To see a video on what student’s think about the testing center, click here.
Kara Lloyd had an experience in the Computer Testing Center that most students have only had nightmares about.”I was having problems with clicking, and I accidentally clicked outside my test window, and it shut my test down,” she said.Lloyd, communication studies junior, said the people at the center wouldn’t help her, so she had to leave her test and talk to her professor about it.”It was really frustrating,” Lloyd said. “They were really impersonable, and no one would help me.”While many students have complaints, David O’Brien, assistant director for Centers for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, said there are many advantages for teachers and students who use the testing center.”Because the test is outside the classroom, the instructor can use the extra class periods to teach,” he said. “Also, if a student is not a morning person, but they have an early class, they could schedule their test for the afternoon.”The center tests about 240 course sections, and about 20,000 students in 20 departments.O’Brien also said different classes use techniques only available on computers such as sound clips and movie clips. Students also have the ability to look at a graphic or clip as many times as they want.A common complaint from students is answer formatting for math tests because most answers are fill in the blank instead of multiple choice.”It’s not really fair that you don’t get partial credit,” said Ashley Johnston, kinesiology junior.”If it was written, at least [the professor] could look at your work and see that you were on the right track.”But Phoebe Rouse, mathematics instructor, said students should not have a problem correctly formatting their answers.”All of the test questions are taken from homework and quizzes, so the students should have seen them before,” she said. Rouse also said students’ homework and quizzes are in the same computer program, so they shouldn’t have a problem filling out answers if they are keeping up with their work.O’Brien said the biggest problem Center administrators run into with so much testing is a crammed schedule at the end of the week.”Students try to take their test as late as possible,” he said. “The last day of the testing window for [classes] on the same test schedule always peak at the end of the week.”Most classes are on a Monday through Friday schedule, so peak days are Thursdays and Fridays, he said. Mondays and Tuesdays see very few students, except during midterms and especially finals, when almost every day is busy.Some students have complaints about the small number of people staffing the center. Steffi Obilisundar said the staff members that are available can’t answer questions students may have about their tests.”If you have a question, there is no one to help you,” she said. O’Brien said the center prefers to send students to their instructors for specific test questions.O’Brien also said the center tries to adjust the availability of seats according to the test schedules he receives from each instructor, and there are always extra seats. But he said these extra seats aren’t for “walk-ins.” “We will have students walk in and try to take a test without scheduling, but we make them go back and schedule it first,” O’Brien said. “It’s not to be mean. We want them to learn the lesson.”O’Brien said the testing center was started as a project for the Department of Biological Sciences because the department’s peer reviews said they need to use more technology in teaching.”We began with 20 computers in a lab in Coates [Hall] that had reserved public access for a year,” he said. O’Brien said the first lab built for the sole purpose of computer-based testing was in Himes Hall, but everyone involved knew it was going to be a long term project — about 10 years — but the move to testing only in the basement of Himes marked its completion. The testing center that used to be in the Pentagon was temporary, O’Brien said.O’Brien said the center’s other responsibilities include grading small scantrons for instructors, testing incoming freshmen and doing course evaluations for all courses except mass communication and business, because they use their own survey center.
—-Contact Ellen Zielinski at [email protected]