Right Direction with Performance-based Testing?

According to a very informal poll from students in a recent class, Microsoft is heading in the right direction with performance-based testing.  One of the students has over 10 years of both Microsoft and Novell certifications and he applauded the new testing methodologies.   Several of the students were only certified on Windows 2003 - so really had no comparison with older tests, but they did think that the concept of performance based testing was good.  But the one gentleman who has been in the industry for a long time thought the idea was, in his own words "about time".

The genesis of this conversation was the topic of "finger learning".  I had used the term when describing how I and some others I know refer to learning new products, preparing for tests and classes.  It is all well and good to memorize and read materials on a subject (and there are some for whom this is all that is required of them), but with me, I actually have to DO the tasks to fully understand the product.  Thus - finger learning - if my fingers perform the task, then I can really understand the product and tasks and that is why I am so excited about the performance based tests - if you have worked with the product, then the tests will be fairly straight forward.

In this same class I actually had a student ask that less be demonstrations be performed so that they could get to the labs sooner - haven't heard that one before - but then again this is one of those students who asked very few questions during lecture but during labs asked a large number of questions.

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