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Norway Trying Out Laptops For High School Exams
The BBC reports that Norway is experimenting with a system that would let secondary school students take their school exams on laptop computers. According to the article, using computers for exams isn't new there, but it's been on fixed machines rather than personal computers that the students can take with them and use for other purposes throughout the school day. Having suffered through three years of exams taken on the awful SoftTest (inflexible, single-platform, ugly, buggy), I hope they do a better job — this is something that is all too easy to get wrong.
News: Norway Trying Out Laptops For High School School Exams
Here, let me fix that. Let's go all the way:
News News: Norway Norway Trying Trying Out Out Laptops Laptops For For High High School School Exams Exams
Now you can read the headline in STEREO (be happy it's not quadraphonic or 7.1 surround sound :-)
Norway is being very lenient compared to what we have to do when we take standardized tests here in the US.
When it's test taking time; your pockets must be empty of virtually anything and the only items your allowed to have are a #2 pencil and scrap paper. If these rules are violated, it could end up in not just you, but your entire class retaking the test. There are also very strict rules when it comes to seating and going to the bathroom during standardized tests (In general, it's just a big pain in the ass). Kudos to Norway for trying something new.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
I think the government is only going to let the students use private laptop on "open book" exams. "Open book" exam is quite popular exam type in Norway, where the focus is not so much on facts, but more on concepts and a very practical approach to the subject. Since there is no facts,there is no need for security since it's very hard to cheat.
I've been through this school-system and I'm no big fan. What usually happens is that it almost impossible to fail an exam, and there is very hard to get a good mark. ( a celebration of mediocracy )
Some things they might consider rather than key logging is booting from supplied portable media or booting from the network. Using key logging tends to set a bad precedent and the whole of school experience is part of their education, including accepted practices by government and respect for the privacy of individuals.
So boot from network and a quick scan and check, or boot from a cdrom which contains all required software and the exams, it also initiates a system check and then uploads the results to the network. Really easy to do with free open source software but could prove expensive with closed source proprietary software ie licences on top of licences and even 'illegal' in some cases.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Ironically though here at the University of Oslo (capital of Norway) we use pen and paper to do our exams on object oriented java programming (yes, we write code by hand...with a pen...)
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This will be a real money-saver, because paper is becoming very expensive.
A friend of mine took a bar exam in California in 2001 using software. The software corrupted her machine and the "technicians" could not fix it. It took me 1 minute with a dos boot floppy.
Using exam software by people who can't write good code depending on an operating system that is written by people who can't write good code will always be a disaster.
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They use a software called MAS from a company called 3AMI (3AMI.com) I personally think it's a bad idea though to use propriatary software that doesn't even specify what level of security it practices between client and server. (oh nevermind, it requires a "password", it must be secure)
Some documentation would be nice.
The Norwegian Data Inspectorate (datatilsynet) is not to happy about their trials though.
A computer is a tool, but I am not. I use Linux
One of the professors at my 4-year college was rather amused by all the concern about cheating and whatnot. He thought the simplest, most foolproof way to see whether people had learned anything or not at the end of their program was to stand them up in front of a few teachers, maybe at a board with a piece of chalk when appropriate, and have them answer some questions.
Another professor at the same school, when he had small classes of 10-15 people, would once or twice per class period pick somebody to come work an example problem from the material from recent classes. Personally, I found that a pretty good reason to keep up with the class material instead of just cramming at the end before the exam.
It seems to me that by the time we've paid for custom anti-cheating software, plagiarism detection software, continual redesign of standardized exams, and all the security around standardized exams, we could have just paid for a video camera, some chalk, a chalkboard, and good local teachers to do some sort of individual testing.
But then, I personally think that standardized tests are mainly good for measuring how good you are at taking standardized tests, and not much else, so I guess I'm a bit biased.
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Come on mods, at least give us all an offtopic.