By Uy Pham
The College Board recently announced that nine AP exams will be completely administered in a digital format for the May 2025 testing season. The tests will still be taken on the high school’s campus and will have the same overall exam structure, including the number of sections, questions and timing.
The nine exams that will be going digital include AP African American Studies, Computer Science Principles (AP CSP), English Language and Composition (AP Lang), English Literature and Composition (AP Lit), European History, Psychology, Seminar, United States History (APUSH) and World History. Currently, six of those exams are offered as courses at Fountain Valley High School (FVHS).
This announcement marks a change from the 2023 and 2024 testing policies; previously, schools had the option to digitally administer the exams in the above list with the exception of AP Psychology. However, all schools will be required to deliver these exams digitally, barring personal accommodations for students.
“It’s time to accept the reality of instruction in the modern age … It makes editing work faster and students have a better opportunity to express themselves with greater clarity. It adds an element of universal access that was missing in previous versions of the hand-written test and this should be viewed as a net positive for students,” APUSH teacher Cory Nelson said. “For teachers, this is also a positive as the major impediment for grading student work, their illegible handwriting, is now no longer an issue.”
Digital exams will share the same rules as paper exams; students will not return to completed sections, and the same number of proctors will be required.
Through the exam administration app Bluebook, students will be able to complete and submit exams digitally. Students will have access to tools such as strikethrough, highlight and other annotating tools within the various sections.
According to The College Board, an added benefit of this change is the prevention of problems with the security of paper exam booklets and the potential loss of exam booklets.
“Digital tests reflect the new reality of being a student in the 2020s,” Nelson said. “The real issue is whether or not the school infrastructure can handle the stress that this will cause on the WIFI network.”
In May 2023, more than 3,600 schools administered 320,000 digital AP exams. FVHS attempted to administer four exams digitally: AP Lit, AP Lang, AP CSP and APUSH.
However, during that time, approximately 20 AP Lit students could not submit their test, and 45 APUSH students were unable to access the test at all. As a result, FVHS reordered paper versions of the exams for both AP CSP and AP Lang.
At the time, former Assistant Principal of Curriculum and Instruction Jon Hurst attributed the problems to the large nationwide digital traffic of students attempting to access the Bluebook server.
The students who were unable to submit and access their test had to make up the test on the respective make-up dates, on paper.
“This is exactly my concern about the digital implementation of the exam. The College Board has not necessarily had all the kinks worked out in the years since it conducted any digital exams, since and including May 2020,” AP Lang teacher Sara Saadeh said. “Last year, having to retake the exams resulted in many of my AP English students missing even more class and made them increasingly anxious about their exam. I had one or two students who decided not to complete the retest due to not wanting to be further stressed.”
Similar problems were reported district-wide, with 33 students at Edison High School and a handful of Marina High School students needing to retake their exams due to digital issues.
For the 2024 testing cycle, FVHS is not offering any digital exams due to reasons such as technology disruptions impacting the administration of AP exams.
“The College Board is notoriously picky when it comes to test security and we wanted to make certain that there were no major debacles or issues that could compromise all of the hard work our AP students have been doing over the year,” Assistant Principal of Guidance Brian Clark said. “We are providing our AP teachers with extra time to adjust their teaching practices to better match a digital world and what these digital tests may look like. Our hope is that this approach gives all AP students the necessary tools to succeed with such a significant shift.”
Teachers’ thoughts
Baron Banner surveyed several teachers impacted by the shift to digital exam administration to see their thoughts on how this will impact their AP experience.
One prominent discussion centers around whether a digital format would benefit students for the various free-response sections of the exams in terms of speed. Some teachers point out that handwriting responses, annotations and other notes help students to better understand, organize and consider their responses.
“I find no advantages for students to take it digitally, many have not learned to type correctly and have [a] false sense of accuracy and speed,” AP European History teacher Michael Kral said.
While most teachers hope that digital testing will be free from errors, some teachers would still prefer that schools be given a choice between digital and paper exam administration.
“I understand the desire and the rationale for the move to all-digital exams however, based on how previous digital testing went, I am wary to have trust that [the College Board] will have tested the technology thoroughly enough or that they will have considered reasonable contingency plans in the event that something goes wrong with the test,” Saadeh said. “I would appreciate it if schools were still provided the option of a written exam.
Saadeh also pointed out that a shift to digital exam administration may also impact the current in-person nature of scoring.
“As a previous AP reader, I acknowledge that reading various handwriting can be challenging to scorers, however, I would still prefer that to staring at a screen for hours on end to read hundreds of responses,” Saadeh said. “Additionally, there is a great benefit to teachers participating in the week-long scoring process in person. Scorers meet other AP teachers in the subject from across the country and are able to learn so much from each other by attending the scoring in person.”
The shifts to digital exams will impact teachers who currently utilize handwritten, paper responses for student practice and understanding.
Nelson and fellow APUSH teacher David Uribe reported no plans for adjustment to their instruction, as most of the work completed in their classes is already digitized. While they have already utilized digital multiple choice practice in AP Classroom, Saadeh, along with other AP English teachers, plans to incorporate typed free responses to their classroom instruction.
“Hopefully the issues from the 2023 test have been addressed and resolved. Problems will need to be dealt with as they arise with patience and understanding,” Nelson said. “Well-prepared students should have no problem making up tests, if issues do occur.”
