As technology continues to progress at a rapid rate in today’s world, online testing has started to replace some written tests. For this current school year, End Of Course (EOC) exams for subjects such as US History and Algebra II have been taken on computers, however Advanced Placement (AP) tests are still taken on paper.

“Writing tests could be more efficient on a computer, but only for people that know how to type fast. For people that don’t know how to type fast, it will just completely slow them down. I think that’s why we don’t really take writing test on computers,” said Junior, Blake Hufstetler.

While proponents of online testing reason that it saves paper and time, in many cases the computers being tested on and the testing programs they’re running experience technical glitches.

“When I was taking the US History exam on the computer, it was just a bad time. Firstly, half of the computers took forever to load the program to take the test on, and then with the other computers the mouse wouldn’t even work,” said Junior, Brian Seybold.

In some states, due to all the technical difficulties with online testing, many were canceled, forcing students to return back to the paper and pencil.

“I prefer taking tests on paper. I’m someone who needs to mark the text a lot in order to do well and understand the questions better. On the computer they give you highlighting tools, but sometimes they only work on the questions or just the passages when I want to mark more than that,” said Senior, Drew Arfsten.

It seems that the push for online testing is strong, but the effects on students and their grades haven’t been so positive. Many students seem to experience issues while trying to take tests on computers that simply don’t have the same feel on a computer than they do on paper.