Ocean Diver test paper B

[Andy Nye]

I sat and read this paper last night ( Tuesday ) and i all can say is " What sort of A**hole sits and makes these papers up at HQ ". ?

Some of the questions are very misleading, having a few of us having different views on all bar 4 of the q & a's.

If i was a newbie, sitting this exam, i would be cra**ing myself wether to do any more training past this level.

My idea of exams in this nature are .


OD = Things you need to know.
SD = Things you should know.
DL = Things you should must know.
AD = All the above.



Andy

[TerryH]

Having now used papers A,B & C of Ocean and A & B of Sport, I
can honestly say that the best thing you can do with these
papers is stuff them in the bin!

The Instructors in our club are now resigned to making up our
own papers following the format and structure of the workbooks
and manual. There will be no ambiguous or trick questions.

Example: How much air do you need for the dive?

Is the "dive" in question the dive portion minus reserve or the
entire "dive" including reserve?

Lot easier to simply ask:
"how much air is needed for the dive (include reserve)".

It's obvious by the options of both air required and air
required + reserve that the writer of this question was trying
to get the student to think reserve. But exactly the same
effect is acheived by simply asking to calculate reserve as
part of the question.

This is one of numerous examples.

All now to be re-written!

TerryH

[Will Swift]

My idea of exams in this nature are .


OD = Things you need to know.
SD = Things you should know.
DL = Things you should must know.
AD = All the above.



Andy

To get to DL presumably you went through OD + SD (or equiv) so if DL=DL+SD+OD and AD=DL+SD+AD then DL=AD - not sure I agree with that ;-)

[Dave]

Example: How much air do you need for the dive?

Is the "dive" in question the dive portion minus reserve or the
entire "dive" including reserve?

I think that this is a good question as posed as it checks whether the trainee has taken in the issue of allowing for reserve gas. By telling the trainee to consider the reserve in the question that check has been removed.

I wouldn't rewrite such a question to hand hold them through it

Dave

[TerryH]

I think that this is a good question as posed as it checks whether the trainee has taken in the issue of allowing for reserve gas. By telling the trainee to consider the reserve in the question that check has been removed.

I wouldn't rewrite such a question to hand hold them through it

Dave

What are we trying to acheive with this question?
Answer a) To do air calculations and include a reserve
or b) To calculate the air needed on the "dive" portion minus
reserve.

Depends entirely on your definition of the word "dive".

I could argue both points and mark right or wrong both
answers. So how do we expect a newbie to know whats in the
examiners mind?

I have degree students that can do the maths and are fully
aware that they include a reserve, yet fail this question
simply because the wording is ambiguous.

So we have good students who may fail an exam although they know the subject, simply because of this method of "checking".

Big diffrence between checking for knowledge and retention and
masking the point to try and catch them out.

TerryH

[Steve Walker]

Big diffrence between checking for knowledge and retention and
masking the point to try and catch them out.

TerryH

I agree entirely, if we want to test their knowledge let's do it in a realistic way, it would be better to ask : show all air requirements for an _actual_ dive to XX metres for XX mins by a diver with SAC of XX litres per min. If they omit the reserve then fail them on this question for unsafe dive planning - simple enough and gets home the message about proper planning.

Questions which aren't geared towards a real dive are IMO a fairly pointless maths exercise which could have been covered in lecture time - even if you do wonder how some of them made it into Uni ;)
Cheers
Steve

[Dave]

Questions which aren't geared towards a real dive are IMO a fairly pointless maths exercise which could have been covered in lecture time - even if you do wonder how some of them made it into Uni ;)

I disagree. A question like "How much air do you need for the dive?" is valid. It requires the person to think about reserve without having anything giving them a clue about it. Start putting hints in like "all requirements" and it's making the question easier and not checking so well whether they have grasped allowing for reserve et al

Dave

[TerryH]

I disagree. A question like "How much air do you need for the dive?" is valid. It requires the person to think about reserve without having anything giving them a clue about it. Start putting hints in like "all requirements" and it's making the question easier and not checking so well whether they have grasped allowing for reserve et al

Dave

So how do you answer a student who knows full well that a
reserve is needed, but interprets this question as what air is
required for the actual dive not including reserve?

Is it "the air actually used" or "the air actually used plus
reserve"?

I can interpret "the dive" both ways and could be right and
wrong without it being able to check if I knew about reserve or
not.

TerryH

[Mike Halligan]

I can interpret "the dive" both ways and could be right and
wrong without it being able to check if I knew about reserve or
not.

OK, so BSAC suggest we create our own papers along the lines of examples given. Might we then rephrase this along the lines of "How much air should initially be carried if you intend to dive to ....mtr for ....min when your SAC is .... ltr/min?" perhaps?

Bearing in mind it is far more difficult to get something (anything) down onto blank paper than it is to correct/amend/supplement/adjust/change/improve/alter/clarify your draft or the work of someone else, I'm grateful for the BSAC's honest attempt at prompting and giving structure to our activity.

Mike

[Steve Walker]

Bearing in mind it is far more difficult to get something (anything) down onto blank paper than it is to correct/amend/supplement/adjust/change/improve/alter/clarify your draft or the work of someone else, I'm grateful for the BSAC's honest attempt at prompting and giving structure to our activity.

Mike

Mike, I agree completely if you mean that getting the first sentence of any piece of work onto the paper is the hardest part, but I don't see that is any reason for letting ambiguity into the questions.


Dave, I could not disagree more. I don't think this is about "giving clues" or not, and I don't see how a vague question like "How much air do you need for the dive?" will turn out a good diver.

Hopefully what both of us would want from our instructing is to turn out a well-rounded diver (please no puns on the physique of bsac divers) who knows what they need, how much they need and why they need it.

I would NEVER set a quesion like "how much air do you need for a dive" because when I tell people why they got a question wrong I need to be able to look them in the eye and know that they're being tested on their knowledge not trying to second-guess what might be in someone elses mind. Bearing in mind that most trainees who come my way are undergraduates, they're smart enough to point out a duff question and argue the validity of their point.

As I suggested before, if you want to test people then give them time and space to show their true mettle, tell them "take your manual's and tables and whatever else you need and draw up a correctly planned dive for us to do that on trip X next week/month/whatever", if your dive plan is unsafe then you've failed. Sounds simple enough to me.

Regards

[Mike Halligan]

Mike, I agree completely if you mean that getting the first sentence of any piece of work onto the paper is the hardest part, but I don't see that is any reason for letting ambiguity into the questions.


Regrettably, it may be the whole first draft, of tens of pages and a 5 day deadline applying but that's another arena. Here, in scuba instruction, I apply the principle that I need to assess a trainee's comprehension of data proffered in standard texts and/or during theory lessons.

I don't believe multi-guess is the best format for this, save that it may (subject to monkey-factor) provide an indication where absolute facts need to be comprehensively known. Not that I'm defending multi-guess in a crucial environment like "must-know" scuba diving data. Indications are hardly adequate for that purpose. The bulk of the knowledge should (IMHO) be tested by open questions seeking brief (2 - 3 sentence or 3 - 5 stage calculation) answers. I noted with interest that, immediately before the current DTP, AD papers had begun to incorporate both formats.

A more descriptive style such as this is in my experience more readily adapted to verbal delivery, where student need or preference might dictate. When composing assessments we might usefully consider whether multi-guess has had its day.

Regards,

Mike