ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

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Braun
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by Braun »

chobs wrote:
s1yx wrote:
Grenseal wrote:I was wondering if there are anymore review questions for the ITA. It seems the block quizes are shorter with every new block. I don't think there are enough review questions to represent the material.
Not only are there very few review questions for the amount of material that the ITA contains, but they do an absolutely atrocious job at representing the style of question you will be presented with on the actual exam; the whole thing is garbage. Best thing you can do is pour over the material for hours and commit as much of it to memory as possible, and even then you will likely be surprised by some questions on the exam because the testable material is very expansive. Don't put much stock in the included review questions, the ones you will get on the exam will not be as straight forward.

It gets better once you start the course material though. The first two months will be a huge influx of information, but you have time to process it, and the instructors do a good job highlighting areas of focus with their reviews. It slows down a bit in the middle as far as theory goes and then ramps up hugely at the end of the course, but again as long as you are putting in the effort, the written exams won't be an issue.
It's really interesting to hear your insight.. I find information from people on the ITA is often so varied... Some people say it's the hardest written test of the whole course, some people say it's the easiest... I've read some people say that if you get 100% on the prep questions you're probably fine and obviously you have a different take on it.

What I am curious about is that... I often hear that most classes usually all pass and often with strong 90%+ grades... Is the prep material is so poorly laid out why do you think that is? (or am I wrong about that?) Maybe because people have advanced time to study it exclusively with no additional in-class stuff to balance?
I'll be honest I don't do instruction in the generic portion but you can pretty much assume at Nav Canada everything you are taught needs to be learned. With that mind set you can see why not a lot of people fail the theory portion. If you've made it his far you give it everything you have to learn it all. It's a particular training program but the hard work is worth it down the road.
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s1yx
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by s1yx »

chobs wrote:
s1yx wrote:
Grenseal wrote:I was wondering if there are anymore review questions for the ITA. It seems the block quizes are shorter with every new block. I don't think there are enough review questions to represent the material.
Not only are there very few review questions for the amount of material that the ITA contains, but they do an absolutely atrocious job at representing the style of question you will be presented with on the actual exam; the whole thing is garbage. Best thing you can do is pour over the material for hours and commit as much of it to memory as possible, and even then you will likely be surprised by some questions on the exam because the testable material is very expansive. Don't put much stock in the included review questions, the ones you will get on the exam will not be as straight forward.

It gets better once you start the course material though. The first two months will be a huge influx of information, but you have time to process it, and the instructors do a good job highlighting areas of focus with their reviews. It slows down a bit in the middle as far as theory goes and then ramps up hugely at the end of the course, but again as long as you are putting in the effort, the written exams won't be an issue.
It's really interesting to hear your insight.. I find information from people on the ITA is often so varied... Some people say it's the hardest written test of the whole course, some people say it's the easiest... I've read some people say that if you get 100% on the prep questions you're probably fine and obviously you have a different take on it.

What I am curious about is that... I often hear that most classes usually all pass and often with strong 90%+ grades... Is the prep material is so poorly laid out why do you think that is? (or am I wrong about that?) Maybe because people have advanced time to study it exclusively with no additional in-class stuff to balance?
I did pretty well on the ITA exam (high 90s) and I attribute that to spending an insane amount of time with the preparation material. It's not that the material is laid out poorly per-say, as everything you need to know is in the course. The problem is the review content included is lacking severely in quantity and quality so you don't really know where you stand going in to the first week of class/the ITA exam. If you quickly run through the ITA once you could do fine with the review material provided with the course, but I feel like you would get run over by the actual exam. You can definitely learn what you need to learn from the ITA (mostly, there is some information in there that could be updated, refined, corrected; but as overall the information itself is fine). The other problem, at least in the case of my class, is that when you show up on course the instructors can't (or won't) teach or help too much with the ITA material as the mandate is that it is a self-study computer based training pre-requesite for the Generic course - at least in our case this may vary from location to location.

Our class bonded pretty well from day 1 so we spent the majority of that first week hammering down everyone's ITA weak spots so collectively we all did well, though we did have one person fail and he was someone who only got the ITA material only 4 weeks before our start date and he ran through the info once, did well with the review content and thought that would be sufficient for the exam; unfortunately this wasn't the case!
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chobs
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by chobs »

What's the format of the ITA and how do you compare it difficulty wise to the other written tests on course?
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s1yx
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by s1yx »

For me I feel like the ITA was the most difficult because the testable material was much more expansive than any of the other exams. I had sets of 150-200 que cards for each block during the course, and over 1100 for the entire ITA; one test. The material you get on course becomes more technical and more complex, but never comes close to the shear volume of the ITA. The ITA format was a mixture of multiple choice, short answer, and "long" answer/written questions. After the ITA everything becomes written.
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RunwayWindAltimer
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by RunwayWindAltimer »

s1yx wrote:
Grenseal wrote:I was wondering if there are anymore review questions for the ITA. It seems the block quizes are shorter with every new block. I don't think there are enough review questions to represent the material.
Not only are there very few review questions for the amount of material that the ITA contains, but they do an absolutely atrocious job at representing the style of question you will be presented with on the actual exam; the whole thing is garbage. Best thing you can do is pour over the material for hours and commit as much of it to memory as possible, and even then you will likely be surprised by some questions on the exam because the testable material is very expansive. Don't put much stock in the included review questions, the ones you will get on the exam will not be as straight forward.

It gets better once you start the course material though. The first two months will be a huge influx of information, but you have time to process it, and the instructors do a good job highlighting areas of focus with their reviews. It slows down a bit in the middle as far as theory goes and then ramps up hugely at the end of the course, but again as long as you are putting in the effort, the written exams won't be an issue.
For what it's worth, my course and the other ones I've talked to all felt the ITA was one of the easier tests. The key is giving yourself ample time to review it. I had about 6-7 weeks and was working a full time job right up to course start and had no problem with it. Just accept that it's going to be a lot of memory work, and building good habits with the ITA prep will pay huge dividends down the line.

For all of the other tests, you will be feeling the pressure of sim runs and evals, and the tests are cumulative as well.

The review questions for the ITA aren't great, but there are no review questions for any of the other tests so I wouldn't rely on them too much anyway. Personally, I found my most effective study method was to go through the material and make my own study questions, then work those.
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ProfessionalATC
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by ProfessionalATC »

Hello All

Not sure if anyone who is using the ITA website is having a problem but I cant access anything beyond block two. The error i'm getting just says "unable to connect" I've closed and opened the browser as well as restarted my computer , my firewall settings has been the same. If anyone know what the issue is and you could let me know how to solve it, i would appreciate it.

Thank You
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belivo
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by belivo »

Have you tried multiple browsers on the computer in question? Chrome, Firefox, ect..
or another computer entirely? if still same issue, make sure to try for another internet access point.
Then you can confirm more of what's happening.
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poseidon
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by poseidon »

Hey ProfessionalATC i am having some problems as well. I can't even get to the website anymore.
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ProfessionalATC
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by ProfessionalATC »

poseidon wrote:Hey ProfessionalATC i am having some problems as well. I can't even get to the website anymore.
Ok so it isn't my computer settings that is the problem then. I tried every browser, I tried different platforms and different computers. I called the number they gave us to call if we had problems and I left a voice mail. I hope they resolve this issue soon.

Poseidon , when does your course start ?
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poseidon
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by poseidon »

My course starts September 12th.

I sent Joanne an email and she said they hope to have the site back up by tomorrow
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ProfessionalATC
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by ProfessionalATC »

poseidon wrote:My course starts September 12th.

I sent Joanne an email and she said they hope to have the site back up by tomorrow


September 12 you only have about 2 weeks. I hope for your sake they figure it out soon so you can get back to studying.

Which FIR and which stream ?
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poseidon
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by poseidon »

Yeah hopefully... I still have a lot to get through
I'm on the VFR course in YYZ
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TGSky
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by TGSky »

What a great thread! Thanks to everyone who contributed. I'm bookmarking this thread for when I (hopefully) need to study the ITA :P.

Good luck to all!
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chephy
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by chephy »

poseidon wrote:Yeah hopefully... I still have a lot to get through
I'm on the VFR course in YYZ
Woo-hoo, so you got through! Congrats! I remember our discussions a few months back about who got a call, who didn't, how the interviews went etc. Best of luck! All I can say is, watch out for GKNC in the simulator (he never seems to catch his call sign). :mrgreen:

I'm just finishing up the VFR Basic course, and it's great fun. You should get a good review of the ITA material, especially if you haven't had a lot of time to study for it.
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chobs
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by chobs »

chephy wrote:
poseidon wrote:Yeah hopefully... I still have a lot to get through
I'm on the VFR course in YYZ
All I can say is, watch out for GKNC in the simulator (he never seems to catch his call sign). :mrgreen:
.
I never had any issue with GKNC, but FPOV caused me some trouble one of the sim evals when he cut in, in front of the traffic he said he would follow - that's always fun :mrgreen:
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RunwayWindAltimer
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Re: ITA Questions, and hopefully a little positivity.

Post by RunwayWindAltimer »

chobs wrote:
chephy wrote:
poseidon wrote:Yeah hopefully... I still have a lot to get through
I'm on the VFR course in YYZ
All I can say is, watch out for GKNC in the simulator (he never seems to catch his call sign). :mrgreen:
.
I never had any issue with GKNC, but FPOV caused me some trouble one of the sim evals when he cut in, in front of the traffic he said he would follow - that's always fun :mrgreen:

Almost daily occurrence at VFR towers, get ready for lots more cutting off!

Where's the class just finishing getting sent? Another YYZ batch or scattered to the other towers?
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