscure way you can think of, or the "well, in 
98% of cases, I can use this, but in that last 2%, it doesn't work".

That's one of the reasons that before I worked in training and exam 
development, I never too certification exams.  I know I tend to overthink 
things. :)

>>> The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I
>>> must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)
>>
>> Questions are sometimes weighted as well, so it's not a straight "x"
>> points for "y" questions.
> 
> The LPI website seems to indicate that /subjects/ are weighted, with
> more important subjects getting more questions. This seems to imply that
> each individual question is worth the same amount.

Yeah, it's also common to weight by "knowledge area". :)

>>> (I'd love to know which questions I got wrong...)
>>
>> You know, of course, that there's no way they'll tell you that.
> 
> Yeah. Heaven forbid that I might actually *learn* from my mistakes...

That's not the purpose of an exam, though.  An exam's purpose is to 
measure what you know, not to help you assess what you don't know.  
That's what an "assessment" or "technical skills assessment" (or 
"technical knowledge assessment") is for. :)  An exam is a measurement 
tool, nothing more.

> As an aside, I had to remove my watch before I was allowed to take the
> test. Because, you know, I might have programmed the answers into the
> cogs and gears somehow...

Actually, I'm not surprised by that.  Not because they might think you're 
using the exam to answer questions, but rather that you might use it to 
*record* your exam session.  There are *many* ways that people try to 
cheat on exams like this, not the least of which is to try to copy the 
questions and then use that as a study guide.

I had a situation where a candidate was alleged to have taken a USB flash 
drive in to get screengrabs of the exam in question (software like VUE's 
test driver doesn't allow that, but for this particular exam, we weren't 
using that system and the workation wasn't locked down as tightly as a 
result).  The drive was confiscated and examined, and it allegedly had 
screengrabs from not just the exam the candidate was sitting, but other 
exams as well.

These days, you can buy watches/watch bands that have USB storage in 
them, or miniature cameras.  It's easier to require the candidate just 
not take it into the testing room rather than to examine each candidate's 
personal items prior to taking the exam.

Having proctored certification exams and had candidates do things like 
appearing to feign not understanding a testing objective (scenario-based 
exam in that case) in order to try to get me to give him the answer, not 
much surprises me these days when it comes to requirements and 
restrictions.

Jim

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