By Max Baron
This year, the College Board has decided to transition nine of their Advanced Placement exams to completely digital. AP Psychology, AP Lang, AP Lit, AP Seminar, AP United States History and AP European History, are a few subjects whose students will be taking their exams online, and opinions on this news vary drastically.
One of the main concerns with this new testing system is the difficulty to mark up and annotate texts to help answer questions, specifically for English and History AP classes. In order to get students familiar with the digital testing system, some schools are using class time to do walk-through tutorials on all the different features.
College Board has released statements explaining that the reason for this switch to digital testing, is attributed to their focus on security and prevention of cheating. The organization believes that test-takers can more easily find ways to copy and share answers on paper, so they hope that taking the test on a locked computer with minimal materials will lessen opportunities for cheating.
This change won’t be seamless, though. Many students and teachers are concerned that test-takers will have trouble navigating the digital testing system, since there are so many features and shortcuts that wouldn’t need to be learned for a paper test. Additionally, College Board doesn’t have the best reputation in administering their online tests. Many test centers have been experiencing WiFi and other technical issues that can lead to lost time, emotional stress and consequently lower scores.
Junior Natalie Rushford expressed her fears about upcoming exams and having to take them on a computer. “I don’t really mind the switch, but there will likely be some sort of issue with the WiFi or Chromebooks while tests are being taken,” she remarked. “During the last SAT, a lot of people lost time because of issues with the application and it will be annoying if that happens for any AP’s.”
Thankfully, taking AP exams in Irvington poses a smaller school environment, meaning that technical issues can hopefully get solved more efficiently if any occur during testing. Still, students should make sure they are very familiar with the College Board online testing format before their exam comes up.
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