Re: Testing job applicants

[Donald Fisk <donald.fisk@inthan.be>]

Peter wrote:

> However the "final exams count for everything" and "only a proper
> examination will sort the men from the sheep (or whatever)" mentality
> (fostered by the Ivory Tower dickheads who run much of UK higher
> education, even today) does make it possible to achieve significant
> results by cheating.

How is reliable cheating possible without illegally (typically
by breaking and entering) getting hold of the exam papers or
model answers?   You can still cheat by looking over someone
else's answers in the exam room, but that's seldom worthwhile
(if the question's so difficult you don't have a clue, chances
are the person whose answers you can see can't do it correctly
either) and easy to detect.

> If one had continuous assessment then cheating would be virtually
> worthless, people would have to really learn the stuff and (god
> forbid) might actually come out of the education system in a state
> where they are genuinely useful in a real technical job. But whenever
> continuous assessment was tried (at the college stage, 16-18 in the
> UK) it got systematically discredited and eventually destroyed by the
> universities. I had C.A. at college and had never worked so hard in my
> life, educationally speaking. And I still remember much of it now,
> many years later.

That makes cheating easier.   Students can get someone else to do
their work for them, and collusion is commonplace.

> Peter.

Le Hibou (ma propre opinion)

-- 
"People help themselves to things if they think they will get
away with it, even things they are unlikely to have much use
for and cannot resell, such as traffic cones. In the UK we
call these people 'students'." -- Joe Boswell