By Mary Wolters, Design Editor
Starting May 2025, the College Board will discontinue administering paper tests and switch to digital or hybrid formats for 28 Advanced Placement exams out of the 39 in total. Schools are to administer the assessments through Bluebook, the application used for the digital SAT and PSAT exams. The change differs from previous years when schools could select which tests to provide digitally.
Conestoga will offer 14 online and nine hybrid digital AP exams, with the other five exams remaining on paper. The College Board originally planned to transition AP exams to a digital format over a longer period, but in July, the organization accelerated the process for the security of the assessments. Megan Smyth, guidance counselor and AP exam coordinator, believes online testing with Bluebook offers a more secure process than paper testing.
“Once a student opens the Bluebook app and logs in, it creates a lockdown browser so they cannot exit it, minimize it, access anything else in their computer,” Smyth said. “They’ve been using this technology for a couple years now. It is definitely secure in terms of cheating prevention.”
During hybrid digital exams, students enter multiple-choice selections and view free-response questions in Bluebook. Unlike fully digital ones, they write free-response answers in paper booklets.
The College Board offers online practice for multiple-choice and free-response questions through the AP Classroom website. Junior Jessica Joseph believes that the digital format makes testing easier, such as when selecting answers for multiple-choice questions.
“If someone was to accidentally skip a line and bubble in something wrong on a paper, that would mess up their tests,” Joseph said. “But since it is digital, you just have to click on the answer and there’s more of a probability that you’re choosing (what you meant to choose).”
For 12 digital tests with calculator active sections, Bluebook will have a built-in option to use Desmos as an online calculator application. Other reference materials, such as equation sheets and periodic tables, will be accessible through Bluebook.
If a computer runs out of battery during testing, the student can recharge it and continue their work without losing any exam time as Bluebook uses autonomous timers for each individual computer. The software also offers the ability to highlight text, cross out answers and mark questions for review.
“The feedback we’ve gotten is that students like the Bluebook interface for the way it helps them focus on relevant passages and type faster than having to write out their long responses,” Smyth said. “A lot of the kids last year that did test digitally said that it was a less stressful environment because they’re used to being on the computer and they found the Bluebook platform to be very user-friendly.”
Mary Wolters can be reached at [email protected].
