Issues that arose during a workshop on Spanish 12 e-exam in Surrey, November 2007

Teachers feel the process is definitely not as straightforward nor as easy as stated in meetings and dialogues with the Ministry.

A. Issues that can be corrected to make the practice/exam administration more accessible:

1. The practice exams need to be reset regularly so that students can get the whole exam even if they use someone else's practice ID. If they are reset every day right now that is obviously not enough because we encountered problems even with our small group and the province as a whole has not even begun the real practice activities. (Our district, for example, has all the Spanish 12 classes in the second semester.)

2. All the correct answers are "A" in the Listening practice and when the answer key comes up it shows that everyone is wrong. Apparently this was to have been fixed.

3. The practice is meant for "process" practice only but teachers feel that there needs to be "content" practice on-line as well. The two need to be integrated for authentic practice.

4. The anchor samples need to be there already. Teachers do not know enough about the marking and expectations in advance. There need to be calibration sessions and helpful in-service from the Ministry.

5. Volume control went to “default” for every question - had to be reset for max to be heard for recording every question. This is very disconcerting when your attention should be on the content of the exam and not constantly on the technical aspects.

6. There were issues around the Timer not working for the Speaking part. (Response: Time shouldn't be there - will only create more anxiety.) However, teachers did see the timer and were concerned that it didn’t work.

7. The Mac built-in mike didn’t allow the external mikes to work. Ministry solutions did not seem to work. The district phoned Apple and got input about overcoming the problem. Macs will need to have a special adapter to override the internal mike or very expensive headsets have to be purchased.

8. It is difficult to find directions/instructions re times allotted in the exam. This should be very clear from the outset. How much time for speaking each portion, listening times etc.? It should also be part of the practice so students and teachers have a realistic idea of the time given.

B. Issues endemic to this type of e-assessment that will always present challenges:

1. Our school labs are not set up for this.
• problems with Mac computers,
• need strong central work and support (time and money)

Is it worth setting up our labs for the sake of e-exams? Does it support learning in other ways?

It took our central Tech Helping Teacher one and a half days to set up the North Surrey lab for our teacher workshop (with help from the school tech person and central tech services (IMS)). This will now have to be repeated in every one of our 19 high schools and then the Learning Centres. Many of the secondary schools will be even more difficult for set-up.

2. The district has encouraged mobile labs to alleviate problems of lab access but these are not good for this process since they are wireless and internet connection is very unstable.

3. Headsets need to be purchased. Who will pay? Will they be used by more than one person? How about the hygiene and sanitation issues?

4. One will be able to do only a few people at a time because of sound issues (hearing each other, seeing each other). This seems especially inefficient because access to labs is so difficult.

5. Training takes a long time and teachers as well as invigilators have to be trained. In addition the tech support people have to be trained. This takes a lot of time. When will this happen? Who will reimburse them for this extra time that is above their actual teaching load? Our teachers did not feel ready to do this after a morning of going through the process step by step with knowledgeable people – we had 3 experts in the room to help. Our tech Helping Teacher made her own helpful hand-out for them and was extremely organised in her presentation.

6. Internet access can be very unstable and we are dependent upon this medium for practice and the actual exam. Scheduling can be thrown off by this and best intentions come to naught. In the workshop session we held, the internet was down for the first part so we could not proceed. All things had been carefully set up but this was uncontrollable. In addition, Plnet was experiencing difficulties once internet access was restored and so the computers kept freezing at strategic times.

7. Test anxiety for teachers and students is increased by all of the above. Even when teachers are doing something fun with the computer and internet, students are anxious about whether the internet will be Ok for them etc. This is manifested in our classes regularly. A testing situation should not have possibilities for things to go wrong like this.

8. In spite of meticulous set-up preparation, there were glitches for us and we were very happy to have such experts present for help. This will not be possible in the actual testing situation. The fact that we can call a Ministry help line does not provide much solace. It takes time and what do you do in the interim with the student? Then there is the very real issue of lack of access to long distance or 800 number phone capability in the labs or any classroom in our schools. Again this chance for glitches/problems is very unfair to students taking the test.

9. We are not satisfied that cheating possibilities have been dealt with adequately.

10. Setting up a viable schedule for the actual exam times for students will be a big challenge. During the day, the teacher has to teach and students cannot be removed from other classes. It cannot be done during class time for it takes too long. After school will also not be popular or even feasible with students, teachers or tech support. This is a very big issue for teachers. Saying that this is the job of the principal does not help. The problems will be further exacerbated when more languages come on board.

11. Teachers have double duty without reimbursement – first to invigilate (despite Ministry comments to the contrary, teachers will need to be present) and then to mark.

12. The process is so training needy for students that valuable time will be taken from concentrating on actual Spanish LOs. Our time in the classroom is already stretched to the limit and this process does not encourage Spanish learning on the part of the students.