[ PRC RESOLUTION NO. 32, s. 1993, September 20, 1993 ]

BOARD OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

FULL COMPUTERIZATION OF THE CIVIL ENGINEERING LICENSURE EXAMINATION



WHEREAS, the Board of Civil Engineering is empowered by Sec. 4, Art. II of R.A. No. 544, as amended: "The Civil Engineering Law" and Sec. 6, (a) of P.D. No. 223, as amended, to adopt measures or policies that will preserve and improve the technical, ethical, and moral standards of the Civil Engineering profession;

WHEREAS, the full computerization of the Civil Engineering Examination is a policy that has three (3) beneficial effects to the licensure and practice of the profession: (1) it will bring about the confidentiality, integrity, credibility, and quality of the examination which the Board and the Commission are sworn to uphold and preserve so as to win the public trust and faith therein; (2)  it will ensure the immediate release of the examination, henceforth, paving the way for the successful examinees to work or practice at once; and (3) it will accord the Board more time for the supervision, regulation, and control of the practice of the profession;

WHEREAS, under Res. No. 265, Series of 1993, the Commission directed that the examinations of all the professions of all the professions under the jurisdiction and supervision thereof "shall be fully computerized in 1993 except those professions with examinees below 1000 which shall be programmed in 1994"; and

WHEREAS, the process of full computerization of the licensure examination does not only involve the correction and rating of testpapers, but it does also utilize test bank from which questions are extracted and randomly arranged by and through the computer,

NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the quasi-legislative power thereof under Sec. 14, Art. II of R.A. 544, as amended, the Board hereby RESOLVES, as it is so RESOLVED, to fully computerize the Civil Engineering Licensure Examination starting with the November 27 and 28, 1993 schedule under these guidelines and procedures, viz.:

1.         The Board Member shall input into the test bank at least three hundred (300) questions for each subject as the starting point which must be built up by minimum of two hundred (200) every examination to reach the ideal optimum two thousand (2000) questions or more.  The questions deposited in the testbank shall be withdrawable and replenishable with new ones so as to keep abreast with the latest technological trend of the profession.

2.         The inputed questions may come from those which the Board Member had personally prescribed or formulated or from those which he/she had adopted from the questions supplied by the academe.

3.         No question shall be fed into the testbank unless it has been appraised as to its objectivity, validity, materiality, reliability, and efficaciousness.  An expert on test construction may be consulted to assist the Board Member fine-tune every question to discern if the foregoing constraints or parameters have been met to determine if every question is unambiguous, and to find out if it is definite and only answerable with one definite and only answerable with one definite correct answer - and not with the "best" answer.

4.         The questions to be fed into the testbank shall be classified as to their degree of comprehensibility: easy, average/moderate, and difficult; as to their level of knowledge (sound adequate, and fair) and proficiency (competent, adequate, and fair); and as to their nature: essay, problem-solving and objective (multiple choices).

5.         The subjects shall have these proportional weights: 60% for objective - type questions which must be selected by and corrected through the computer and 40% for problem-solving, essay type or similar nature of question which must be chosen by the computer and corrected manually.

6.         Security measures shall be implemented to ensure that the computer programs and files are tamper-free.  Multiple password shall be adopted so that no one has complete control of, or access to, the computer programs and files.  Three (3) responsible key officials shall be designated for this purpose.

7.         The number of questions to be given in the examination for each subject shall be extracted from the testbank and randomized so as to produce at least two (2) sets e.g. "A" and "B" containing the same number of questions but having different chronological arrangement of questions for printing and distribution to the examinees, accordingly precluding the examinees from copying the answers of their seatmates.

8.         The correction and rating of testpapers as well as the other stages/processes involved in the release of the results of the examination shall be computerized.

FURTHER, RESOLVED, that the herein resolution, upon its approval by the Commission, shall be effective after fifteen (15) days following its publication in the Official Gazette or newspapers of general circulation.

FINALLY, RESOLVED, that this resolution shall be circularized to the schools/colleges offering the course of civil engineering for the guidance and information of all concerned.

Adopted: 20 Sept. 1993

(Sgd.) ERNESTO S. DE CASTRO
Chairman

(Sgd.) CAMILO P. CREUS
(Sgd.) MACRA A. CRUZ
Member

Member
APPROVED:

(Sgd.) HERMOGENES P. POBRE
Commissioner

(Sgd.) MARIANO A. MENDIETA
(Sgd.) ARMANDO C. PASCUAL
Associate Commissioner
Associate Commissioner