OEQ - What are they like? How are they structured? Are they

How about this for a relevant post then guys and girls?

Open-Ended Questions 101:

1. Why are there open-ended questions in the first place, isn't the CCIE
Written suffcient to prove "theory"?

Answer: There are open-ended questions to defeat the widespread and rampant
memorization of the actual CCIE Labs - apparently to the degree of 90-95%
first time pass rates in some countries such as China for example
(consequently where the CCIE Interviews were introduced).

The CCIE Written is actually the most relevant study guide for the
open-ended questions and the CCIE Lab itself. There are a lot of
misconceptions about the CCIE Written and one of them is that is "just
theory" and therefore irrelevant and only serves as a barrier to taking the
CCIE Lab itself. The CCIE Written actually is very "lab-like" in terms of
scope of problems and the level of comprehension of a wide-variety of topics
even when the blueprint between the lab and the written do not match 100%.

2. How long will the OEQ's be around and will they be removed from the exam.

Answer: The OEQ's were designed to be a "discriminator" and allow proctors
the ability to ascertain whether or not a candidate has the basic level of
understanding and comprehension to perform a task. For instance: Can a
driver win the Indy 500 but somehow does not know where to place the key or
cannot tell you what the gas pedal does? It's really kind of like that.
The idea is that an expert should be able to tell you these things in
his/her own words. Simple enough. The concept is that no well-qualified
candiate would be able to fail on just the OEQ, although some have claimed
this and I've found their posts to prove it. Please don't test me - the
example I found gave the candidates lab dates, his scores, and his OEQ's all
in one tidy place and so if I expose this the poor bastard would probably be
banned if his post is true and it looked authentic to my eyes but who can
say short of Cisco?

The OEQ's may or may not be removed if the Troubleshooting Section of the
lab exam measures up and proves to serve as a fair "dicriminator". No one
is yet certain of this but it is a thought and may well happen. Watch and
see how this progresses.

3. What are open-ended questions like? How are they structured?

Answer: Has anyone ever read any of the FAQ's on a protocol on Cisco's
website? If so, I'd say this is the meat and potatos of say 2 of the 4
questions in any 4 questions presented. Just a guess but this is the level
of difficulty and degree of wordiness that might be expected from any given
candidate's OEQ's. This is appropriately referred to as CCNA level OEQ's.
The CCNP level OEQ's might actually have a diagram and some given output of
any given protocol and the candidate might be expected to ascertain what is
or has occurred based on the information presented or even what role a
device may be playing for that scenario. This might be considered
high-level CCNA or low to mid-level CCNP type of OEQ. Now the last
question might be a little tougher and require more of that 30 minutes and
it might be a show-stopper and could even be considered unusual but
typically is not that unusual to a very observant CCIE Candidate. For this
type of question not much prep is availble except maybe Hutnik and
Satterlee's CCIE Prep Course. I would agree that Doyle an or Clark might be
useful as well but in truth just day to day configuration and observing and
interpretting not only what each device is doing based on the command output
or relevant debug but also say... what role that device might be playing in
the greater scheme of the given scope of the question and or topology.

4. Are they impossible?

Answer: I'm a poor guy to say as I've yet to encounter them in the wild in
a lab yet. However, I will tell you that in the Techtorial at least 2-3 of
us had been to the lab between say 1 and 9 times I think and most of us in
that category seemed to know most of the questions, but if challenged we may
have had some self-doubts. So they can come across as daunting to the
unexpecting well-prepared lab candidate. The newbies in the room seemed
mostly quiet and I think most of the questions presented were eye-openers
for the majority of the room.

5. Where can I get an example of these questions?

Answer: Cisco posted some on their site. Maybe one or two. Each of the
CCIE Techtorials offered by Cisco (not the Cisco CCIE 360) had a very good
garden variety of OEQ's tossed into the salad for the participants. I am
not sure if these can be purchased after the event. But they are the only
official source that I am aware of to get OEQ's or the true semblance and
essence of the OEQ's as they might appear in an actual CCIE Lab. Who better
to present them than the proctors themselves?

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Sat Jul 11 2009 - 12:55:47 ART