12496481: BRIAN MOTTERSHEAD
Certification Level Club Tournament Director (Expires 2014-01-31)
There is significant difference. The purpose of a study bank is not to keep the answers hidden from the studier. They are purposely made available along with explanation.
It’s extremely common when you have exams such as this and associated study banks, that the studier will go through all questions to begin gaining familiarity with the concepts because individual questions are digestible chunks of information, rather than a book, especially something like the rule book, is not. This is a mode of learning, especially for the adult learner that is easier to deal with than reading a dry book.
The key to use of any study bank of questions is not to ‘get the study bank questions right’ but instead to understand the reasoning behind the correct answers and why the incorrect ones are incorrect. Mindlessly being able to click ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘A’, and getting the study bank questions correct will lead to failure on the real exam.
The TD exams at the Senior Level and below are no different, IMO, than professional designations like the CISA, CIA, CISSP, pick your acronym… They all utilize study banks of questions based on multiple domains of knowledge.
And the assumption is that everyone that will be taking the tests will be reading these forums, going through all of the responses, and finally finding the final version of the vetted question and answer. So what if they do? They probably learned more that way than reading the rule book.
Brian,
I’ll be happy to work with you on this project as I believe in its value.
I would like to ask from you though, which I believe is the correct thing to do, is to take your Local TD test if you qualify for it. If you don’t take it as soon as you do. This will provide you with another perspective.
Ultimately, the TDCC will have the responsibility for implementing this as I would believe that any delegates motion for this will get referred to the TDCC. This is not to say that you shouldn’t place an ADM for this. You should so it can get discussed in the workshops.
But if the core work is done prior to the delegates meeting, then you have a lot to be able to discuss and sway people over. Remember the majority of all discussions happens not only in the workshops but the breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings that delegates and committee members have during that period of time.
Not everyone participating in this thread seems to feel that testing is a ‘learning experience’. 
The study bank though isn’t testing. It’s test preparation as another modality of learning. There’s a distinctive difference.
Anyone except Brian M who has yet to try the test experience at all?
Brian, did you have any take-home tests in college? I’m almost sure you did. Didn’t at least one of the profs say the purpose was to force you to work very hard on the material for a number of hours?
It would surely be easier for the prof. to grade a 3 hour closed book final.
In truth, I can’t remember any take-home tests in college at all. That wasn’t really the done thing at Harvard in the 1970’s, at least not in the courses that I took, Those covered a reasonable spectrum of the disciplines. Mid-terms and finals were invariably in-class, with finals being very formal. The “at-home” work was papers and problem sets; no “at-home” tests as I recall.
At MIT, also in the 70’s, most of my finals were closed-book but I did have some takehome exams. My midterm and final in so-called real analysis (actually intro point-set topology) were both takehome. Some physics and math majors on my hall were taking other finals in their rooms. I think all my EE courses, which was my major, had in-class (or in the cafeteria or other location where desks could be spaced) 3 hour finals.
In grad school there were a few take-home finals. They don’t really care so much about course grades, because the grades that matter are pass or fail on the qualifying exams, which were not take-home.
In the school take-home exams, the answers were never right in the book, or even in published literature. As such they were more rigorous (agonizing) learning experiences than the LTD exam. But I believe in all cases, the intent was to promote our learning and test us on the ability to solve non-trivial problems under normal conditions. Learning by doing.
Assuming facts not in evidence
You would have greater standing if you had actually taken the Local TD test. And the Senior TD test is a very different beast for the Local TD test.
That is something that will have to be addressed if this project gets off and running; i.e., the difficulty of the questions and which level exam they possibly should be limited to. Placing extremely difficult questions, that take more than just a “look in the rulebook,” on a Club exam might prove to be to much of a challenge for a first time low experienced exam taker. Currently the easiest exam we have ever created is the first exam a Club TD takes after their first three years of directing experience.
I believe we have reached a point after many constructive responses for next steps to be outlined and acted upon.
Brian - will you take ownership to drive the project? I believe you would need to do the following:
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Formally contact the TDCC about the project and any request for assistance. Be mindful that they may tell you that they dont have resources to help develop questions and only review the final product.
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Tim’s comnents regarding difficulty level will have to be accounted for.
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You would have to solicit resources to help develop questions.
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An adm would be necessary to get it on the table for discussion.
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You should take the Local TD test if you qualify or take it when you do qualify.
I would recommend to break up the rulebook into domains of knowledge to make the project manageable.
Great post-Tim. The fact is that in many parts of the federation, there is a shortage of
qualified volunteers willing to serve as tournament directors. One super major industrial
state only hosted 70 events in 2010. Many Southern states very few USCF events of
any type. For the successful future of USCF this must simply change. And having an
adequate supply of those willing and certified is key to this.
Rob Jones
I would be happy to coordinate this project, and hopefully we will have questions already by the next meeting of the TDCC in Orlando. Meanwhile, I expect to have taken the first of the tests myself.
My intention is to set up a web site where people can author questions and use the questions which have been authored for study. This web site will be up by Spring this year. The site will support both authoring of questions and “playing” of the questions.
It would be good if we could get TD’s with higher levels of certification to participate in the authoriing. But since I will be authoring questions myself and have at present only Club TD certification, I can hardly make TD certification a requirement. So the authoring side of the site will be open to all, as will the “self-assessment” side of the site.
Since chess people are “rating” oriented, the site will give each question and human an Elo-based “TD rating”. The carbon-based units (people) will start “unrated”, but will then be paired “against” the questions, one at a time. People will be paired mostly against the questions which are near to them in rating, with some pairings against “higher-rated” (meaning harder), and some lower-rated (easier) questions. New, just-authored, questions will also start unrated and then be paired against the humans. Thus, the ratings of the questions and the people will go up and down as the humans compete against the questions and either “win” or “lose” – by answering the question correctly or not within the alotted time.
The ratings calculations will use the Elo formula. As the system approaches equilibrium, we will tend to know which are the hardest questions, as they will have the highest ratings, having “won” against the most humans. Similarly each person will, over time, learn his “rating” against the questions, and this rating will presumably improve as the person learns the material on which the questions are based (i.e. the rules).
(I can’t take credit for the idea of using the Elo formula to rank the questions and the test subjects, though I wish I could claim such a good idea as my own.) I stole it from the Chess Tactics Server chess.emrald.net/ run by the Berlin Chess Club. Highly recommended for chess tactics training.)
When the question site is up, hopefully by April or so, I hope people with TD certifications will help me to author the first batch of questions.
Brian, while there is a TDCC workshop in Orlando, along with other workshops, it isn’t really a ‘meeting’ of TDCC.
In fact, very few USCF committees hold official in-person meetings.
I haven’t seen any traffic on this in some time…did this ever get off the ground?
Sounds to me like reading Cliff’s Notes rather than the assigned book in High School English class.
Michael Aigner
Sitting in the TDCC meeting now and Tim Just requested for Brian Mottershead to come provide the presentation he stated that he would give for the testing system from this thread, but Brian is not here.
It might just be a coincidence but at about the same time there was a lot of yelling and screaming near Board One of the tournament, when the players were apparently trying to agree to a draw.
I won’t be there until tomorrow afternoon; so I could not make the TDCC meeting. Also, Tim didn’t mention to me that he wanted me to give a presentation. I might have been able to present something had I known, although I haven’t been able to work on this as much as I had hoped in the Spring. I’ve not given up on the idea, however.