While the New York State Regents exams were cancelled this year, AP tests proceeded online. This decision was made in accordance with the 91 percent of AP enrollees who indicated their desire to take the exams through a College Board survey. Desperate to earn credit for their hard work, AP students opted into these challenging and expensive exams in a heavily revised format. As the curriculum had been cut short and not all students had been receiving the same rigor of distance learning, the exam was absolutely butchered-it was shortened from 3 hours to a mere 45 minutes. Needless to say, it was a novel experience for me and thousands of other AP students across the country.
Near the end of my freshman year, I took the AP World History exam in person. My peers and I piled into Q Gym and sat two to a table, with numerous proctors who were well situated to monitor us and available to provide basic support. Since having large numbers of people in a room together for several hours poses a significant risk of contagion, I took the 2020 AP European History exam at my desk in my bedroom, alone.
When the College Board announced that AP exams would be in a significantly truncated format, some amount of dread was alleviated for students who were ill-prepared or simply loathed taking long, grueling tests. For students who had already begun studying or at least considering the skills they would need to ace their AP exams, the announcement was characterized by a strange sense of betrayal. Weeks or even months of careful preparation had to be tossed out, or at least heavily revised. For history exams, only one of four question styles remained: the Document-Based Question, or DBQ, in which students have to develop and defend an argument using a set of written documents and images. Even the number of documents was reduced from 7 to 5. Students had to adjust to the stipulations of a new 10-point rubric and had ample time to speculate about how the score would be converted into a AP score of 1 to 5. Aside from worrying about the new grading scale, many students lamented that their score was contingent on only one essay question, especially those who were more comfortable with multiple choice or had a very wide range of rather shallow knowledge. What if they received the one topic they were least comfortable with, and had no chance to make it up by demonstrating their knowledge in other areas? Additionally, all of the time spent learning how to eliminate wrong answers and select the best one–none of it would matter on this test (although it would surely be helpful on future ones). One upside to the drastic change in format was that it did force me to practice the question style I had the most difficulty with.
Distance testing shares many of the same caveats as distance learning in general, with unequal access to quality hardware and fast internet being the main concern. Since the test is only 45 minutes, it is essential that the student not have to worry about technical difficulties in order to do their best and receive a score that somewhat reflects their knowledge and competence. Some students had pronounced advantages in the form of access to larger monitors, which facilitates viewing more windows, or more ergonomic keyboards, which allow for faster and more comfortable typing. However, others had to rely on district-issued Chromebooks, which have smaller screens and can be extremely slow. In addition, some students had misplaced their chargers or did not have the opportunity to get a damaged Chromebook repaired before school shut down. As with other online tests, submission posed concerns. To alleviate these worries, the College Board released an online demo which allowed students to practice, but there were still some who had issues submitting and had to retake the test. Having technical difficulties in the last 5 minutes of the test could be stressful and frustrating to the point of agony. Despite the many constraints of an online exam, students did gain the option of typing, which many chose to do. Some slower typers chose to handwrite but were concerned about how long it would take to snap photos and submit them in time–a legitimate worry when you consider that many students had to factor in slow internet speeds or limited bandwidth from sharing the network with other family members working from home. Another incredible advantage was an environment with minimal distractions. For those confined to a smaller house, living with a large family, or simply forced to share space with people who have their own responsibilities and agendas, the online AP test raised a plethora of concerns.
A genuine consideration for educators developing and proctoring online tests is the issue of cheating. As one might expect, academic dishonesty is much easier to get away with online than in a physical testing space–it’s easy enough to make internet activity non-traceable by the proctors, and you’re not being monitored nearly as closely as you would ordinarily. One change that helped to reduce the urge to cheat was making the test open-book. I think this was a prudent decision when considering that students are alone in a room, most likely with supplementary materials available and no one to reprimand or restrain them. The time constraint also helped to reduce cheating–with simple internet searches, falling into rabbit holes is common because it is difficult to find in-depth and pertinent information quickly, therefore resulting in an amount of wasted time that’s not worth whatever information you might be able to glean. I know people who found it more useful and expedient to refer to a textbook or class notes instead of wasting time frantically searching the Internet. I believe graders focused on major themes, historical thinking skills, and ability to synthesize information and create a historically defensible argument than specific details and dates (although the latter was still considered, just not as crucial), which also helped to discourage cheating. Personally, I didn’t have much time to look things up anyway. I needed to write almost constantly to finish my essay. I will say that I definitely improved my typing speed during this process! And call me a nerd all you want, but the sheer risk of having my score and all my hard work from the year invalidated was enough to deter me from cheating altogether.
For students who detested multiple choice and long tests, I would say that the 2020 AP testing experience was probably favorable to the alternative. For students with limited access to technology and a distraction-free environment, however, the playing field was far less level than it had been in previous years. For me, there was not much of a difference as I was lucky enough to have sufficient time and excellent instruction (thank you, Mr. Prokosch!) in refining my skill set for the new exam format. I had access to pretty optimal technology—a fast computer and a stable and high-speed internet connection. I was also lucky enough to have a quiet and comfortable testing environment, and I type relatively quickly. Even for me, a person with nearly every conceivable advantage, the 2020 exam still felt less likely to be an accurate representation of my knowledge and skill set than the one I took in 2019. As such, it is clear that online testing needs a lot more refinement if schools want to increase equity and make sure students receive the test scores they deserve.