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Home > Archive > 70-217 > February 2002 > Passing 217 and the New Micro$oft Testing Philosophy
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Passing 217 and the New Micro$oft Testing Philosophy
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| eljefe79 2002-02-22, 7:19 pm |
| Well, I finished the 217 today which consisted of 63 Questions in 170 Minutes...non-adaptive. Rewarded with a practically blank piece of paper saying "passed". I'll apologize in advance so pardon me as I jump on the soap-box here and start a discussion on the "new Micro$oft testing philosophy".
It was nice to have some feedback on the tests, even though they were bar charts and numbers. It did give the test takers some relative performance data with which to earmark areas of review before moving on to the next level of study. Feedback..a necessary component of learning???
Over the last year or so , we've been seeing some strange things coming from Redmond and especially Anne McSweeney's desk. The least significant happening to be a 25% raise in fees. For the life of me, I as well as associates have a hard time understanding why the giant is so reluctant to provide feedback on the tests. Any inside dope on this would be informative.
The 240 exam must have been a big failure considering that there were rumors of less than a 10% pass rate. Micro$oft itself wouldn't comment on the exam except to say that they would not be providing "upgrade" tests in the future. Why?? Could it have been the Microsoft curriculum structure, the availability of clear and uniform documentation to support their curriculum. After all, knowing the answer to a question also depends upon clarifying its' context as well. Why weren't test takers allowed to retake it to boot? My thought as to why I didn't take it was simply...
1. Implementation and support documentation was in its' infancy.
2. The expanse of knowledge was so broad that articulated study seemed fruitless.
3. Timeframe.
Microsoft took several pages from the Novell book, its a shame that they didn't learn the lesson of education. Coming from a Novell background, my hat goes off to that aged firm who still prides itself on the principles of structured learning to effectively support their product line. It'll be interesting to see what comes next although my belief is that M$ is more interested in using its' curriculum not as a support tool for the product line but more as a forced Marketing tool.
Good Luck and Best Wishes,
Pallbearer | |
| cross36 2002-02-22, 7:27 pm |
| Congradulations on that. How is 217 not adaptive? | |
| eljefe79 2002-02-22, 11:52 pm |
| Hey Cross
adaptive tests???? Adaptive tests work on a sliding scale, they "adapt" to the difficulty of the questions being answered. The harder the question being correctly answered, the less questions you'll have to take. In effect, testing continues until the program settles into a reasonably accurate estimate of what you know and can do, taking anywhere between 15 and 25 questions.
At this point, the test is static at 63 random questions and I'd have to put it on a par with the old TCP\IP exam in difficulty. | |
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| the problem with the 240 was not the test. It was the people taking it, thinking that their NT background and an Exam Cram book was enough to pass this test. THe new format also caught some people by surprise.
Botton line: the MCSE 2K track is much harder than the MCSE 4.0 was, and it is a good thing. Yes, it is going to weed out some people -- and that is exactly what it should do in my opinion.
Congrats on your pass!  | |
| PotatoHead 2002-02-23, 10:04 pm |
| Congratulations!!
cross-none of the M$ tests are adaptive | |
| unreal 2002-02-24, 9:27 am |
| Congratulations to your pass !
Well, I guess every-one would agree, "The higher we climb, the harder it gets." . But at the end , we will surely enjoy the fruits of our labour !
Best of luck to you future ! | |
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| quote:
Originally posted by PotatoHead
Congratulations!!
cross-none of the M$ tests are adaptive
... at least not so far  | |
| cross36 2002-02-24, 12:27 pm |
| Thanks for all of your inputs. Adaptive for me was considered or so though on a computer monitor. and random order of questions.
So A+ was adaptive knowing you can go from 20 to 30 questions.
But when the questions are fixed to a certain number, then it is not adaptive.
Thank to you all for clearing my confusion. | |
| iceman2001 2002-02-24, 1:08 pm |
| As I stated in a previous post just getting a pass isn't helpful at all.
Canditates should have the right to get a breakdown on how they done,whether they passed or failed.
If just offering a pass is a way for MS to weed out the weak then that is a poor substitute.
It's fine to say well I don't care I passed,which I have said a few times,but I'd like to know how I actually did in the exams.
My 2 cents...
iceman. | |
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| I once talked to a buddy of mine who works for the Training division of Microsoft, and here are their reason:
1. You should know while taking the test, which questions -- ie whic areas of the curriculum -- caused you problems.
2. If they told you as much as we all want to know, then it would be easy to take the test several times, and end up with a direct map to a pass from their hints.
It used to be like that for old NT exams, but they realized that some bozos would go and take the same test multiple times, used the breakdown at the end, and ended up passing a test out of shear repetition -- not for the right reasons!
That's their story, and they're sticking to it | |
| unreal 2002-02-24, 8:22 pm |
| That's enlightening, to "patch" the weakness of the exams system. |
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