>I can not think of many questions on either exam where reference material would have helped that much. IMO, the time required to fire up VFP, VSS, etc., to find answers to some of the questions would have been too costly with respect to having time to answer other questions.
>
MS really makes it a point to test more than regurgitation. The BrainBench exam does not represent the same sort of qualification and review of materials, at least not as it exists now. And I doubt that anyone is going to develop the necessary infrastructure to do the amount of content development and review that MS invests in the exams.
>I have not perused the BrainBench site, but there has been enough comment in this thread where I discard its value as a barometer of VFP skills. However, I do believe an on-line exam could be designed to test a persn's basic level of competence. Granted this would have to be done with time contraints, number and difficulty of questions and possibly at least 1 witness.
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Certainly doable; in fact, you could port the MS exam to the Web, at least in theory.
>IMO, the
biggest point of contention in on-line certification exams is examinee integrity. How can I be assured someone did not take the exam for you? Is any witness reliable? In the Engineering exams, this was obviously not a problem. You had to show up and provide positive identification of yourself.
>
Agreed. And that's pretty much the same with the MCP certification tests; you show up at the test site and provide picture ID. The tests are structured so that you should not need more than pencil and paper; you can use the Windows calculator IAC as I remember.
>Maybe such exams would only be useful by an employer needing to test a potential new employee's level of competence. At least you know the employer has a vested interest in making sure the potential employee follows the testing rules.
>
Yep - and can oversee the administration of the exam during an interview or some such. The BrainBench model doesn't work IMO AFA a realistic objective assessment of relative qualification, for all the reasns I've been spouting to Alice and The Catepillar in other threads.
It's a a QUAD tool to help assess the qualifications as long as your assumption that passing represents a base level of knowledge; the test procedure is not adequate to assess relative ability beyond the pass/fail issue. It doesn't have the necessary infrastructure to do kore than that, and as its content is developed now, it does not meet the basic requirements needed for meaningful certification.
>As for FREE exams, the provider [in true capitalistic ideals] retains the right to determine cost of such exams.
TANSTAAFL!
