Scioly.org

windu34 wrote:

nicholasmaurer wrote:

rfscoach wrote:

Well, as an event supervisor there, I did not want my test released. That's my thought.

I'm curious as to why you object to the release of your tests...?

As am I. All of the supervisors I have spoken to are always in favor of releasing tests to students. This is mostly because they are all alumni and remember a time when they were competitors and wished they could see their tests. Why don't you want your test released?

nicholasmaurer wrote:

windu34 wrote:

knottingpurple wrote:So this doesn't exactly match up with the topic of this thread, but the discussion of studying for the specific ES at nats reminded me for it. My best event last year was probably Remote Sensing, but I felt like when I took the Nationals Remote Sensing test that I'd never taken a Remote Sensing test all that similar to it. When I remarked on that to windu after he ran Remote Sensing at PUSO this year, he told me to go look at the Wright State Invitational Remote Sensing test from last year, and I expected it would have similar question types or something, but when I looked at it, several of the questions seemed to be the same as what I could remember from the Nationals test. As an invitational, it was definitely released to competitors, and somebody had in fact shared it with my team, but not knowing anything about the ES's or anything (besides that one of them was a former colleague of my parents', and the dad of my childhood babysitter, but that didn't really tell me anything about his test writing style lol) I didn't really have time to take every single Remote Sensing test we had from an invitational, and as it happened, Wright State Invitational was not one of the ones I'd taken.

Okay, having gone through the tests side by side, the invitational station 1 is similar in topic to nats station 9, invitational 3 is literally only a couple words different from nats 6, invitational 5 is the same topic as nats 1, invitational 7 and nats 8 require the same interpretation of different data, and while of course I could've studied all of Remote Sensing better and done better, it also seems like attending the Wright State invitational was basically a shortcut to high placings at Nats. It wasn't just a shortcut in familiarity with the ESs' styles but also in familiarity with exact questions, and idk what other people's opinions on that are but I resented it.

I think is an issue that must be voiced to national ES in order to be resolved correctly. I certainly struggle myself with trying to ask different, unique questions when writing tests for the same event, and I think its just something that the ES needs to have in mind when doing so. While formatting may not necessarily change due to personal preference, it is certainly crucial that the ES try their best to change the content and vary the focus on their tests (topic-wise).

When I am an ES, I specifically avoid reviewing previous tests I have written for the event until after the majority of the new test is written. At that point, I may go back and identify a handful of questions on topics I'd overlooked that I think are worth paraphrasing for inclusion. But generally, by not looking at past tests I've written, I can avoid writing questions with the same wording and answer choices, even if the topics are similar (just by the nature of the rules). Once you look at a previous test, it can be very difficult to get your past questions out of your head to avoid repeating them.

knottingpurple wrote:

nicholasmaurer wrote:

windu34 wrote: I think is an issue that must be voiced to national ES in order to be resolved correctly. I certainly struggle myself with trying to ask different, unique questions when writing tests for the same event, and I think its just something that the ES needs to have in mind when doing so. While formatting may not necessarily change due to personal preference, it is certainly crucial that the ES try their best to change the content and vary the focus on their tests (topic-wise).

When I am an ES, I specifically avoid reviewing previous tests I have written for the event until after the majority of the new test is written. At that point, I may go back and identify a handful of questions on topics I'd overlooked that I think are worth paraphrasing for inclusion. But generally, by not looking at past tests I've written, I can avoid writing questions with the same wording and answer choices, even if the topics are similar (just by the nature of the rules). Once you look at a previous test, it can be very difficult to get your past questions out of your head to avoid repeating them.

So in the case of this one particular Remote Sensing test I'm annoyed with, I completely understand that there would be an energy budget formula question, because it's an important section of the rules, even though I think copying the wording is lazy. And there's no real section of the rules I can say was left out of the Nats test. But there were certainly many, many ways the Nats test could have maintained its quality, complexity, and breadth without repeating quite so many ideas from the Wright State test. I haven't yet been an ES but just in writing tests for captains' tryouts and stuff, I looked at previous tests I'd written for the same event, exactly copied the formatting, but then typed over each question with something different so taking the two tests wouldn't allow any answer memorization, so I don't see why Nats ESes, with much more knowledge in the events than I have, can't find at least as many different ways to meaningfully test the material.

windu34 wrote:As am I. All of the supervisors I have spoken to are always in favor of releasing tests to students. This is mostly because they are all alumni and remember a time when they were competitors and wished they could see their tests...

Unome wrote: There are only so many invitationals near these particular event supervisors. Wright State/Centerville tends to be a good one to check because a lot of the National Event Supervisors from Ohio live near Dayton (i.e. within a few hundred miles or so - Dayton is nearer than the Cleveland area or Sylvania for most of them). I haven't ever seen WL-S tests, but those might also be useful on the same basis (not certain).

nicholasmaurer wrote:

Unome wrote: There are only so many invitationals near these particular event supervisors. Wright State/Centerville tends to be a good one to check because a lot of the National Event Supervisors from Ohio live near Dayton (i.e. within a few hundred miles or so - Dayton is nearer than the Cleveland area or Sylvania for most of them). I haven't ever seen WL-S tests, but those might also be useful on the same basis (not certain).

In my estimation, the high ratio of NES at Centerville/Wright State is less a matter of location (although this certainly helps), and more that CeAnn Chalker and Alan Chalker are involved in this tournament.

syo_astro wrote:

windu34 wrote:As am I. All of the supervisors I have spoken to are always in favor of releasing tests to students. This is mostly because they are all alumni and remember a time when they were competitors and wished they could see their tests...

For graded tests, personally, no (even as a competitor). I opt for only putting "standard" tests and invites online. Releasing all tests can saturate one with resources and can narrow studying to be on specific tests. Tests help, etc, but tests aren't automatically going to be helpful (especially with too many).

For obvious reasons, if states are undermanned, have to use the same ES, etc...tests probably won't get released. Still, here's a list of reasons (and counters) I can think of to release graded tests (note: I assume the main goal here is to improve learning / tests...hopefully not mistaken):
-"It helps students to identify their own specific mistakes"...Call me skeptical, but, from what I've seen, releasing graded tests mostly leads to scoring complaints. Yes, some use them well for studying / give helpful feedback, but this is not the majority.
-"More practice is needed to do well at events"...Invitationals seem to be good for that (I am a fan of invites releasing tests online, which is why prestigious invites don't make much sense to me as opposed to invites that give good practice for regionals / states...a rant for another day).
-"Practice needs to be relevant to the specific ES / region / state"...Then maybe something like NC's system would work best. At least it'd inform everyone uniformly. Some tests aren't even good practice, especially if ESs change.

I think it's worth investigating what's good practice as well as teaching better question making / scoring practices. But I can't think of how giving back scored tests from regionals / states necessarily helps with this (...other than, sure, learning you got a specific question wrong...). The only other issue I can think of would be about accountability, but that is very much a rabbit hole that people can't seem to agree about.