Down For Digital: AP European History and AP Literature exams will be taken digitally

The College Board has announced the option for schools to administer digital Accelerated Placement exams — specifically for AP European History and AP English Literature and Composition at East.

2023 will be the first time, aside from 2020, East will offer those exams digitally. The College Board will be using this year to gather data to decide the future of AP testing.

As the era of paper testing ends, the board is currently looking to shift to a fully digital testing platform, according to national trends from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Along with AP exams, College Board will also offer the SAT digitally for the 2024 testing year, according to AP news.

“Most tests are going online,” East’s AP coordinator Jim Dusek said. “They offer to do this with a number of different schools to try to work out any kinks there might be with the online system if the school can support it.”

After 68 years of administering paper exams, AP has refined their digital exam model from the 2020 test — from the capabilities and features of a newer, more accommodating test platform on the Bluebook system — that will benefit the College Board along with schools and test takers, according to the AP newsroom.

Last year, over 4 million AP tests were administered throughout the US, according to College Board, which is roughly 1.4 million pounds of paper worth of testing materials. The new online test will eliminate a substantial portion of shipping costs of packets from test centers to College Board’s headquarters, as well as benefit the environment.

Additionally, the new test platform will include a timer at the top of each screen, tools such as a question strikethrough and highlighter, and the ability to flag and navigate between questions and type free response questions.

Sophomore Lulu Stadler, who is taking the AP Euro test, prefers digital testing and expects her performance to improve as a result.

“I feel it’s more productive because you can type, and writing longer hurts your hand,” Stadler said. “Typing on a computer will make things go by faster and easier.”

While students handwrite an average of 8-10 words per minute, they can type at 30 words per minute, according to typing.com. As the amount of time for the FRQ section will remain the same, students like Stadler will have extra time to prepare and review work.

Since the change, AP Lit teacher Amy Anderson has been preparing for the online format by switching in-class timed essays from handwritten to typed.

The decision to test digitally was up to the English teachers. Andersen and AP Lit teacher Erica Jackson each polled their classes and got student input. The consensus was students were done with paper, as the majority of her students saw that taking the digital test would be more beneficial.

However, the ability to actually feel and touch the test could be viewed as an advantage for the paper test. If Andersen was able to make her own test, she would want a hybrid, but then said that the ability to type, and the time gained, was greater than the ability to have a paper MCQ portion.

Andersen predicts that in years to come, more teachers will opt for the digital test because if you look at our schooling system, it’s almost fully digital, and she believes that tests will follow the trend. In the meantime, she’s eager to see how the online format affects student performance.

While AP plans to offer more exams online in the upcoming years, results from this year will be a key factor in the decision, according to the College Board news site.

“I think digital is the way of the future,” Andersen said. “Eventually there will come a time when digital is the only test offered.”