This year, Olentangy is making the switch from paper AP exams to online. This affects many students at Liberty since the whole format will be changed. AP Students will have to adjust their study habits and how they digest information in the class.
“With the exam being online, it will change how students prepare for the exam. And that means starting now,” said Mrs. Boone, the Secondary Coordinator of Gifted Students at Olentangy. “You have to train your mind to think in the ways that the exam is going to require.”
AP seminar was the first AP class in our district to move to taking the exam digitally.
“The board reached out to the AP seminar teachers last year and asked if we would be interested in piloting the exam,” said Mrs. Zahran, one of the AP Seminar teachers. “We said yes because so much of the AP seminar exam is handwritten and in years past a lot of students felt like handwriting all of that was actually a lot harder than typing it.”
AP exams aren’t the only major tests going online. The ACT and SAT are starting to be taken digitally more often.
“We knew that the shift to digital testing was inevitable so we said let’s just do it and we went for it,” Zahran said.
Technology makes giving tests much easier on the test givers and graders. In many ways it is an improvement from paper tests even if it is a large transition.
“Starting in COVID year, they spent a lot of money trying to avoid ways for students to be academically dishonest with their testing. I’m sure it saves them a lot of money and they can have built-in tools to avoid cheating on the exam,” said Boone. “It’s going to be more efficient and less expensive for them. The College Board is a business and is in business to make money.”
Teachers will have to adjust to this change just like the students, and together they can make the most of this change.
“As a teacher,” said Boone. “I have mixed feelings about the change. It’s not an all bad thing and it’s not an all good thing either. Technology is not going anywhere and it’s continuing to progress. Students need to live in that world; they already do for almost everyone. I know that there was a lot of tech burnout after the first major COVID outbreak when everything shifted online. The reality is, that technology and efficiencies like it are here to stay. So I think it only benefits students to live in the world that is right in front of them.”
