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Microsoft word update messes up exams in Denmark (www.dr.dk)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

87 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Sorry for the Danish post i hope you can translate it.

The Ministry warns that Microsoft programs can create problems for written exams for students with Mac computers.

Users who have updated the programs to the latest version may experience the programs running slowly, freezing and crashing. This means that the examinees are delayed in their work and that parts of the answers risk being lost, write the Agency for Education and Quality and the Agency for IT and Learning in a notice to schools.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I assumed they would be centrally managed, but they are not apparently. So then I don't really see why they would get a time extension to be honest. You could easily game that then and just fake it crashing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

A single person experiencing an error is bad luck and may go through an apeals process. Half a class experiencing the same error jeopardizes the legitimacy of the exam for enough students that they decided to handle it collectively. It may be a third party tool but it is one they are expected to use which changes things. Had it been a few students using libre office they would probably be out of luck as they would have used non standard software.

Another important note is that many exams now require digitally handing in the assignment, so the only alternative to writing the assignment in a text editor would likely have been to scan a handwritten one and convert it to pdf, if that was even allowed. So while particular hardware and software isn’t required, the limitations of the exam makes it impossible to completly avoid errors such as these.