Software Engineering - Re: Auto-grading aptitude tests

Author

Re: Auto-grading aptitude tests

Ben Pfaff

2005-08-23, 7:00 pm

rem642b@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:

> Suppose the computer-run test was truly interactive, where the
> applicant could fill in something, then the program would check it and
> discard the parts that don't fit the desired pattern, and give one free
> letter as a clue what's missing, and then the applicant would get
> another chance, etc. as many clues as needed until the applicant gets
> the correct answer?

I'd like to buy a vowel.
--
"Long noun chains don't automatically imply security."
--Bruce Schneier

gds@best.cut.here.com

2005-08-23, 9:57 pm

Ben Pfaff <blp@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>rem642b@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:
>I'd like to buy a vowel.

Actually, I had a queueing theory professor (Kleinrock) who allowed
students to buy part of an answer for a few exam points. The idea was
rather than having the student be stuck, giving the student a bit of
assistance would help the student complete the rest of the exam
question.

Is there some reason why this type of assistance should not be
available in testing software engineers? Especially since in jobs,
software engineers don't operate in vacuums; they consult man pages,
help pages, web pages, even other software engineers for assistance in
solving problems.

If it's cheating you're worried about, ask them to take the exam in
person at a site of your choosing.

--gregbo
gds at best dot com

Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t

2005-08-24, 9:56 pm

> From: g...@best.cut.here.com
> I had a queueing theory professor (Kleinrock) who allowed students to
> buy part of an answer for a few exam points. The idea was rather than
> having the student be stuck, giving the student a bit of assistance
> would help the student complete the rest of the exam question.
> Is there some reason why this type of assistance should not be
> available in testing software engineers? Especially since in jobs,
> software engineers don't operate in vacuums; they consult man pages,
> help pages, web pages, even other software engineers for assistance in
> solving problems.

Yes, we're in agreement! One common jargon to keep in mind is "value
added". If somebody is asked to recite a definition, and so they go
online and copy the definition from WikiPedia and paste it to their
exam sheet, they have added no value, their instructor could have
looked it up him/herself faster than asking the student to do it. But
if a student/employee is supposed to write a working program, and the
student/employee then goes online to look up the API and some other
info, and puts it all together to yield a working program, then the
student/employee really has added considerable value beyond what was
already available online. I suppose the least quantity of value-added
service would be a system integrator, who merely finds software readily
available online to perform the various steps of the overall task,
downloads each, and tells the boss how to use each of them to solve
each individual step of the overall problem, not even bothering to
write a glue script that ties them together so the boss could issue a
single command to run all the programs in sequence.

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