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Touch Bar MacBook Pros Are Being Banned From Bar Exams Over Predictive Text (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: When it launched late last year, the new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar was largely reliant on first-party applications to show off what it could do. Since then, a number of other companies have jumped on board, helping the secondary screen grow into something more than novelty. Of course, as with any new technology, there's going to be some unanticipated downside. Test taking software company Examsoft, for one, believes the input device could help facilitate cheating among students taking the bar exam. What's perhaps most interesting here, is that the company's calling out one of Touch Bar's more mundane features: predictive text. "By default," the company writes, "the Touch Bar will show predictive text depending on what the student is typing, compromising exam integrity." It's hard to say precisely how the company expects a standard feature on mobile devices to help students pass one of the more notoriously exam out there, but The Next Web notes that some states have already taken action. North Carolina, for one, has required test takers with the new model MacBooks to disable the Touch Bar, while New York is banning the machines altogether.
Why are professional level tests being taken on a personal laptop? Shouldn't these tests be taken on the test company devices? Sort of like, I don't know... the SAT, ACT, GRE, and every other test?
I am surprised that they would allow anyone to use their own computer. If the test taker controls the device, the opportunities for cheating are unlimited. And they can't rely on the honor system, since, hey, they are lawyers.
WordPerfect is far superior to Word so the lawyers are actually being more efficient. In fact, WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS is probably the most perfect word processing program ever.
Anyone who ever used it can attest to the speed and ease of accomplishing things which in Word require burrowing down through ribbons to find what you need. In fact, once one became even moderately proficient in WordPerfect their hands rarely left the keyboard.
Imagine being able to figure out why your tabs or paragraphs weren't lining up correctly through the tap of two keys which revealed all the hidden codes. Now imagine being able to instantly control how you wanted things to look rather than be at the mercy of some far off developer who didn't care what you wanted.
Why pay an exorbitant amount for a bloated, convoluted piece of software when you already have something which is easier and more efficient to use?
Open book law exam in the past, now its open laptop.
"Open book" still requires the test-taker to do their own work. With "open laptop", they can be in collusion with another person who actually answers the questions. Lack of Wifi doesn't fix the problem because they could still use the cellular network, or have an ad-hoc network between two test-takers in the same room who share answers.
Disclaimer: When I was in college, I made money taking tests for other people. In a 200 student lecture hall, nobody notices that. So I think I understand the "cheater" mentality. Many people will put more effort into cheating that what would have been needed to just study and pass legitimately. Part of it is just the thrill of "beating the system."