Walter said:
LOL! I recently saw a "Dateline" episode on college cheating, where students
would wirelessly access the internet during an exam to find answers to
questions.
In addition to it probably being a student, there is an issue of legality
and prudence with a potential employer using a test to qualify candidates.
The general thinking goes like this:
Are the questions on the test indicative of the type of work being done?
Would being able to answer the question determine that the candidate could
do the work that the opening is for? Can you prove that the questions are
normative, non-descriminatory with respect to ethnic and cultural
differences, sex, or race? How have you qulaified the test questions such
that they are predictive of success or failure of the candidate in
performance of the actual expected work?
If there is no indication of having proof of the applicability of the test
to the specific job, and proof that the questions are actually specific to
the position being screened for, the use of the test is illegal. In
addition, it must be shown (by actual job situations) that the information
required to answer the questions is necessary to be known without reference
to generally available materials expected to be in the workplace.
It is legal, for example, to require a doctor to pass exams that require the
candidate to know various medical terms, procedures, and techniques without
reference to books, notes, or collegues in order to be certified as a
surgeon. The elements of the exam must match what a surgeon must do in
performance of general surgery. It is not expected that a surgeon will know
everything (even if they all think they do!) and that reference may have to
be made prior to a specific surgery, or even during a surgery in special
cases.
In programming, it is highly unlikely that all aspects of each language that
might be encountered during any given project would be known without
references to any given programmer. That eliminates from qualifying test
such nonesence as "Which toolbar button do you use to change the display
icon in a project?" What might be more appropriate (but still a little
"dicey") would be to ask "Can the display icon for a project be changed?"
and "What is involved in changing it?"
It is one of the disgusting aspects of the Microsoft qualifying exams for
certification that many of their questions are of the extremely specific
type covering topics that most programmers would simply look up when needed.
(And I have been certified, so I know whereof I speak; MCP, MCT, MDSD, CTT.)
I tell my students "Never memorize what you can look up." What is important
is that they understand the principles, techniques, and what's available in,
say, a language so they know what can be done, various options, and reasons
for selecting one over another. What distresses me is co-workers I have had
who have no clear understanding of what a compiler does, how the language
they're using is structured, the differences in data types, etc. This is the
basic stuff I always wished we had a qualified test for before hiring them.
IBM used to use a "Programmer Apptitude Test" in the '60s which I believe
they dropped when they were faced with legal problems trying to justify it
as predictive of success or failure. I took it in 1961, thought it was dumb,
and got hired anyway.
