Norway Trying Out Laptops For High School Exams 120
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.
Well... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
only on some exams.. (Score:4, Informative)
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 )
Re:Ironic (Score:1, Informative)
Thats standard practice in the US too. Usually take home projects are a considerable part of the grade too though.
I took one class where the professor would take off points for syntax errors (ie capitalization mismatches on a variable names). On one exam he thought it would be a good idea to take off points for lack of comments and indentation.
Re:Tweaks to the System (Score:3, Informative)
My experience from Denmark: computers are fine! (Score:3, Informative)
Hi all. I thought I'd chip in with my experience.
In High School ("gymnasiet"), we were allowed to user computers for all written exams (that I attended; IIRC; maybe except math).
The protocol was this: you would get your problem set (i.e. five texts and two pictures, "write an essay about [...]"). You wrote some words, either on paper or on your computer. If you wrote on your computer, you'd print the document and put it in your handed-out blank A3 sheets (folded to four A4 pages, put prints in the middle). It was your own responsibility to have a working computer and printer.
Note that this was in 2002; most people brought desktop boxes. I don't recall wireless networking being the hip shit back then.
In math we were allowed to use calculators that couldn't perform "abstract symbol manipulation". Our (turing-complete...) TI-83 was allowed. [a part of the exam was "no-aids"; no calculator there, only pen(cil) and paper].
In music (given a melody, make an arrangement), we were allowed to use software from a whitelist; the whitelist was based on the capabilities of the software (it wasn't allowed to do our jobs for us).
In general, I didn't notice any problems regarding the use of computers.
Fast forward to university (I'm doing CS and math). The Introduction to Programming exam was done on the university's computers, with electronic hand-in. You'd get a problem set instructing you to write a simple class or two and a for/while loop iterating over some collection. When you'd hand in, you'd copy the files somewhere on the network. ISTR that you were allowed to bring your own computer if you wanted, but being connected to the network was your own responsibility then.
There were generally no problems there.
For all other exams, either you weren't allowed to bring your computers, or you weren't allowed to bring a printer (so there'd be no point). One exception was the statistics course. the kind of problems we'd face was easy to predict, so one of my fellow students wrote a program which would solve 90% of the problem set for him, generating some nice LaTeX. He'd then copy this to paper by hand, and work on the remaining 10%.
My experience: using computers as a "smart typewriter" works great. Using computers as a "smart typewriter" for music notation works fine as well (and hey, midi keyboards are easier to lug around than pianos).
Using them as "smart typewriters" with a Java development environment and a "smart mailman" (network handin) works fine too. Were the possibilities for cheating there? Sure, draw a map of the computers and their names; ssh into the host of your friend; start talk(1)ing. So what? If you need to cheat on your first quarter course, chances are you'll EPIC FAIL some other course heading your way. And there were TAs walking around, glancing at your screen every now and then.
Using them to solve the exam problems, when you write the solving software yourself, works great too; if it was someone else's software, it'd be a little is-it-cheating iffy.