Dont end up like this guy..

[RIP - VTEnviro]

I was on their website updating my NCEES Record stuff when I found this article. It's a good read.

News
Release: 7-9-2009

Contact: Doug McGuirt, Corporate Communications Editor

[email protected]

Puerto Rican court awards damages to NCEES in exam theft case

The U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico has ruled in favor of NCEES in a civil suit involving damages exceeding $1 million. The judgment resulted from the case of a civil engineering licensure candidate who was found with recording and transmitting equipment during the October 2006 administration of the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam in the city of Mayaguez.

The candidate, Bethzaida Cameron Ortiz, was discovered during the afternoon session of the administration after a proctor noticed her unusual behavior. The chief proctor at the exam site confronted Cameron, 44, and discovered that the defendant was concealing a host of recording and transmitting devices within her jacket and handbag, including a wireless audio/video transmitter, a small video camera, a receiver, a pocket video recorder, a device used to connect video cameras to a television or computer, and battery packs.

Working with materials provided by law enforcement, NCEES determined that Cameron had recorded the Civil PE exam and established that Cameron had performed a similar operation with the FE exam, which records show she attempted in October 2005 at the same location. As a result of these exam breaches, NCEES had to remove all compromised material from its exam item banks, resulting in the damages awarded in the civil suit. In estimating damages, NCEES takes into account the time, travel, and work hours required of NCEES staff, psychometric consultants, and subject-matter experts who are involved with the development and review of exam content.

"Like any organization that develops standardized tests, NCEES's most valuable asset is its intellectual property. When someone steals exam content, the effects are the same for us as they would be for a retail store that has its assets stolen," said NCEES Executive Director Jerry Carter.

NCEES develops and enforces stringent policies to protect exam content, including limiting the materials candidates are allowed to bring to the exam site. Before attempting an NCEES exam, each candidate is required to sign a statement affirming that he or she will not copy or reveal any exam material.

Prior to the judgment in the civil suit, Cameron had been convicted of fraud in criminal court as a result of the incident. She is prohibited from attempting any NCEES exam in the future.

"The fact that we are a nonprofit that assists licensing boards means that this event in some way has affected everyone in the engineering and surveying professions and, ultimately, the public," said Carter. "We are pleased that this judgment was reached and we are confident this will serve as a deterrent for anyone who might consider stealing exam content in the future."

About NCEES

NCEES is a national nonprofit organization composed of engineering and surveying licensing boards representing all U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. An accredited standards developer with the American National Standards Institute, NCEES develops, scores, and administers the examinations used for engineering and surveying licensure throughout the United States. NCEES also provides services facilitating professional mobility for licensed engineers and surveyors. Its headquarters is located in Clemson, S.C.

 

[FLBuff PE]

This exam cycle's bump to dissuade posters from violating the agreement.

 

[smithrj40]

Anybody know where I can find a copy of that article, the post is from 2007 and it looks like that link has expired, I did a quick google search and couldn't find it anywhere either.

 

[kevo_55]

It looks like it is gone like the sands of time...........

It was a pretty good read.

 

[FLBuff PE]

QUOTE (smithrj40 @ Dec 14 2009, 03:57 PM)

Anybody know where I can find a copy of that article, the post is from 2007 and it looks like that link has expired, I did a quick google search and couldn't find it anywhere either.

To summarize, DON'T ASK QUESTIONS THAT WERE ON THE EXAM! There was a user of this site that posted about a specific question on the exam, basically stating the question word for word. The user posted it in several threads. This site is actively monitored by NCEES, and I, for one, would not want to put passing the exam in jeopardy. The user got in MAJOR trouble with NCEES. I don't remember the specifics of the case.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

It was available recently, I wonder if the link went dead when they rebooted their site.

Basically what happened was some dope posted nearly verbatim a question off the civil exam, and posted it into several forums. I think he even said something like "I know I shouldn't be doing this but I just need to know the answer..."

Tim@NCEES, as well as other concerned members, notified us. The post was removed, and I believe IP and registration info of the ******* in question were passed onto to NCEES.

The person's results were nullified, and there may have been other sanctions.

 

[TranspoVA]

http://www.dpor.virginia.gov/dporweb/2009%20Dimensions.pdf

Check out this newsletter...similar situation this year with the ARE Exam...plus they busted someone recording the FE and PE exam with a video camera

 

[DVINNY]

QUOTE (VTEnviro @ Dec 15 2009, 11:33 AM)

It was available recently, I wonder if the link went dead when they rebooted their site.

Basically what happened was some dope posted nearly verbatim a question off the civil exam, and posted it into several forums. I think he even said something like "I know I shouldn't be doing this but I just need to know the answer..."

Tim@NCEES, as well as other concerned members, notified us. The post was removed, and I believe IP and registration info of the ******* in question were passed onto to NCEES.

The person's results were nullified, and there may have been other sanctions.

You forgot about how he got on here and said I had no balls since I removed his posts.

 

[MWC PE]

What I don't get is why the NCEES recycles questions. The questions themselves on the test are not that tricky or unusual. As many times as some people take the test it would seem they possibly have seen a majority of the questions. Would it not be easier to keep the test secure to just write a new test each time? I took a class in college where the teacher used the same test over and over again. He graded it, showed to the students, then took it back up. One semester nearly the entire class scored a hundred. It is impossible to keep an exam secure if you keep using the same questions.

 

[benbo]

QUOTE (mwchandler21 @ Apr 22 2010, 09:41 PM)

What I don't get is why the NCEES recycles questions. The questions themselves on the test are not that tricky or unusual. As many times as some people take the test it would seem they possibly have seen a majority of the questions. Would it not be easier to keep the test secure to just write a new test each time? I took a class in college where the teacher used the same test over and over again. He graded it, showed to the students, then took it back up. One semester nearly the entire class scored a hundred. It is impossible to keep an exam secure if you keep using the same questions.

Good Lord, it's enough for them to get the tests graded as it is. Developing questions would take even more valuable time, plus they have to recruit volunteers to write the questions and test them out. I believe they have a large pool of questions so the likelihood somebody will take the test enough times to see a majority of them is pretty slim.

Plus, maybe people could just follow the rules.

 

[klk]

I also remember reading in the NCEES article that not only did they nullify his results, the state was going to prevent him from retaking the exam in the future.

 

[Vishal]

QUOTE (mwchandler21 @ Apr 24 2010, 06:41 PM)

What I don't get is why the NCEES recycles questions. The questions themselves on the test are not that tricky or unusual. As many times as some people take the test it would seem they possibly have seen a majority of the questions. Would it not be easier to keep the test secure to just write a new test each time? I took a class in college where the teacher used the same test over and over again. He graded it, showed to the students, then took it back up. One semester nearly the entire class scored a hundred. It is impossible to keep an exam secure if you keep using the same questions.

NCEES has several questions graded as a "standard". These questions are used for evaluating the pool of candidates and setting the passing score. I believe that I read this somewhere in the NCEES scoring method explanation. This is why it is necessary that all the questions remain confidential. Also, NCEES considers these questions as intellectual property since a lot of time, effort, and money are spent to make the pool of questions that can be put on the test. I guess that this is similar to piracy or sharing the copyrighted material. NCEES reserves the right to the questions which in my opinion is only fair.

 

[DVINNY]

I agree with Vishal, the pool of "equating" questions to evaluate the examinees is very important to the scoring process. These questions NEED to remain the same and cannot be comprimised.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

Benbo and DV and Vishal are right. I don't know what the process for developing questions is, but there's a lot of R&D that has to be done before using it on an exam.

There's a science behind it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometrics

 

[rzannino76]

One of my ex-coworker went through the same thing as what is talked here. But I know, that guy eventually got his P.E. He did said that his scores were invalidated in that exam due to his some crazy mistake. who knows!!

Lesson is to just be patient & keep mouth shut after the exams.

 

[Dleg]

I also read somewhere how each test question costs NCEES something like $100k. I could be wrong on the figure, but it was a high figure.

I make certification exams as part of my job, for something much simpler than this. It's tough to come up with even 10 new questions every six months, for a 25 question exam. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to come up with 80 or 100 new questions, and have each question validated through the process NCEES uses.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

My dad used to write questions for the industrial exam. They require that you provide the question, solution, all work for the solution shown, and other possible answers based on common screw-ups in formula application or other math errors. Then, there is a big meeting of academics that are members of NCEES. They all take full exams of potential test questions, and grade their difficulty, quality, etc. Some of those questions make it into the test pool, then have to be analyzed based on how examinees did on them. Then they are able to be "equated" for future exams. When that whole process has to be repeated 80 times whenever an entire test is compromised, NCEES tends to get pretty pissed. That's why a girl in Puerto Rico recently got sued for $1 Million for compromising a PE exam. The NCEES won that lawsuit.

 

[Dark Knight]

My dad used to write questions for the industrial exam. They require that you provide the question, solution, all work for the solution shown, and other possible answers based on common screw-ups in formula application or other math errors. Then, there is a big meeting of academics that are members of NCEES. They all take full exams of potential test questions, and grade their difficulty, quality, etc. Some of those questions make it into the test pool, then have to be analyzed based on how examinees did on them. Then they are able to be "equated" for future exams. When that whole process has to be repeated 80 times whenever an entire test is compromised, NCEES tends to get pretty pissed. That's why a girl in Puerto Rico recently got sued for $1 Million for compromising a PE exam. The NCEES won that lawsuit.

The girl was making fatty money, but not millions, with that business of her but she was not alone. She was just the pawn. I heard that there were at least two guys involved in that. I never followed the whole story but would like to know what did happen to the others in the scheme. By the way, no way in heck she has 1M to pay NCEES.

Thanks for the lesson on how the test are selected WilH. Very interesting.

 

[ptatohed]

I would like to read the article but it appears that the archives don't go beyond ~3.5 years. http://www.ncees.org/About_NCEES/Licensure_Exchange.php

Is there a link to this June '07 article by chance? Thanks.

 

[snickerd3]

its not the original article but close enough to what was written in LE. Alabama wrote it see pg 15 for story

http://www.bels.alabama.gov/pdfs/2007%20Newsletter.pdf