At the end of each school year, many students take Advanced Placement (AP) exams, administered by the College Board. In the past, exams have only been on paper, but this year many of the courses offered at BHS are turning to digital testing this May.
Starting this year, paper testing will be discontinued for 28 AP courses. 18 of these will become fully digital, mostly consisting of English and history courses. An additional 12 courses will become hybrid.
“For the 12 hybrid digital AP Exams, students complete multiple-choice questions and view free-response questions in Bluebook. They handwrite their free-response answers in paper exam booklets that are returned for scoring,” the College Board website states here, addressing changes regarding exams becoming digital.
Exams taken digitally will be administered on the Bluebook testing app, which students have used in the past for various other College Board tests, such as the PSAT or digital SAT.
“It should simplify the process for students. Most students will have experienced testing with the digital format of the SAT last spring and the PSAT etc, students will eventually be familiar with how it works. Students will have to be sure that their iPads are fully charged and have the testing application Bluebook loaded,” post-secondary counselors Jennifer Stroh and Kathleen Moody said.
Even though the exams are taken differently, the exams themselves are the same. The number of sections, number and type of questions and timing remain unchanged. Students can go back within a section or part to review or complete previous questions, but can’t go to previous sections, similar to the paper exams in years prior. The registration process for these exams also remains the same.
“By now all students should have joined their AP Classroom for their courses that are a full year or first semester only. Fees for each exam can be found in a student’s Infinite Campus account and should be paid for no later than Nov. 1. Students who are taking a second semester-only exam will be sent more information as those dates and deadlines get closer,” Stroh and Moody said.
