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06.08
Wanted: PE
Exam Item Writers
By Steven
F. Barrett, Ph.D., P.E.
To become a registered
professional engineer, one must successfully
complete the fundamentals of engineering (FE)
examination, the professional engineering (PE)
examination, and typically have four years of
professional engineering practice (some minor
variations exist from state to state, so check
with your state licensing board for specific
details).
The PE examination consists of
80 independent multiple choice questions and
each has to be written by a registered
professional engineer. If you are a registered
professional engineer, you can write a question
for future exams. This article describes the
vital role you can fill as a volunteer PE exam
item writer.
Each question in the PE
examination consists of a question stem,
supporting information (e.g., diagrams,
equations), and four answer choices. Of the
answer choices, only one is correct. The
remaining alternatives, called distracters,
are incorrect responses that must be sensical.
Distracters are alternatives representing common
mistakes or misconceptions about exam question
concepts. Furthermore, the exam items must be
fair and straightforward. “Tricky” questions are
not allowed and will be removed from
consideration during the item review process.
Before a potential exam item
enters the question bank for use on a practice
examination or the actual PE exam, it goes
through a gauntlet of reviews. Each potential
examination item is independently reviewed and
approved by three registered professional
engineers on the National Council of Examiners
for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES)
examination writing committee.
I have served on the committee
that writes and edits the PE examination for six
years. I consider it a great honor, and I hope to
work on this committee for many years to come.
The committee consists of approximately 20
registered professional engineers from industry
and academia. We represent the different
technical specialties within electrical and
computer engineering. What we all have in common
is a deep commitment and respect for our
discipline and the registration process. We
consider it our responsibility to construct fair
and effective PE examinations that our fellow
engineers will take. We write some of the exam
item questions, and also edit those that are
provided by other volunteers.
During the review process, each
item is reviewed for clarity, grammar, technical
correctness and perceived difficulty. Rejected potential
examination items are returned
to the author for possible rewrite. Once an
examination item becomes a question on the exam,
an external audit agency conducts a post-exam
statistical analysis to insure
each examination question measures up under the
scrutiny of impartial analysis.
Currently, the four-hour morning
exam session covers the breadth of a specific
discipline, while the four-hour afternoon
session tests a discipline specialty of the
examinee’s choice. The latter session is
considered the depth portion of the examination.
For example, the afternoon specialties available
for electrical engineers include: power;
computers; or electronics, communications and
control.
Recently, the NCEES changed the
format of the electrical engineering
examination. For any examinations administered
in April 2009 and thereafter, an examinee may
choose to take an entire eight-hour, 80-question
multiple-choice examination within the
discipline specialties of power; computers; or
electrical/electronics. The majority of the
material covered in the existing morning breadth
exam has been retained, but better
partitioned into the appropriate sub-discipline
specialties. This change was initiated in
response to survey results from across the
United States, and developed to better serve
the professional engineering candidate. However,
these exam changes require the development of
additional exam items for the question bank.
NCEES needs you — registered
professional engineers — to write exam
questions. From personal experience, I find it
very rewarding to contribute to the development
of the next generation of professional
engineers. The NCEES also provides a $15 stipend
for each volunteer submitted exam item that is
approved and enters the question bank. If you
are a PE and think you would like to participate
in this very worthwhile activity, please contact
Charles Rutland, P.E., Exam Development
Engineer, NCEES,
crutland@ncees.org for further details.
To learn more about licensure
and registration, see:
Steven F. Barrett, Ph.D.,
P.E., is an associate professor of electrical
and computer engineering at the University of
Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming, and a member of
IEEE-USA’s Licensure and Registration Committee.
Steven previously wrote an article in
Today’s Engineer in July 2006 entitled “To
P.E. or not to P.E.: That is the question”
http://www.todaysengineer.org/2006/Jul/PE.asp.
Opinions expressed are the
author's.
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