Quote:
Originally Posted by Raymond
I'm answering based on the teaching point.
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It's much better now, but IAABO International has a history of "gotcha" questions, with questions differing from the rulebook or casebook language by a single word.
I'm considered to be a pretty good "rules guy, so I'm all for the exam being a teaching vehicle, I learn something new every year, but there are others on my local board who have a full year of assignments in jeopardy if they don't pass the exam, or take remedial rules classes.
If the exam had fair, well worded questions about the rules, and not about semantics, then it's fair that they lose games (or are forced to take remedial rules classes) because they don't know the rules very well.
But if they fail due to several poorly worded, "gotcha" questions, based on how well one understands semantics, where it's more of a reading test rather than a test of how well one knows the rules, that just doesn't seem right to me.
IAABO International should do a better job writing it's exams.
Locally, we've had so many exam problems over the years with these always open book IAABO International exams that my local board has encouraged, organized, and publicized exam study groups, even providing answer sheets to these study group leaders (no more answer sheets, we're trying a new study group model), "legalizing cheating" to keep the failure numbers down.
One had to be the laziest official in the world to fail the exam on my local board. We had to make the local process of passing the IAABO International exam so easy that the exam was no longer a test of one's rules knowledge, but a test of something else.
A better IAABO International exam would mean that we wouldn't have to hand a passing score to our local guys on a silver platter. A well written exam would identify the guys that truly need remedial classes (or no assigned games).