Did you pass your MCI? Site has instant results
September 26, 2005
Did you pass your MCI? Site has instant results
Now, Marine Corps Institute lets leathernecks take online exams
By Gordon Lubold
Times staff writer
Besides offering courses, the Marine Corps Institute is now offering instant gratification.
School officials have put out a new online answer sheet that gives the more than 215,000 Marines taking courses at MCI a quick way to take exams. And seconds after submitting it, they find out whether they passed.
The online answer sheet, which is an alternative to the paper form MCI still uses, saves on paper and postage. But most importantly, it gives Marines looking for test results the answers they need.
“It is graded at the speed of light and he will immediately get a message whether he passed or failed,” said Lt. Col. Nick Klaus, deputy director of MCI in Washington, “whereas before, he was throwing a piece of paper in the mail and waiting a couple days or weeks to see how he did on the test. Now he can do that immediately.”
MCI provides nonresident coursework to Marines from a cluster of buildings at the Washington Navy Yard. Nonresident courses such as the Fundamentals of Marine Corps Leadership or Personal Financial Management and hundreds of others are shipped to Marines in large boxes full of “redbooks” and other study materials. Students also get a test and answer sheet, which they use under supervised conditions before sending them into MCI for grading. The process can take weeks.
The new system is already being used by about 7 percent of MCI test-takers, Klaus said. In August, the first month the online form was offered, Marines turned in nearly 2,400 digital answer sheets, said Kyle Vogel, assistant webmaster at MCI. Marines take about 600,000 MCI courses per year.
The grading system works well for Marines overseas, especially in Iraq, where regular mail may be more problematic, MCI officials said. When officials launched the application, called “Command Unit Verification Reports,” on Aug. 1, they figured most of the users would be nondeployed personnel. But Marines in Iraq and elsewhere started using it right away.
“We were thinking that this would be mostly desk-oriented people, but in Iraq, they’ve got as good if not better access to computers and Internet activity,” said Matt Dyor, MCI’s webmaster. As a result, MCI officials arrive in the morning to discover that dozens of people have submitted test results throughout the night.
“We’re seeing a lot of activity at night,” he said.
The answer sheet is not an online exam because the exam itself is still published in pamphlets or books. MCI officials hope to be offering online exams in the future, Klaus said.
Marines such as 1st Sgt. Michael J. Sanderson, with II Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group based at Camp Fallujah, Iraq, wrote to tell MCI officials just how much he likes the new program.
The digital answers sheet is “an absolute success with the Marines, training NCOs, and platoon sergeants to track,” Sanderson wrote. “Not only that, but the almost instant grading and posting are just perfect for the young Marines, and making them more energized and motivated to do more.”
The system has another capability, too. It allows commanders and their training noncommissioned officers a bird’s-eye view of their Marines’ professional military education. In the past, a commander or designated person would have to log in to multiple accounts to view MCI education data for Marines within several subordinate commands. With the new system, commanders or their designates can log in to one account and view data for all their Marines.
Ellie
