In article , "Phil Kane"
writes:

On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 11:53:58 -0400, Scott Unit 69 wrote:

How about essay or fill-in-the-blank
type questions instead of multiple-guess type questions?

This presumes that the examiners are at the professional level and
can properly grade an essay-type question.

No sweat for me and I'm sure for several others here. I have a PE in
several states and have taught electronics at the University level.
What about all the other VEs out there?

I have BSEE and MSEE from University of Pa. and Drexel, respectively. Also can
do 40 wpm Morse and build my own ham rigs. (It ain't braggin' if ya really done
it...)

The big problem with essay and fill-in-the-blank questions is that the answers
are not 100% objective. There's always a measure of judgement involved.

For example, take a simple question like "what is the length of a half-wave
dipole cut for 7.1 MHz?" With multiple choice, the QPC says that one answer
(say, 66 feet) is the correct one and all others are incorrect.

But with essays and fill-in-the-blank, what tolerance do we put on the correct
answer? Is 67 feet acceptable? 68 feet? 66 feet 3 inches? The person being
tested could write a long dissertation on tapering elements, the effect of
ground, wire/tubing sizes, etc., and come up with a whole raneg of
arguably-correct answers.

And that's just a simple question. When you start getting into explanations and
diagrams, it gets really hairy.

From what I have researched, FCC went to multiple-choice questions for all ham
exams no later than 1961. At least 42 years ago, probably more. Try convincing
them that they've been wrong all this time.

73 de Jim, N2EY