From: Scott M Vermillion (scott_ccie_list@it-ag.com)
Date: Sun Feb 15 2009 - 16:51:27 ARST
At least they're being consistent! CCIE lab grading has always been "all or
nothing." Precisely why we're not approaching the 250,000th number. While
I do shudder at the thought of failing the SP lab before my first cup of
coffee is down, it is pretty cool to think I could bag 21 points in under 30
minutes. I don't care how well you know your stuff, that isn't something
you can accomplish on the CLI. So then you've got 7.5 hrs to come up with
just 59 more points. Interesting...
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Darby Weaver
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2009 11:53 PM
To: Cisco certification
Subject: Open-Ended Lab Questions - All or Nothing?
Taken from CCIEPursuit's Blog
=================================================
Open-Ended Question Grading: All or Nothing
Filed under: Cisco, Cisco Certification cciepursuit @ 3:28 pm
Tags: CCIE, CCIE Lab, Certification, Cisco, Cisco Certification
In a discussion on the Cisco Networking Professionals Connection a candidate
recently failed his lab. He received a 0% grade on the new "open-ended
question" portion of the lab even though he was sure that he got at least 2
of the 4 questions correct. If he got two of the four questions correct then
he should have received a 50% mark in that category, right? Well, it turns
out that this is NOT the case:
Replied by: lohaver - Marketing Programs Manager, CISCO SYSTEMS - Feb 10,
2009, 4:30pm PST
Hello Nuno,
I work on the CCIE team. The short answer section is graded on an "all or
nothing" basis. If you answer the minimum number correct you will get 100%.
If you don't achieve the minimum, your score shows as 0%. It is indeed
possible that you answered two questions correctly.
Lora O'Haver
Learning @Cisco
What the [censored]??? Honestly, WHAT THE [censored]?!?!? What is the
"minimum number correct"? I would have to assume that in this case it's
three. Lora states that he could have correctly answered two and still not
passed the section. If it were four then she would (well, 'should') have
said that you need to answer all of the questions correctly. This "minimum
number" gets more interesting in that some candidates have received 4
questions while others have received 5 questions.
This gets even more interesting. From the responses on this thread it looks
like the questions are worth a total of 21 points and the remainder of the
lab is worth 79 points. That means that you need to pass the question
portion of the lab in order to pass the entire lab as the passing grade is
80 points and the most that you can score on the lab portion is 79 points.
I've fully supported the addition of the questions to the lab, but this new
scoring "revelation" pisses me off. IF the questions are worth 21 points
towards your total score and they are graded on an "all or nothing" method
based on meeting some undisclosed "minimum number of correct responses" then
this is more than just a minor addition to the lab and Cisco really owes it
to the candidates forking over $1400 to explain this better. This "all or
nothing" scoring is especially important for candidates to be aware of
because if they aren't aware of it, then they may be likely to request a
reread of their exam. If you get a 0% on a section that you are sure that
you had at least half of the questions correct, then you're most likely
going to assume that the lab was graded incorrectly and request a reread
($250).
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
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