Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by f0xtrot 1603 days ago
I really don't understand the need to make every interaction a digital one.

IMO, here wasnt anything wrong with the paper & pencil version. I think this will end up causing more problems then it solves and just like everything else that goes digital. Just like every other business that can't function without electricity anymore. Our soft skills like being able to tally a restaurant order on paper and letting people pay for it are dissapearing. Its just saddening

1 comments

> I really don't understand the need to make every interaction a digital one.

Think cheap.

College Board is a business. Paper exams have probably been optimized for cost as much as they can be, and the SAT is under fire from multiple directions.

The problem is that "cheap" also then applies to the implementation. And, because everything is digital, it's really easy to erase the evidence of incompetence, malfeasance, shoddy workmanship, etc.

when I think of 'cheap' in that context, the thought of shoddy does come up.

That seems like a negative.

what kind of benefit could the switch have? I'm having a hard time understanding the need. A "cheap" education dosent seem like a good thing unless were talking about cost to the student.

Securing the test papers has a cost. Distributing the test papers has a cost. Having the exam only a small number of times a year has a cost (spiky resource usage which is idle the rest of the year).

There could be some benefits to students--better accessibility for disabilities as well as taking the test at arbitrary times and getting scores immediately spring to mind.

There just won't be because those would require money to develop.