The Minister of Transport has the authority to prescribe by regulation
the places in Canada and the conditions under which examinations of applicants for
certificates of competency as masters, mates or engineers shall be held ((R. S., 1985, c.
S-9, s.124(1)). The Ship Safety Branch of the Marine Safety Directorate administers the
national program for the examination and certification of marine personnel.
The AUTOQUEST project would allow the creation and maintenance of an
automated examination system. The system will help staff to prepare, store and distribute
examination material in a more eificient, effective and economical way than the current
manual one. AUTOQUEST will have the flexibility to produce. Examinations on paper, on
electronic storage media, and on interacitve display monitors. This flexibility will allow
controlled remote use of the examination system by Ship Safety examination centers, marine
schools and authorised individuals.
AUTOQUEST Project
The AUTOQUEST system is intended to automate some of the question
selection, examination creation, and candidate tesing procedures. Further, it will allow
for elimination of unnecessary manual processes such as the manual production and use of
bubble-type answer sheets. Tbese changes will permit more related functions, such as the
analyses at the examination and question level, which are not presently feasible.
Additionally, it will facilitate expanded delivery to locations other than existing
examination centers thereby providing improved public access. It may also lead to savings
on operational expenditures related to the course monitoring processes that are presently
done manually.
AUTOQUEST system is essential to satisfy operational review
recommendations with respect to the security, effectiveness and efficiency of the marine
personnel examination system. The project will also support the current Ship Safety Branch
policy of sharing examination responsibility with the marine schools.
At its core, the AUTOQUEST system is seen to require automated question
banking examination generation, and administration capabilities. The Autoquest Project
followed the system development life cycle phase sequent of the User Requirements
Definition and Options Identification Phase. As an outcome of the subsecuent Options
Analysis Phase, Ship Safety selected and presently processes the capacity o use
contorolled random question selection to generate exams using The EXAMINER Item Banking
and Examination Administration Software (DOS v. 3.50v) with objective-
