RyanHarne.com

The digital proctoring setup was recently altered at the Empo. To actually explain how it works in brief would be difficult unless you’ve been there, sat in front of one of the iMacs, and had an Empo proctor get a test started for you. Anyways, the point is that the actual script has been changed to implement Firefox instead of Safari.

Since the tests begin via a USB key, there has historically been some lag as the application is run, initially, straight from the USB thingie. But now, with the browser switch, it takes even longer. So from the time a student clicks “Accept” for the Honor Code pop-up, there is a good 10-second pause until the testing browser is prompted. And it’s funny to watch how some of the students respond to this.

In the past, even with about the 6 or 7 seconds of delay, students would often hit Accept more than once, thereby beginning more than one testing window. The last window would automatically kill the previous ones, so it worked out fine. It’s the same case now using Firefox. But since the delay is longer, more and more students are impatient and click Accept again to make sure they did it. But some don’t stop there.

Tonight, one kid clicked it about 6 times. Five of those testing windows blinked on and off screen in an epileptic fashion, humorous to watch, not to mention his surprise at the outcome. And the silver star goes to the kid who clicked Accept a solid 10 times. The result from that flourish was astounding and even I had a hard time watching the strobing windows.

And these are the simple pleasures of my job that I love.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 10:34 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.