Word 2003: Who's Afraid of Simulation?
Our Microsoft Office exam reviewer finally gets a chance to take the Office Specialist Word 2003 Core exam and finds it to be tough but fair, if not a bit quirky.
by Faithe Wempen
11/3/2004 -- I have been using and teaching Word for over a decade now, and I’ve taken every Microsoft Office exam that has been released, so you would think I would be able to get a perfect score on one. So far no luck. And I’m still bitter about that.
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Microsoft Office Specialist Word 2003 (Core) Exam |
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Microsoft |
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| Status |
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Live (released late 2003). Available at participating Certiport testing centers worldwide. |
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| Reviewer's Rating |
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“Moderately difficult, but fair. Simulation environment offers some quirks. Make sure your testing center sets your screen to the correct resolution!" |
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| Test Information |
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Approx. 15 "questions" (hands-on tasks), 640 of 1,000 to pass. Cost varies per testing center: Reviewer's cost $75 (U.S.). |
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| Who Should Take This Exam? |
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Anyone who wants to prove their hands-on skills in Microsoft Word 2003. |
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| Test Objectives |
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Click here |
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I must say, however, the folks who create the questions for these exams are getting better and better with each version. This time around I found all the questions to be fair (if difficult) and well phrased. I honestly have no idea why I missed my perfect score on this one, because I was sure I answered every question correctly. The grading software disagreed. I’m telling you this not to be a big whiner (that’s just a side-effect!), but to let you know that it’s not just you. Fortunately, with this exam you only need a 640 to pass (out of 1000), so there is still plenty of room to make a few mistakes.
Let's take a closer look at what this exam is all about.
Exam Basics
Microsoft Office certification exams are not traditional question-and-answer tests with multiple choice answers. Instead, you’re presented with an actual program interface with a document already started (for most questions). Steps appear in a pane below the application window, and your task is to complete the steps exactly as directed. Then you are scored on how closely your result matches the computer’s version of what’s “correct.”
For example, suppose that for one of the questions you see a half-finished memo onscreen. The instructions for this particular question might have two or three separate steps, and those steps might not necessarily be related to one another. For example, the steps might be:
- Replace the date on the Date line with a date code that is automatically updated.
- Convert the body paragraphs in the memo to numbered list that uses letters rather than numbers (A, B, C)
- Using Format Painter, make all the headings match the first one.
You can receive full or partial credit for each task.
The Word 2003 Core exam has 15 questions, and almost all have two steps, so there are approximately 30 scoring opportunities. When you are finished with a question, click Next to go on. There is no backing up after you click Next, so make very sure you have double-checked your work. (You can click Skip to come back to a question later.) When you finish, you’ll receive a printout showing how well you scored in various categories.
Unlike all other Office Specialist exams, the Word 2003 test takes place in a simulation of Word, instead of the actual program. (Read the CertCities.com news article here for more information on why Word is the only one currently using simulation).There are pros and cons to using a simulation versus the real software. The simulation gives the test developers more control over the environment, but it is also more labor-intensive to develop, and it makes it more difficult for the test-takers to use their preferred method for accomplishing tasks. For example, right-clicking does not bring up a shortcut menu in the simulator in most situations.
On all the Office 2003 exams, even the ones that use the real software, the Help system is not available. That’s because there was some debate on earlier tests as to whether or not it was fair to allow test-takers to look things up in the Help system that they didn’t know. (Personally I think it is fair because the exams are simulating real-world performance, and in the real world you would have that resource. But I can also see the other side.)
Content Categories
The content categories have completely changed from the Word 2002 Core exams. Rather than breaking down text and graphics separately, the focus is on “content” in a generic sense. There is also a greater emphasis on research and online integration.
These categories are:
- Creating Content: This tests your ability to input and edit text and symbols, work with AutoText and AutoCorrect, find and replace text and formatting, insert and modify graphics, diagrams, and charts, and use the Research tools.
- Organizing Content: This tests how well you can insert and modify tables, work with all types of bulleted and numbered lists (including outline numbered lists), work in Outline view, and insert and modify hyperlinks.
- Formatting Content: This tests your ability to format text and paragraphs, create multi-column layouts, work with headers and footers, and change the document’s page setup and layout (including working with different page orientations, margins, and headers/footers in a single document).
- Collaborating: This tests your skills at using comments, tracked changes and versions, as well as circulating documents for review via e-mail.
- Formatting and Managing Documents: This tests your ability to use templates (both local and online ones), document properties, and file formats including Web format. You’ll need to know how to use various views, and how to manage files from within Word (for example, create and delete folders from a Save As dialog box).
Tough Questions
Even though it’s a fair exam, it’s not an easy one. There were a couple of questions on it that I scratched my head on for awhile because they referenced features and methods that I felt were frankly too obscure to expect most people to know about. Is that fair? Yes, because those topics are part of the published objectives for the exam. Trouble is, the exam objectives are pretty vague about which specific features are covered, so you have to cast your study net widely to hit all the topics you will need.
I can understand where the test developers are coming from. They want to certify people who can solve problems with Word, not just use individual features. Further, they want the MOS certifications to have some value in the marketplace so they don’t want to make them too easy.
I can’t tell you what’s on the test, of course, but here’s a general example. The exam objectives state:
- Insert frequently used and pre-defined text
There are several features in Word that this might be referring to, including AutoText and AutoCorrect. Which one will you be tested on? There’s no way of knowing, so you have to study them all. Further, you need to know everything there is to know about each of those features, because the question is likely to contain a reference to some rarely-used option of that feature.
Using the Interface
When you sign on to the testing software for the first time, you create a user ID and password for yourself and it asks you a series of rather personal survey questions. You can decline to answer any of them that you don’t feel comfortable with. Then you choose the exam you want to take, and a testing administrator enters his or her user name and password to authorize you to do so.
As you are taking the test, you can start a question over by clicking Reset. Since the testing engine does to some degree “watch” the way you do things, it is sometimes advantageous after fumbling around for awhile to click Reset. This restarts the current question; any previous questions are unaffected. After resetting, you can zoom directly in on the activities with confidence.
A new feature in the 2003 interface is the Skip button, which enables you to skip a question and come back to it later. When you finish the last question on the test, the software will then redisplay the first skipped question, then the next skipped one, and so on, cycling through until you click Next in each and every question to signify you are finished with it. (To give up on a question, simply click Next without answering it.) A clock tells you how much time you have left, and a question counter tells you which question number you are on.
My biggest gripe with the interface was that the test questions all seemed to display the Word window too big to fit in the little area onscreen where it was supposed to fit. Giant arrow buttons would appear at the left and bottom of the window for scrolling it, and I was forever scrolling back and forth to access different parts of the screen that should have all appeared onscreen at once. I even had to scroll the display to click the OK button in a dialog box! That’s just unacceptable. I found out afterward that the testing facility had not received instructions as to what resolution to use for the testing software, and they had set the display resolution on the monitor too low. At the correct resolution (1024x768) I would not have had this problem--or at least it would not have been so prominent. So, attention everyone out there who works for a testing facility: This test engine MUST be run in at least 1024x768! (And as you’ll read in my upcoming review of the Excel 2003 exam, this is even more critical in that exam, since for some reason it lacks any means of scrolling the display when the resolution is too low.)
My secondary gripe about the testing experience is the speed at which the simulations run: slowly. In several cases there was a several-second delay between clicking a menu name and the menu opening. Since the simulation lacks some of the functionality of the real product, I had a hard time telling what was a delay and what was a feature that simply wasn’t enabled. Perhaps running the testing software on a faster PC would have helped, but I can understand why testing facilities would not want to waste one of their better PCs on a workstation that is dedicated to testing and gets very little use.
The Bottom Line...
The Word 2003 Core exam fairly tests your abilities on the limited range of objectives covered in the published skill set. This skill set is rather general, so it’s important to study all the ways of accomplishing a particular outcome.
While this test is tough, and asks a few questions about features you probably don’t use in daily life, there are no questions with tricky or unclear wording, and the grading software, while not perfect by any means, does an adequate job. Good luck! 
Have you taken this exam? Post your thoughts below!
Faithe Wempen, M.A.,is a Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor and an instructor in the Computer Technology Department of Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis. She is the author of over 50 books on computer hardware and software, including A+ Jumpstart: PC Hardware and Operating System Basics. She also co-owns the Sycamore Knoll Bed and Breakfast.
More articles by Faithe Wempen:
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