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THE COMMON ROOM

26th November 1965
Page 70
Page 70, 26th November 1965 — THE COMMON ROOM
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

By George Wilmot

Lecturer in Transport Studies, University of London

Methods of Examination in Transport-1

THE formal written examination with five or six questions to be answered in two to three hours is the main basis of all transport examinations. Indeed, in the majority of examining bodies, it is the only basis of testing.

In any examination scheme this system should retain its place. It presents the candidate with the challenge of quick thinking and having to make answers within a time schedule. After all, many problems which face transport and traffic managers are not pre-destined but occur suddenly and demand quick solutions. Providing that the questions are designed to test a candidate's ability to apply facts to particular problems, rather than a reproduction of the facts themselves, I believe this form of examination to be most important.

But is the method right? There is a strong case for allowing candidates to bring a limited number of reference books and notes into the examination room. This view is finding favour with a number of general examining bodies, although few have seen their way to making the idea a reality.

If this could be done an enormous amount of memory work on the part of the candidates would be dispensed with and candidates could concentrate on applying factual theory. A more exacting and searching paper could be set in these circumstances and the industry would gain in many ways. The practical difficulties are minimal, but obviously there must be a limit on the amount of material brought as there would be a danger of many candidates equipping themselves with a miniature transport reference library. Some enthusiasts for reform in transport examinations would go much further and suggest that all candidates should be sent their actual question papers a fortnight beforehand—a " pre-release " technique. This is taking reform too far and is a system which would create more problems than it would solve. To begin with, the test of thinking quickly in the face of a sudden situation is lost, and this method tests quite a different technique. Furthermore, such a method could turn into a mammoth memory test, however unconventional the questions set. There is a further practical danger that "underground agencies" might be established to provide sets of model answer papers for candidates to memorize.

The method, however, presupposes something different from the formal examination paper; it aims at testing a candidate's ability to work at problems on his own Over a longer period. There are better ways of testing this attribute, which indeed ought to be brought into the general scheme of an examination. Work in preparation for the examination should be assessed and included within the results. One method is to set all candidates particular problems —for example, the best means of operating a particular fleet in an area given certain traffics and other data. Candidates could be given a choice of working through a number of like problems during the time of their preparation for the formal examination and at the end of the course send the examiners their "practical notebooks" giving their working and solutions to the various problems.


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