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Cadet Exams are for Cadets

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Any way I as a Staff Cadet Adj can access units to release exams etc? Role account doesn’t work :neutral_face:

Not at the moment. More of a training officer responsibility in any case.

This works in theory.

The practice is that training materials and exam questions don’t match up. Being able to do the exam as a trainer allow us to correct for that.

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The argument here is that even if we could do the exams, we would only ever see a small sub-set of the hundreds of questions, so isn’t as useful as it may seem.

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I don’t believe for a second there are more than half a dozen questions for each section, and half of those are the same question reworded [1].

It was massively useful when I did the Ultilearn exams (I’ve done all of the leading ones, and many of the senior ones).
Not to give cadets the answers (that’s not the aim here), but to understand the style and content of questions being asked.

[1] Source: I got the same question twice on at least one occasion (I forget for which subject(s)), with slight wording changes.

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I fully agree with you! But what I said is the arguments I’ve seen so far as to why we as staff can’t currently do the exams. But I would like to be able to see the layout too!

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I don’t understand the current fascination with not letting staff have access to the cadet systems

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Because those involved have and will never have to tell a cadet “I don’t know how to do that”, or ask a cadet to log in so we can see our own organisation’s system*.

It’s a farcical situation to be put in that degrades the relationship between cadet and CFAV. It has been since the start, but anyone suggesting it has been pushed away.

A Vimeo video is not sufficient to learn a system and its idiosyncrasies, train, or problem solve. Especially when these things are still under development and changing.

*Edit - see also:
“I think it should be like this”
“You should be able to do this this way”
“Have you tried x, because I’m not sure if that’s a thing but maybe it is”

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Cadet Portal I understand the technical limitation… if you could log into that, you still wouldn’t see the same things because you’re not a cadet (and therefore, e.g., don’t have a brassard or badges to put on it). I can reasonably see that this would be challenging - you’d have to effectively impersonate a cadet, or build a mock system, neither of which are zero effort.

Learn, I’m afraid I struggle to see a similar limitation.

Indeed.

I was rediculed when i made these points at the start of the whole process 3 or so years ago.

Now look where we are.

You could see the functions, and attributes could be templated in so that quals and badges were shown.

You mean like a sandbox with test accounts, as created during development for testing?

Or, considering cadets have user accounts that don’t have licenses attached, a generic user per squadron. This would tackle all cadet systems such as MyRAFAC and (bringing it back on topic) Learn.

Regardless, the time and effort that devs may have saved has become an exponentially greater amount of lost productivity and professional image across the entire organisation. And it’s not just staff that get frustrated, the cadets do too and we can’t meaningfully help and advise.

Fantastic work has occurred to create these things, and lots of people have worked hard on them - I take nothing away there - but the decision to not take this extra step has caused problems for users and squadron CFAV.

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Same issue I’m having as Staff Cadet Training Officer can’t release exams to the cadets?
Is there any plan to allow us access to this or will it stay a CFAV thing only?

Not sure if it’s been mentioned…

@Ben_Wakefield

Options on BADER to add Pass/Merit/Distinction however LEARN doesn’t appear to distinguish into those pass bands. Is this something that will be added in the future, or am I being an absolute melt and not noticing it?

Pass, merit and distinction is currently something only recognised in First Class Cadet training. Merit/distinction was never implemented in Ultilearn from paper exams.

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Thank you, begs the question why the option is there for it in the first place.

So that invalidates the merit and distinction in first class syllabus then, no point as you wouldn’t get a merit/distinction in the BTEC then.

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Initially, there was a transition period where we had cadets who could have done half their exams on paper and half on Ultilearn. You could still get Merit/Distinction on the paper exams. This transition arrangement in SMS was never removed, which is why you still see the options.

I think there was always an ambition to bring back Merit/Distinction but I guess they didn’t prioritise it/couldn’t get it to work. Unsure of the reason.

Edexcel/Pearson/Ultilearn reasons. Roughly speaking the assessments are gauged across the following:

Pass level questions = memory test. Binary answers
Merit level questions = check you understand what you know
Distinction level questions = deeper level understanding looking at justification, reasoning and interpretation

Computers can mark pass level questions. But you need human intervention (at the moment!) for Merit and Distinction. And Ultilearn could never do that.

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I believe staff cadets will be getting a license in the new financial year but suspect will only happen once the civ com licenses are sorted.

That is a very unfortunate typo.

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