My BTEC part 1 of many.

When my BTEC course began, we were presented with a series of questions to be answered in writing - some essays - explaining the nature of sound and simile. I had trouble with them not because of the nature of the material, as i told my teacher, but because i did not know who i was answering to; Did this person who wants to know what phase is(or reverb, or vibrations, or kinetic energy, or amplitude, or frequency, pick one), knows *anything* at all about sound, physics and the like, was he a learned person, or a complete ignorant? To an acoustician who asks me the same question i could answer with three words, to a schoolboy i would have to explain lots more, in a long and extensive manner which explains terminology, basic physics, and so on.

Explain it to an idiot, the teacher said.

As the course went on the questions got more complex, more in depth, and also reflected on what we wrote before.
On one side you must assume that anyone who asks a question so specific must have a knowledge of at least certain particular elements, so the answer you give is appropriate to that person - too short for the BTEC course to be good. But if you assume that you must explain a very advanced acoustics concept to someone who doesnt know anything at all, a simple "what is the Doppler effect" becomes a 30 page essay, instead of the simple answer "compression of soundwaves".

And furthermore if we advance in a course we cannot be expected to not reference earlier work on the same subject; the idea that your "examiner" has forgotten everything you did yesterday and you must explain it again is ridiculous.

Look : an unrelated link : explaining why the new Skype is bad and how can a group of programmers screw up so badly. But my course is exactly the same, how can professionals do so badly something they are specialized in, when a student knows more about the art of teaching than the national board of BTEC examiners does.

That link speaks the truth and, if you read it, you will notice that it does so RIGHT ON  THE MAKERS' OWN FORUM. Do you think they fixed it? They went "oh no, we screwed up, we must fix this embarassing thing double-time!".

They didnt. (nerd rage follows).