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U.S. students will take the SAT online

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Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#41

Post by [deleted] »

dandesim wrote: post #29
screamingninja wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed; this will further devalue these standardized tests when the results cannot be fully trusted and stop correlating with academic success.

This are big statements to be making with no rationale. These will still be proctored exams in person, so there is no reason to believe that cheating will increase . Additionally, there is low indicators from the start that standardized tests correlate with academic success, hence the number of higher ed institutions no longer requiring them. People who want to cheat will always find a way to cheat. All you need to d…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#42

Post by philsnow »

icyfox wrote: post #11

When I took the GRE in 2017, everything was digital as well. But I couldn't believe how locked down the experience was. The testing center in downtown SF had no windows, a metal detector, and you had to check all food outside of the testing room. Just in case you were going to try to cheat off of your banana. I think each computer was also recording a video of you taking the test although I might be mistaken here. Ce…

My experience was nearly identical taking the GRE in 2003.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#43

Post by glial »

gnicholas wrote: post #28

When I first heard they were shortening the exam by 30%, I thought that was unfortunate, since it would either make the test less reliable or impose a lower ceiling on the range it can assess. However, I later learned that it will be dynamic — depending on how a student does in the first section on a given topic, he will be given either easier or harder versions of a subsequent section. That means that they'll be abl…

Shorter is good, but dynamic tests (called "computer adaptive tests" or CAT in the industry) make it difficult to follow longstanding best-practices for test taking. When I took the SAT, I could quickly scan through the questions in the current section and mark those that looked difficult, and save them for the end. With a CAT test, it's typically one-question-at-a-time, and if you're a strong test taker, they get successively more difficult. They are more efficient tests, but (IMHO) less pleasant to take.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#44

Post by gnicholas »

itishappy wrote: post #33

My friend took an important law school exam (GRE or BAR, not sure which) in the past 2 years that was self administered, and she described her experience as "harrowing." The kernel level malware they installed to monitor the exam crashed her device 4 times during the exam. This was after she got it running on a secondary device because it wouldn't even start on her M1 MacBook Air. The software recorded her screen and…

The amount of surveillance/security needed when students take tests at home (like your friend, and many others during COVID) is awful. But it sounds like the SAT won't be administered at home, only in high schools and test centers.

Students will use either school-owned or student-owned devices, which is not great. I would certainly opt for the former, since I wouldn't want to install this crap on my own computer. We'll find out in the next couple years how smoothly this goes. They've been doing the SAT online for a while outside the US, so hopefully the ironed out some of the bugs already.

But they won't have to worry about someone entering the frame, since testing will happen exclusively at proctored centers.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#46

Post by iraqmtpizza »

tehjoker wrote: post #12
screamingninja wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed; this will further devalue these standardized tests when the results cannot be fully trusted and stop correlating with academic success.

all true, but at least there will be one fewer setting students are forcibly exposed to COVID-19 in

You were forcibly exposed to things other than your favorite brand of organic soda too

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#47

Post by [deleted] »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #34

Here's the company's description of how they will secure it: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/test-security-fairness Still relying on the test being taken in a monitored environment, like at school or a test center. They emphasize that this new digital delivery means questions are less likely to be taken out of the test environment and published.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#48

Post by gnicholas »

glial wrote: post #43
gnicholas wrote: post #28

When I first heard they were shortening the exam by 30%, I thought that was unfortunate, since it would either make the test less reliable or impose a lower ceiling on the range it can assess. However, I later learned that it will be dynamic — depending on how a student does in the first section on a given topic, he will be given either easier or harder versions of a subsequent section. That means that they'll be abl…

Shorter is good, but dynamic tests (called "computer adaptive tests" or CAT in the industry) make it difficult to follow longstanding best-practices for test taking. When I took the SAT, I could quickly scan through the questions in the current section and mark those that looked difficult, and save them for the end. With a CAT test, it's typically one-question-at-a-time, and if you're a strong test taker, they get su…

That is true for adaptive tests that operate on a per-question basis. What I have read of the new SAT is that it operates at a session level. So if you do well on the entire first session, you get a harder version of the next session on that topic (reading or math).

Students should still be able to use the technique you mention to identify hard questions and save them for last.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#49

Post by Buttons840 »

Eldandan wrote: post #36
autoexec wrote: post #18

I'd rather go into a testing center and use someone else's device than infect my own system with whatever spyware they'll insist students install to try and prevent cheaters.

> try and prevent Yeah, good luck with that. If there's one thing remote teaching during covid taught me it's that you can't stop someone from cheating during an online assessment.

I graduated from WGU and I wouldn't have known how to cheat on the many proctored tests. The only special software I installed was Zoom. I had to have a detached USB camera and show myself and my testing area, and then during the test the camera was to my side showing both myself and the laptop screen.

I'm sure it's possible, but that seems just as secure as a random highschool teacher, which was the only anti-cheat of decades past.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#50

Post by glial »

iraqmtpizza wrote: post #39
gnicholas wrote: post #28

When I first heard they were shortening the exam by 30%, I thought that was unfortunate, since it would either make the test less reliable or impose a lower ceiling on the range it can assess. However, I later learned that it will be dynamic — depending on how a student does in the first section on a given topic, he will be given either easier or harder versions of a subsequent section. That means that they'll be abl…

If you can't opt out of the dumb-dumb version regardless of your answers to previous questions then the test is rigged. Not only would it not be directly comparable to previous test years, it would not be comparable to other versions of the test. Defeating the entire point (ranking students)

Comparability across test years is taken seriously by the folks that make these tests (see e.g. [1,2]). There are valid criticisms to be made, but flippantly calling the test 'rigged' is not constructive.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1435437 [2] https://www.ets.org/research/policy_research_reports/publica...

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