IDPA SO Recertification

[Skiprr]

Just wanted to give all you safety officers a heads-up.

The new IDPA Rulebook was published last Wednesday, June 26. HQ is scheduling online recertification based on your IDPA member number.

My member number puts me in the first batch of recerts: I have from July 1 to July 14 to take the online exam.

You probably won't be notified until your exam window surfaces, but here's what you'll need to know:

• HQ will send you a link to your online recertification exam. Each link is specific to a group of member IDs, so the link should not be shared: it won't work for any member ID outside that block of IDs.
• The online test is 100 questions randomly drawn from a pool of more than 200 questions.
• The exam is open-book. You can look at the 2013 rulebook while you take the test.
• A score of 85% or higher is required to pass.
• There is a time limit of two hours (120 minutes) for the test.
• You will have two opportunities to pass the test. Anyone not passing the exam after two attempts will be locked out of the system and will need to take the full length SO class from a Safety Officer Instructor.
• Feedback on missed questions is provided at the end of the exam, along with the citation from the rulebook explaining the correct answer.
• You will receive a grade at the end of the exam with an acknowledgment of passing or failing.

HQ encourages you to take the exam within one week of your testing date so IDPA can process each of the Groups in an orderly and organized manner. If it is not possible for you to take the exam during your scheduled week, please contact your club representative for rescheduling. Once you have passed the exam, you will no longer be able to login to the system.

Guess I'd better allocate some time this week to study the new rulebook...

[MegaWatt]

Anybody know when a NEW SO Certification class will be offered in the Houston area? I've asked several times and was told no classes until the new rules came out.

[Piney]

I'm also in the first batch of test takers. Plans are to look through the new rule book and take the test Tuesday or Wednesday evening.

[MoJo]

I took the test cold and made a 65 studied what I had missed on the first try and used the rule book made an 89. If you have been an SO for very long the changes are mostly commonsense. Some of the changes I like are mandatory range commands and the adoption of the English language as the language all commands are given in regardless of the language of the country the match may be in. Another good change is the dropping of the penalty for round dumping.

As soon as I can get it arranged I'm going to schedule a SO class at my club.

[Piney]

I read over the new rule book, then took the test-- I didnt pass . Got a 76 if I recall. The questions I missed were generally about the new rules. A few missed ones caused me to smack myself-- I knew the right answer but misread the question. Studied up a bit over a few days. Passed in the 90s.

Several folks I've talked with commented (prior to taking the test) that 120 min wasnt long enough for a 100 question test. If one has a good grasp on the material, many of the questions can be answered quickly, thus leaving time to ponder some of the others and finish with time to spare.

I've also found over the years that I tend to miss questions that are about the interpretation of a presented scenario. I re-read and over think them. I do better with my initial answer.

[Skiprr]

A correction to my first post. Evidently the member number blocks are based on geographic region, so every SO in Texas and New Mexico (I suppose with the presumption that you were in one of those two states when you joined IDPA) should have been in the July 1 through July 14 test time. The HQ notification only mentioned the membership number, but our Area Coordinator, Iron Mike Webb, clarified things.

Several folks I've talked with commented (prior to taking the test) that 120 min wasn't long enough for a 100 question test. If one has a good grasp on the material, many of the questions can be answered quickly, thus leaving time to ponder some of the others and finish with time to spare.

Yep. Among my first 10 questions were a few scenario explanations that took a minute to read, and I became worried early that the time limit would be a big factor. But it wasn't. I actually had time to finish, and then go back and review all 100 answers.

I re-read and over think them. I do better with my initial answer.

And in reading back over my answers, I changed two of them...and I ended up getting both those two wrong.

I got one other wrong that, based on the exact wording of the question, I believe I could defend my answer with the rule book. But it counted as a down-one anyway.

I like the new rules. It's a higher word count than the previous book, but the new version does a good job of removing a couple areas that were ambiguous under the previous version. And like a lot of folks, I like the simplification of the SSP and ESP divisions: if it's striker fired and meets all the other SSP requirements, it can be shot in SSP.

I wish I hadn't waited until this weekend to take the recert test, but I just couldn't find the block of time any sooner to read over the rule book and shut everything else out for two hours to take the test.

[Charles L. Cotton]

I finished mine also. It wasn't a problem, especially since it's "open book" and you can search the new rule book if you run into something you don't know.

Chas.

[Skiprr]

Just a note that the online test mechanism was superb.

You cannot only go forward and backward from question to question, but the application allows you to view any or all of your previous questions.

ClassMarker is a first-class app.

Kudos to IDPA for choosing this application.