[Athen] E-book devices in testing rooms

Robert Beach rbeach at KCKCC.EDU
Thu Jan 21 13:46:30 PST 2010


We have had students want to use devices such as the BrailleNote and PackMate to take tests. At first, my director used to allow this until I explained to her that this was the same as letting any other student write their answers in the same notebook they used to take notes in class. You cannot guarantee that the student will not access the notes from the class or other resources, including the textbook.

We now do not allow students to use such devices to read and/or write answers for tests. They must use one of our computers with assistive technology that is setup for testing. When we had a blind student complain that this was not fair because he was better at writing braille on the Braillenote than he was with typing into Word, we simply explained that he was in college and typing papers on the computer was going to be a skill he would have to develop. Once he tried using JAWS to read and Word to write during a test, he really liked it.


Robert Lee Beach
Assistive Technology Specialist
Kansas City Kansas Community College
7250 State Avenue
Kansas City, KS 66112
Phone: 913-288-7671
Fax: 913-288-7678
E-Mail: rbeach at kckcc.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Dell
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:18 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: [Athen] E-book devices in testing rooms

Hello
Has anyone had any experiences with a student that has an open book
exam and wishes to use a device like the Kindle or an e-book ap on an
iPod or iPhone? How did you deal with the situation. Many of these
devices have features that professors would not want a student having
access to like WiFi capabilities. We haven't seen it happen yet but I
was just thinking of that when I was reading about BLIO this
afternoon.
Jeff
Cleveland State

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