Just completed the first part of the new assessment regime (paper-based tests only), so I though I'd give an overview of the new tests.
First off, the Group Bourdon and TRP are done back-to-back. As far as I am aware, these are unchanged from the previous assessment, so plenty of information on them can be found elsewhere. As I understand it from the research papers on the selection of the new tests, the computerised Group Bourdon is no longer used.
The second half of the day was for the new TEA-Occ (Test of Everyday Attention for Occupational Assessment), which is done in 3 parts back-to-back:
First is an exercise where you must count low tones, interspersed with high tones that you must ignore. This was the part I found the most difficult, especially as 'low' and 'high' are relative. You cannot make any tally marks, and counting on your fingers is not going to help you (the tones are too quick, and often count above 10). Remember: the first tone you hear is always a 'low' tone, so you always start by counting 'one'.
Second is a test where you have to search a faux Yellow Pages for symbol pairs. There is a lot of flim-flam about going on holiday and having to hire a plumber, but that is irrelevant to the task. You also have a 'symbol card' on which four symbol pairs are shown, but there are only four varieties of symbols on the answer sheet so this also is a bit of indirection. What the test boils down to is ignoring any text on the answer sheet, and circling any and all pairs of matching symbols. That's it, and you have 45 seconds.
Third, you do the same symbol matching task (with some new waffle about finding a restaurant, again irrelevant) but at the same time you must count sequences of tones. Unlike the first task the tones are all the same, so this is much easier. There are several answer boxes on the answer sheet but you do not necessarily fill them all (e.g. there may be 15 answer boxes but you may only be played 8 sequences of beeps), so you cannot rely on looking at how many boxes are left to fill as to how much time you have left. You have 60 seconds.
The invigilator understandably kept schtum on any marking criteria for any of the tests, but we were told that OPC would mark the exercises within a week and hand them to the TOC, who may take another week before contacting anyone.
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DIT::
Update! Assessment part 2:
Starts with providing short (one, maybe two sentences) on a selection of questions, that will later be used for the MMI. Very similar types of questions to the CBI, so look up the large amount of information on that.
Next, the Situational Judgement Exercise. It's judgement based, so I can't really offer any advice. Done on a computer, you click on-screen buttons with the mouse, if you can't do that you have bigger problems than trying to drive a train.
The MMI itself seemed to be entirely based around further questioning on the examples provided at the start of the day. Rumors that the MMI would be more based on theoretical responses to situations and less on personal experiences seem to have been utterly incorrect. This came as a rather unpleasant surprise.
Next, you have the perception and vigilance tests:
WAFV: A small square in the centre of the screen will blink regularly (or close to regularly, seemed to be about once per second to me) light grey. Occasionally, it will appear as light grey and then after half a second switch to dark grey. (i.e. it will not appear as a dark grey, the switch will be fairly obvious) You then press a button on the provided Schuhfried WTS controller. You do this for 30 minutes solid, though it will only feel like 10 at most. There are only two tricky things about this test: first, eye strain. Staring at a fairly bright screen for half an hour is more tiring than you think. Second, the button on the controller is awful. The activation force is so light that resting your finger on it will cause you to press it accidentally, but there is no positive engagement force, so it feels really mushy when you actually press it.
ATAVT: Watch the youtube video for an example of what the images look like. Don't worry about trying to memorise which button corresponds to which category, the answer screen after each image will have the buttons and their labels displayed.
2HAND: For those thinking "I'm used to the Playstation's dual-thumbstick layout, I'll be fine", be warned! The joysticks do NOT move the dot by velocity (i.e. pushing the stick up further, the dot moves up faster) as you would normally expect. Instead, the absolute position of the stick corresponds to the absolute position of the dot on the screen. If you pushed the stick halfway up from it's centre position, the dot will be 2/3 of the way up the screen, and if you let the stick go it will flick back to the centre position, and the dot will jump back to the centre of the screen. Left stick controls left/right, right stick controls up/down. Also, there is only one pattern you need to trace, and you do it multiple times. If you crammed together CVT so the letters joined, that's the sort of path you need to trace.
First off, the Group Bourdon and TRP are done back-to-back. As far as I am aware, these are unchanged from the previous assessment, so plenty of information on them can be found elsewhere. As I understand it from the research papers on the selection of the new tests, the computerised Group Bourdon is no longer used.
The second half of the day was for the new TEA-Occ (Test of Everyday Attention for Occupational Assessment), which is done in 3 parts back-to-back:
First is an exercise where you must count low tones, interspersed with high tones that you must ignore. This was the part I found the most difficult, especially as 'low' and 'high' are relative. You cannot make any tally marks, and counting on your fingers is not going to help you (the tones are too quick, and often count above 10). Remember: the first tone you hear is always a 'low' tone, so you always start by counting 'one'.
Second is a test where you have to search a faux Yellow Pages for symbol pairs. There is a lot of flim-flam about going on holiday and having to hire a plumber, but that is irrelevant to the task. You also have a 'symbol card' on which four symbol pairs are shown, but there are only four varieties of symbols on the answer sheet so this also is a bit of indirection. What the test boils down to is ignoring any text on the answer sheet, and circling any and all pairs of matching symbols. That's it, and you have 45 seconds.
Third, you do the same symbol matching task (with some new waffle about finding a restaurant, again irrelevant) but at the same time you must count sequences of tones. Unlike the first task the tones are all the same, so this is much easier. There are several answer boxes on the answer sheet but you do not necessarily fill them all (e.g. there may be 15 answer boxes but you may only be played 8 sequences of beeps), so you cannot rely on looking at how many boxes are left to fill as to how much time you have left. You have 60 seconds.
The invigilator understandably kept schtum on any marking criteria for any of the tests, but we were told that OPC would mark the exercises within a week and hand them to the TOC, who may take another week before contacting anyone.
:
DIT::Update! Assessment part 2:
Starts with providing short (one, maybe two sentences) on a selection of questions, that will later be used for the MMI. Very similar types of questions to the CBI, so look up the large amount of information on that.
Next, the Situational Judgement Exercise. It's judgement based, so I can't really offer any advice. Done on a computer, you click on-screen buttons with the mouse, if you can't do that you have bigger problems than trying to drive a train.
The MMI itself seemed to be entirely based around further questioning on the examples provided at the start of the day. Rumors that the MMI would be more based on theoretical responses to situations and less on personal experiences seem to have been utterly incorrect. This came as a rather unpleasant surprise.
Next, you have the perception and vigilance tests:
WAFV: A small square in the centre of the screen will blink regularly (or close to regularly, seemed to be about once per second to me) light grey. Occasionally, it will appear as light grey and then after half a second switch to dark grey. (i.e. it will not appear as a dark grey, the switch will be fairly obvious) You then press a button on the provided Schuhfried WTS controller. You do this for 30 minutes solid, though it will only feel like 10 at most. There are only two tricky things about this test: first, eye strain. Staring at a fairly bright screen for half an hour is more tiring than you think. Second, the button on the controller is awful. The activation force is so light that resting your finger on it will cause you to press it accidentally, but there is no positive engagement force, so it feels really mushy when you actually press it.
ATAVT: Watch the youtube video for an example of what the images look like. Don't worry about trying to memorise which button corresponds to which category, the answer screen after each image will have the buttons and their labels displayed.
2HAND: For those thinking "I'm used to the Playstation's dual-thumbstick layout, I'll be fine", be warned! The joysticks do NOT move the dot by velocity (i.e. pushing the stick up further, the dot moves up faster) as you would normally expect. Instead, the absolute position of the stick corresponds to the absolute position of the dot on the screen. If you pushed the stick halfway up from it's centre position, the dot will be 2/3 of the way up the screen, and if you let the stick go it will flick back to the centre position, and the dot will jump back to the centre of the screen. Left stick controls left/right, right stick controls up/down. Also, there is only one pattern you need to trace, and you do it multiple times. If you crammed together CVT so the letters joined, that's the sort of path you need to trace.
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