I__. - International Military Testing Association

‘A’ and what knowledge a typical trainee brings with him to the school.
All subjects were given the six practical problems to solve. The mean score for the
two trained groups was 44.6 out of 140 points possible. An additional test item
developed by the EM school staff accounts for the increase in total possible points.
The average trainee had difficulty measuring values in simple electrical devices
using the multimeter. For the most part the trainee’s know how to use the multimeter.
However, they have difficulty knowing when or where to use it. Further, even after
completing Phase II training, most trainees are not able to accurately interpret meter
readings to identify an open or short, which is fundamental to equipment maintenance.
Trainees did much better recognizing the various electrical components than they
did measuring them. However, less than 50 percent of the PI and PI1 trainee’s were able
to identify a capacitor, and a significant number of PI trainees had problems identifying a
battery, conductor, and resistor.’ After the second phase component identification
improves significantly.
Alternative Approaches
Over the last 40 years a number of alternative approaches to teach BETI’ have been
developed and tested. This section will summarize some of the more significant work in
this area. While none of these projects specifically reports cost data, all of them report
decreases in attrition and set back rate and some report decreases in course length. All of
the decreases directly relate to cost savings.
The first test was done in the Navy School of Electronics in 1949 (Johnson 1951).
The course that was changed was the basic electricity and electronics for radio, sonar,
and radar maintenance. The results were that the course was shortened from 26 to 18
weeks, attrition as compared to a control group was reduced by 66% and the setback rate
dropped significantly.
The second, was the LIMIT project done by HumRRO in the late 1950s (Goffard,
Heimstra, Beecroft & Oppenshaw 1960). It reorganized the three week basic electricity
section of a field radio repair according to job-oriented training (JOT) principles. A
comparison of conventional students with JOT students showed that the latter achieved
higher test scores.
The third was project REPAIR again done by HumRRO in the late 1950s and early
1960s (Brown et. al. 1959, Shoemaker 1960). The course modified was the entire field
radio repair course. Approximately 100 students completed the new field radioman’s
class. When their performance was compared with that of graduates of the traditional
class, it was found that they were “significantly superior ” to the traditional class in four
of seven test administered--troubleshooting, test equipment, repair skills, and
achievement. No improvement was noted on the alignment, manuals, and schematics
tests. An interesting finding was that the experimental course graduates were superior to
the standard course graduates on each of the 8 problems that made up the troubleshooting
test. This is impressive since 3 of the problems involved equipment on which the
experimental course students received only 4 hours of familiarization training, compared
with 38 hours of training for each student in the standard course.
The fourth project was X-ET which was done at NPRDC in the mid 1960s
(Pickering & Anderson 1966, VanMatre & Steinemann 1966, Steinemann, Harrigan, &
VanMatre 1967). An experimental electronics technician (X-ET) course was developed
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